Meera was on her balcony, sipping chamomile tea under the rising moon when her phone vibrated beside her.
The screen glowed with a name she hadn't seen in years.
Mrs. Sunita Sharma.
Aarav's mother.
She stared at it.
Frozen.
She had thought Sunita Sharma was long gone from their lives—by choice. Aarav rarely spoke of her after the cancer diagnosis, except for one line: "Some people leave not because they don't care, but because they don't know how to."
Meera hesitated before answering.
"Hello?"
There was a pause.
Then a soft, wavering voice.
"Meera?"
"Yes. This is Meera."
"I… I wasn't sure if your number was still the same."
Meera took a slow breath. "It is."
There was silence. Then:
"I saw your name on the Storyseed website. You're writing a book about Aarav."
Meera blinked. "How did you—?"
"I check," Sunita admitted. "Every month. Sometimes every week. Just to see if… someone's still remembering him."
Meera felt something tighten in her throat. "I never stopped."
Sunita exhaled sharply, like holding back tears. "I didn't come to his funeral."
"I know."
"I was ashamed," she whispered. "I abandoned him. And you. When he needed me the most."
Meera didn't respond.
She didn't know what to say to a wound reopened after so long.
"But I have something you need to see," Sunita added quickly, as if afraid she'd lose her nerve. "He wrote you a letter. Not the one everyone knew about. This one he never sent."
"Why didn't he?"
"He gave it to me to mail," she admitted, voice cracking. "But I… I never did. I wasn't ready to face what he was saying. But now… I think I owe it to you. To him."
Meera's hands gripped the edge of the chair.
"Where are you?"
"I'm still in Pune. Same address."
The next morning, Meera boarded a train with the ring on her finger and a heart bracing for whatever truth had waited all these years.
The Sharma house hadn't changed.
Same cream walls. Same wooden gate with the rusted handle Aarav used to jiggle with a butter knife. The mango tree still drooped over the fence, tired but proud.
Sunita opened the door before Meera could knock.
She looked older.
Her long hair was streaked with silver, tied in a low braid. Her eyes were red-rimmed, not just from age, but from memory.
"Come in," she said softly.
Inside, everything smelled like incense and old winter sweaters. Faded photographs lined the wall. Most of them were of Aarav as a child—laughing, always moving.
But none of them had Meera.
Not even one.
It stung more than she expected.
"He took them with him when he moved in with you," Sunita said, noticing Meera's glance. "Said they belonged where love lived."
Meera smiled sadly.
They sat at the dining table. Sunita reached into a carved wooden box and pulled out a folded, yellowing envelope.
To Meera. (Don't read this unless I'm already gone.)
Her heart kicked in her chest.
"He asked me to send it the day he told me the treatment was stopping," Sunita said. "I couldn't face it. I wasn't brave like you."
Meera took the letter with trembling hands.
"Do you want me to read it here?"
Sunita shook her head. "No. That letter isn't mine. It's yours."
Meera read it alone that night, curled on her hotel bed with the curtains drawn and the world muffled.
Meera,
If you're holding this, I'm already shadows and sky. But I need you to know something I couldn't say when I had breath left in my lungs and fear left in my bones.
I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid of you surviving. Without me. Without the chaos I brought into your perfectly organized kitchen and the bad singing I ruined your mornings with. But more than that… I was afraid you'd stop dancing.
You see, I watched you one night when you didn't know I was awake. You were in the living room, lights off, swaying gently to that old Hindi song. I saw grief in your movements. Like your body already knew I was leaving.
I wanted to get up and hold you. But I couldn't even sit up by then.
So I closed my eyes and danced in my head instead.
You always asked me why I never let you sleep at the hospital alone. It wasn't the tubes or the machines. It was because I didn't want the last thing I saw before I died to be strangers. I wanted it to be you.
Your face was my final prayer.
And I need you to know—if love was medicine, I would've lived forever.
But since it isn't, let it be memory. Let it be ink. Let it be that book you'll someday write.
And maybe, if you're lucky, someone will read it and find their own version of me.
Or better yet, their own version of you.
Because the world needs more women who dance alone in the dark.
Yours, The boy who still dances beside you — Aarav
When Meera finished reading, she didn't cry.
Not because the pain had faded.
But because she understood something now.
Aarav hadn't just left her memories or drawings or rings.
He left her a mission.
To carry forward love as a story.
To build something eternal from something temporary.
And that night, she began rewriting the ending of her manuscript—not as a tragedy, but as a transformation.
New Last Line:
"The boy didn't just survive cancer through medicine. He survived through memory. And the girl didn't die with him. She lived. And she wrote. And she danced."
To be continued…