Chapter 2 :-
The house changed first.
Not in obvious ways. The walls stayed the same. The furniture didn't move. But something invisible slipped out, and nothing knew how to replace it. Sound felt louder. Light felt harsher. Even mornings seemed to arrive without asking.
My brother was too young to remember her.
That thought hurt more than anything else.
He learned to say Ammi from photographs and stories. From people who spoke about her in past tense, like she was a place we could never return to. Sometimes he pointed at her picture and smiled, unaware that his smile carried a grief older than him.
I watched him closely. I became careful. Protective in a way that didn't feel natural to a child. I learned to listen for his breathing at night, the way I once listened for hers. Responsibility didn't ask if I was ready—it simply arrived.
Within three months, someone new entered our home.
She didn't come as a storm. She came quietly, carrying children of her own. One of them sat beside me in class like nothing had changed. The other was still learning how to spell her name. They didn't know they were stepping into a space still echoing with absence.
She wasn't cruel. That confused me.
I didn't know where to place her in my heart. She cooked in the same kitchen. Walked through the same rooms. Her presence felt like a replacement that no one had asked for but everyone expected me to accept.
So I adjusted.
Children are good at that.
Years passed, and time did what it always does—it moved forward without permission. My brother grew older, still untouched by memory. I grew quieter, carrying too many of them.
Four years later, everything shifted again.
This time, the woman who entered our lives came with impatience instead of silence. The house no longer just felt empty—it felt unsafe. Anger stopped hiding. Words cut faster. Hands followed.
I learned a new kind of stillness.
The kind where you stay alert even while sleeping.
Sometimes I think about how different I was before. Before I understood regret. Before I realised that changing for the better doesn't erase what came before it. I had become softer—but the world around me had hardened.
I don't talk about her much anymore.
Not because I've forgotten—but because remembering feels like opening a wound no one else wants to see. The name stays unspoken. The lessons remain.
Love, I learned, does not disappear.It only changes shape.
And sometimes, it leaves you holding the weight of it alone
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