There are silences you carry in your body long after the words are gone.
Anaya knew that kind. It lived in her shoulder blades, in the way she walked, always half-expecting to be stopped, questioned, hurt. It stayed in the way she flinched when someone called her name too loudly. In how she always sat closest to exits.
And in the way she still hadn't blocked her sister's number, even after everything.
The phone buzzed again on the kitchen counter.
Aarav glanced at her from the living room, where he was scribbling something in his notebook. He didn't say anything. He never asked her to talk. But his eyes always listened.
It was Diya. Again.
Anaya's fingers hovered over the phone screen, then withdrew.
She walked to the balcony instead, feeling the thin chill of the late evening air bite at her bare arms. The traffic below hummed like distant static. Above, the sky stretched grey-blue and empty, like a notebook waiting for a story she hadn't yet found the courage to write.
She closed her eyes.
The next morning, she answered.
Her voice barely above a whisper. "Hello?"
Silence at the other end. Then, "Hi."
That one word — Diya's voice, softer than she remembered, less certain — made something clench in her throat.
"I didn't expect you to pick up," Diya added.
"I almost didn't."
"I know. I wouldn't blame you if you hadn't."
Anaya didn't respond.
There was a long pause before Diya spoke again. "I'd like to meet you. Just talk. Nothing more. You choose the place."
After a beat, Anaya said, "The park behind Mama's old school. Tomorrow."
And hung up before she could change her mind.
She told Aarav that evening while folding her clothes.
He looked up from his writing. "How do you feel about that?"
"I don't know yet."
"That's okay."
"I might yell at her."
He nodded. "That's okay too."
"What if I don't feel anything?"
"Still okay."
She exhaled, and something in her face shifted. The tight line of her jaw softened slightly.
"You're not scared of my anger?" she asked.
"I'm only scared of you hiding from yourself."
That made her look at him.
And for once, she didn't look away.
The park looked the same. A few new benches. The paint peeling off the old swings. The same gulmohar tree with roots that twisted like veins above ground.
Diya was already there, clutching two coffees.
"Still too sweet?" she asked, holding one out.
Anaya hesitated. Then took it.
"I'm sorry," Diya said quietly.
Anaya didn't answer.
"I don't know where to start. I just… I've wanted to talk to you for months."
"It's been a year," Anaya said, voice flat.
"I know."
"You said I was lying."
"I said I didn't believe it," Diya replied, her voice cracking. "Because if it was true, it meant I had let it happen. That I failed you. That I—"
"You did fail me," Anaya interrupted. "You looked at my bruises and said maybe I overreacted. You made me doubt myself."
"I know," Diya whispered. "And I haven't stopped regretting it since."
They sat in silence.
The sound of a child crying in the distance. A vendor yelling for bhel.
"I wasn't just your sister," Diya continued. "I was your only home. And I made you homeless."
Tears rose in Anaya's eyes before she could stop them. But she didn't cry.
"I lived in that man's shadow for too long," she said. "Even when I left, I carried him with me. I still do."
"I understand more than I did then," Diya said. "I've been in therapy."
That surprised Anaya.
"I kept thinking if I could fix myself, maybe I'd be worthy of speaking to you again."
"You don't need to be fixed to be forgiven," Anaya said quietly. "But I'm not ready to forgive yet."
"I don't expect you to."
"But I'm here," she added. "That's something."
Diya nodded. "It's everything."
That night, Aarav found her curled on the floor, knees to her chest, sketchpad untouched beside her.
He didn't ask.
He sat down next to her, close enough to feel the heat of her pain.
After a while, she spoke.
"She didn't cry."
"She didn't have to."
"She just listened."
Aarav nodded. "Did you say what you needed to?"
"I don't know yet."
He looked at her, eyes steady. "You don't have to figure it out today."
She reached for his hand.
No words.
Just warmth.
Days passed. The air grew cooler. Diya began calling once a week — never more. Never less. Just enough to say, I'm still here if you want me to be.
Anaya didn't always answer. But sometimes she did.
She started sketching again. Faces. Shapes. Small memories from childhood. She drew her mother's hand holding a broken cup. Her father's old wristwatch. A crooked umbrella she once used to cover a puppy during the rain.
Each drawing was a confession.
And Aarav? He never asked to see them.
But she started leaving them out in the open. On the desk. The table. The floor.
And every morning, they were exactly where she left them — but always straightened slightly, carefully smoothed down at the corners.
Touched, but never disturbed.
One night, Aarav returned home late from the writing group. Anaya was already in bed, her breathing steady, her face calm.
He looked at her for a long time before lying beside her.
She stirred, half-asleep.
"Did you read today?" she mumbled.
"I did."
"About what?"
"About a girl who carried silence like armor," he whispered.
Anaya's lips curled into the faintest smile.
"Was she strong?"
He looked at her, moonlight touching the edge of her face like a soft blessing.
"She survived," he said. "That's more than strong."