Page 9 of Born in Grief

“I’m Inspector Vikram Mathur,” he announced. “And this is Sub Inspector Lakshmi Vardhan.” He smiled, a shark baring his teeth. “I’d like a private moment with Mrs. Gokhale please.”

“Dhrithi,” Amay said automatically, his mind whirring with the implications of their arrival. “Her name is Dhrithi.”

Chapter Five

DHRITHI

Her name is Dhrithi.

The sound of his voice trickled through her system like hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. Dazed and disoriented, she stared at all the people crowding her hospital room. Her mother tried to stroke her hair again, but her finger caught in a particularly bad tangle, pulling on Dhrithi’s hair and making her already sensitive scalp sting.

Her gaze swept the room, stopping on Amay who stood to the back, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the wall.

Varun was dead. She stared at Amay, wondering what he thought of that fact. But his eyes and his expression gave nothing away. He was nothing like the boy she’d once known. The boy she’d once forced herself to mock and scorn along with everyone else. The boy who’d –

“Mrs. Gokhale.” The policeman’s strident voice cut through her muddled, maudlin thoughts. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

Mrs. Gokhale. But Varun was dead, so she wasn’t Mrs. Gokhale anymore. She was Dhrithi. Just Dhrithi.

Her name is Dhrithi.

A strange bubble of elation swept through her.

“Can you tell us a little more about the accident Ma’am? Do you remember anything from that night?”

Her bubble popped. Her gaze swung towards her father who was standing to the back of the room, stone-faced. Dhrithi’s heart started a frantic thrumming, the machine she was hooked on to beeping in tandem to it.

The other doctor who’d been doing most of the talking to her parents only frowned at the machine, but Amay pushed off from the wall, stepping closer to her bed. He didn’t say or do anything, just positioned himself near her bedside, his intense stare fixed on the policeman.

Dhrithi belatedly realised that everyone else was looking at her, barring Amay. “I-I-I,” she stuttered. “Don’t really remember much.”

“Where were you going? Do you remember that?” The lady inspector spoke for the first time.

“Out.”

“Out where, Madam?” The policeman looked a little annoyed now, his avuncular smile fading.

“I didn’t have a specific plan,” she murmured, deciding to stick to the truth as much as possible. “I just wanted to get out of the house.”

“And your husband?”

Her eyes shot to her father again. He looked away, not holding her gaze. Dhrithi’s hand clenched in the white, hospital sheet.

“He-“ She fell silent.

The entire room watched her quietly waiting for her to finish her sentence.

“He followed me,” she whispered, finally, unable to see a way around the question. “He wanted me to come home.”

Silence greeted the admission. She saw Amay’s hands flex at his side, those long, surgeon’s fingers vising into a fist.

“And you didn’t want to go?”

Her mouth felt dry, panic pounding in every cell as the memory of that night flooded through her.

“I wanted to go out,” she said again.

“The patient needs to rest,” Amay’s hot-chocolate voice interrupted. “Can we resume this tomorrow?”

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