Chapter 14 — What Priya Decided

Priya — Three months later. January.She did not leave.This was the thing people expected her to do — she could see it in the faces of the two friends she had told, and in her sister's face, and even in Kabir's face in those weeks when he was being very careful with her. The expectation of the departure. The reasonable response.She had considered it. She was honest with herself; she always was. She had sat with the possibility of leaving for three weeks in October and November, turning it over the way she turned over all significant things: carefully, from all sides, without flinching from what she saw.She had come back to the same answer every time: she was not leaving.Not because she had forgiven everything immediately — she hadn't, and she wouldn't insult either of them by pretending she had. Not because February hadn't hurt. It had, specifically and significantly, and she had told him exactly how and he had listened and they had sat with it together and that had been its own kind of hard.She had come back to the same answer because she had looked at the whole picture — February, Rishikesh, the pact, Aanya's decision to carry it alone — and what she saw was this: a man who had been unfinished and was now finished. A woman who had made a choice that was simultaneously selfish and extraordinary. A situation with no villain.She was not going to leave because of a situation with no villain.She was also not going to leave because she had been to Rishikesh. She had sat in Shiv Café and she had looked at Kabir looking at Aanya and she had seen — clearly, without jealousy clouding the clarity — a man who was glad to see a person and completely clear about where home was. She had been right in what she'd told him. He was never confused. He was unfinished.He was finished now."You're sure," Kabir said, on the night she told him she'd decided."I'm sure," she said. "I'm not— there are things I'm still processing. That's going to take time. But I'm not leaving.""I don't deserve—""What you deserve and what I'm deciding are two separate things," she said. "I'm deciding for me, not for you. I want this. What we have — I want this. I'm not giving it up because it got complicated."He looked at her with the expression she had come to think of as the real one — not the composed, managed version, but the one that showed the actual texture of what he felt."I'm going to spend a very long time making sure you don't regret this," he said."I know," she said. "I'm counting on it."* * *The baby was born in March.A girl. Four kilos, the midwife said with the satisfaction of someone reporting a good number.Aanya named her Kaveri. After the river. After something that moved and kept moving and had been here longer than any of the things built around it.Devika was in the room. Aanya's mother was in the room. Kabir was not in the room because that was not his place to be, but he was in the waiting area, because Aanya had called him that morning and said: if you want to be here, you can be here.He had been there in six hours.Priya had driven him to the airport.