Chapter 11 — The Call

AanyaShe told her.All of it. The conference in February, the dinner, the conversation that had gone until two AM, the decision that was not entirely a decision. The morning. The six AM bus. The July Tuesday and the pharmacy and the bathroom floor and the three tests.She told her what she had decided and why.She told her what the telling was costing, now, and why she was telling it anyway.Priya did not speak for a very long time after she finished."You came to Rishikesh," Priya said finally. "Knowing all of this.""I came to close the pact," Aanya said. "To give us both — him and me — the completion of the showing up. And to say goodbye properly. That's all I came to do.""And you weren't going to tell him.""No.""You were going to have his child and never tell him.""Yes," Aanya said. She said it steadily, because it was what it was and the steadiness was the only honest way to say it.Another long silence."I don't know," Priya said slowly, "whether that's the most selfish thing I've ever heard or the most generous."Aanya had thought about this. "It's both," she said. "The line between those two things is not always as clear as it seems.""He has the right to know," Priya said. "You know that.""I know.""Then why—""Because telling him costs you," Aanya said. "Your engagement. The life you're building. What you have — I watched you two for one day and what you have is real. He chose you, Priya. He chose you with his whole self. And the February thing was—" She stopped. "That was the last look backward. That was him making sure. And he came to Rishikesh and he brought you and that was him choosing again, in full knowledge of the choice." She paused. "Telling him gives him a responsibility he didn't choose and it gives you a complication you didn't earn. That's what I was trying to—""Aanya," Priya said. And her voice was different now — not angry, something more complex. "What were you going to tell this child, eventually, about their father?"The question hit somewhere specific."I hadn't fully worked that out yet," Aanya admitted."No," Priya said. "I don't imagine you had."Silence."I need to think," Priya said. "I need to—" She stopped. "I'm going to talk to Kabir.""Priya—""I'm not going to protect you from this," Priya said. Not coldly. Clearly. "I understand why you made the choices you made. I even understand the why of not telling him. But I'm not going to carry this for you. He deserves to know. Whatever happens after he knows — that's between him and me. But he deserves to know."Aanya sat in her Delhi apartment with the phone against her ear and thought: yes. She's right. She has always been right — that's who she is."I know," she said."Are you all right?" Priya said. And even now — even in the middle of this — the question was genuine. Not tactical."No," Aanya said. "Not right now.""You will be," Priya said. And she said it with the conviction of someone who had looked at Aanya for one day and made an assessment and was standing by it.She hung up.Aanya sat in the silence of her apartment.She thought: it's out now. The thing I've been carrying alone for four months is out.She thought: whatever happens next, I didn't decide it alone.She put her hands on her stomach.She thought: I'm going to be okay. I promised him I'd be okay.The flat evening light came through the window.She sat with it.