Chapter 8 — What Devika Said

AanyaShe called Devika at eleven PM.Devika answered on the first ring, which meant she had been awake, which meant she had been awake in the specific way of someone who had been waiting for this call for a long time."Finally," Devika said. Not accusing. Just: finally.Aanya sat on the narrow guesthouse bed in the dark and said: "He's engaged."A pause. "Oh, Aanu.""She's wonderful," Aanya said. "Her name is Priya and she's the kind of person who looks at hard things and walks toward them. She asked me directly at dinner whether I still loved him.""What did you say?""The true version. That I loved who he was, not who he became, because I didn't get to know who he became." She looked at the dark ceiling. "Which is also a way of not answering.""Aanya." Devika's voice had the tone it took when she was about to say something Aanya needed to hear and didn't want to. "You have to tell him.""No.""Aanya—""He has a fiancée, Dev. A fiancée who is good and real and has done nothing wrong. Who came to Rishikesh today specifically to show him — and me — that he had chosen. That he was chosen and that he had chosen." Her voice was steady. "I am not going to detonate that.""It's his child," Devika said. "He has the right—""He has a right to know," Aanya said. "I know that. I've thought about that. But knowing comes at a cost and that cost is paid by someone who is innocent in this.""And what about you?" Devika said. "What about what it costs you?""I made the choices I made," Aanya said. "In February. I knew enough by then to know what I was doing. I don't get to—this is not something I get to escape the cost of."Devika was quiet."What if he finds out later?" she said. "What if the child wants to know? What if—""I'll deal with later when it's later," Aanya said. "Right now I need to get through tomorrow morning. I'm taking the first bus.""Does he know you're leaving?""Not yet.""Aanya." Devika again, the tone again. "If you leave without telling him — not the pregnancy, just that you're going — that's the second time you've left him without saying what needed to be said. February was one. Don't make this the same."She sat with this."What should I say?" she said. And it came out less controlled than she intended — the question of someone who was genuinely asking."Tell him you're okay," Devika said. "Tell him it was good to see him. Tell him to take care of her because she sounds like someone worth taking care of." A pause. "And tell him that whatever he thinks he understood from this weekend — that the pact is closed. That it's done. That you're both free.""And if he asks about what I'm carrying?""Tell him it's yours," Devika said. "Because it is. And because you've decided. And because some decisions, once made, have to be honored."Aanya was quiet for a long moment."I don't know if I can look at him and say all of that," she said."Yes you can," Devika said. "You have been doing harder things than this your whole life. This is just the hardest version of a hard thing." A pause. "You're going to be okay, Aanu. This baby is going to be so loved. And you—you are going to be okay."She cried then. Finally. The specific release of someone who has been holding something for four months and has found the one person they trusted enough to put it down in front of.She cried quietly, on the guesthouse bed, with the Ganga somewhere below in the dark doing what it had always done.Devika stayed on the line.She did not say anything else.She just stayed.