Three days after the interviews, Priya found the letter.
She found it not through investigation but through housekeeping — the Anjuna police had been asked by the Kaul family to secure Villa Saudade until the estate's legal status was determined. Priya went personally, because she was a detective and detectives don't delegate crime scenes.
The villa was empty. The party debris had been cleaned. The kitchen where the marriage had been dismantled was spotless. The guest room where Kavya had slept (or not slept) was stripped. The terrace — the terrace where everything ended — was just a terrace. Tiles, fairy lights still strung, a railing that overlooked a cliff with a fresh break in the laterite.
The letter was in Meera's bedside drawer. A sealed envelope, cream-coloured, with a single word on the front in Meera's handwriting:
"After."
Priya opened it. As investigating officer, she had the authority. As a human being, she felt the violation. Some envelopes are meant for specific hands.
The letter was three pages, handwritten, dated four days before the party. It was addressed to no one.
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"If you're reading this, I'm gone. That sounds dramatic. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I'm trying to be honest, which is harder than it sounds and takes more practice than anyone admits.
I am dying. A tumour in my brain, the kind that doesn't negotiate. Six to twelve months, the doctor said, in a voice that was trying to be kind and mostly succeeded. I've known for three months. I've told one person — Kavya, because Kavya is the only person in my life who can hear terrible news and not immediately try to manage it.
I have not told Rohit because Rohit would turn my dying into a project. He would research, strategise, optimise. He would find the best doctors, the best hospitals, the best experimental treatments. He would throw money and energy and willpower at the problem, and the problem would not yield, and his failure would break him in ways that my death alone would not.
I have not told Kabir because Kabir would grieve. Immediately, completely, devastatingly. He would hold me and cry and the remaining months would become a memorial service for a person who isn't dead yet. I want to live my last months. Not mourn them.
So I am writing this letter, to be read after, by whoever finds it. Here is the truth — the whole truth, the version nobody else has.
I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of dying dishonestly. I am afraid of leaving behind a life full of omissions — a husband who didn't know I loved someone else, a lover who didn't know I was sick, a best friend who carried my secret and was burdened by it, parents who still think I'm a journalist in Goa living my best life.
The party on November 11th is my deadline. Not to die — please understand this, whoever reads this. Not to die. To tell the truth. I am going to use that evening to dismantle every lie I've constructed, and I am going to do it not because I'm brave but because I'm running out of time to be anything else.
