The days passed like beads on a string—slow, weightless, delicate. The quiet between Siddharth and me remained, not cold, but taut with something unresolved. The haveli breathed and laughed without me. I watched it from behind veils of steam in the kitchen, from shadows behind carved pillars, never quite seen.

When the fair came, the children—Aasha's twin girls and Shweta's precocious boy—were wild with excitement. They shrieked and bounced through the courtyard, henna-streaked hands tugging at silk dupattas, begging to go.