The decision that stays with you

My wrist has his fingerprints in it. Not metaphor — I can feel the exact shape of his grip when I turn it in the dark. He didn't think I would hold on. Twelve days I held on and he still didn't believe I would. That's the part that will not leave me: the surprise on his face. Like I was supposed to drop the phone and apologize.

The garden wall was cold. That's what I remember most clearly — the stone through my kurta, his body heat everywhere else, and the way my brain went flat and clear in a way it never does at a party. At a party I am always slightly too much, performing the version of myself that lands. In the garden I was just the version that survives. I do not know which one is real.

I sent the file this morning. I do not know if he opened it. The uncle. I do not know what the uncle will do. Nobody tells me anything. I sit in my room and listen to the house eat dinner without me and I think: this is what it looks like when a family decides you are the problem. Sujata Tai set his phone face-down on the table like it was contaminated. Fine. Let it be contaminated. Let it be radioactive evidence that travels through WhatsApp and lands in a police station and changes everything.

Friday I will sit across from Sonam and drink chai and be a person who has opinions about things that are not evidence. I am counting the hours.