She came the next morning, alone, without warning, exactly the way her father had apparently taught her that important conversations were best conducted — swiftly, before anyone had time to prepare defenses.
I was in the front room when I heard the gate creak, and through the window I saw her standing there, dressed simply this time, none of the composed elegance of that first morning in the Sen family's sitting room, just an ordinary woman in an ordinary saree, looking, for the first time since I'd met her, genuinely uncertain of herself.
"I won't stay long," Priya said, once I'd let her in, before I could even offer her a seat. "I only wanted to say this to your face, because my father doesn't know I've come, and if I don't say it now I don't think I ever will."
"Say what?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral, though every instinct in me was braced for another blow after the week I'd had.
"I'm sorry," she said, and the words seemed to cost her something, coming out stiff and unpracticed, as though she'd rehearsed a dozen different versions of this apology and abandoned every one of them somewhere on the walk over. "Not for being angry. I think I have a right to be angry — five years, Ishita, five years of my life built around a future that got cancelled in a single phone call because a factory needed saving. But my father's methods — what he did with Ghosh, what he's doing now with this supply contract — I didn't know about any of it until it had already happened. I want you to believe that, even if you don't believe anything else about me."
I studied her for a long moment, and found, to my own surprise, that I did believe her. "I don't hate you, Priya," I said finally. "I want you to know that too. Whatever's happened between our families, none of it was your doing, or mine. We were both handed a mess neither of us built."
Something in her shoulders loosened slightly at that, some tension she'd clearly been carrying since she walked through the gate. "I loved him," she said quietly, sitting down at last, uninvited, on the edge of the chair nearest the door. "I still don't know if I've stopped. But watching him in that hallway, the way he stood up for you, the way he handed you that choice in front of everyone — I don't think that was ever going to be something he did for me, if I'm honest with myself. I think some part of me knew that even before the engagement broke."
"What do you mean?"
She was quiet for a moment, choosing her words carefully. "Amit and I were comfortable," she said. "We fit well together, on paper, the way two families who've known each other for decades fit well together. But I don't think either of us ever fought for the other the way he fought for you in that hallway, over a contract neither of you asked for, against his own mother, in front of his whole family. I've been angry about losing him for three weeks. It's only now, watching this, that I'm starting to wonder if what I actually lost was smaller than I let myself believe."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing, and we sat together in a strange, unexpected quiet for a while, two women who had been set against each other by men neither of us had fully chosen, finding, unexpectedly, something closer to understanding than either of us had walked in expecting.
"My father won't stop," Priya said finally, rising to leave. "I want you to know that too, before I go. Whatever he's doing with that supply contract, it's not the end of it. He's the kind of man who doesn't let go of a grudge just because his daughter has made peace with hers. Be careful, Ishita. Whatever you decide about Amit, don't underestimate what my father is willing to do to win this."
She left as quietly as she'd come, and I stood at the window for a long time after the gate had swung shut behind her, turning over everything she'd said, understanding, with a clarity that settled cold and certain in my chest, that whatever decision I made about my marriage in the remaining two days of my week, it was no longer going to be a decision I could make quietly, in private, at my own pace. Ranjan Sen had made sure of that, and if Priya's warning meant anything at all, he wasn't finished yet.