One day after my marriage, my father passed away.
Just like that.
No dramatic last words.
No final instructions.
Just silence—heavy and permanent.
The house filled with people again. Media vans. Condolences. Black clothes and hollow expressions. Cameras captured every tear that wasn't real and missed the ones that were.
I stood there, numb.
I had fulfilled his last wish.
And still… I lost him.
Latika was present—only when the cameras were. She stood beside me when flashes went off, her face composed, grief carefully measured. The moment the media left, she disappeared into her own world again.
She had nothing to do with me.
And I had nothing left to give her.
Our marriage existed on paper, in headlines, and at formal events. She maintained the title of Mrs. Smith with grace and ambition. Society adored her. She appeared at parties, charity dinners, magazine covers—smiling, confident, untouched by the silence that filled our home.
She was living the life she wanted.
I wasn't living at all.
I buried myself in work.
Meetings replaced emotions. Deadlines replaced conversations. I became a workaholic not because I loved my job—but because it was the only place where I didn't have to feel.
My life revolved around two things now:
My office.
And my mother.
She was the only one who noticed how empty I had become.
One evening, as I sat in the living room staring at nothing, she came and sat beside me. The house was quiet in a way that only widows and broken sons understand.
"You don't sleep anymore," she said softly.
"I'm fine," I replied automatically.
She shook her head. "You stopped being fine the day your father made that decision."
Her words cut deep.
"I thought doing what he wanted would give you peace," she continued, her voice trembling. "But all it gave you was guilt."
I stayed silent.
Tears filled her eyes. "I watch you every day, Adam. You smile for the world, but you're dying inside. This isn't the life I wanted for you."
I clenched my jaw. "It was his last wish."
"Yes," she said, breaking. "And it destroyed you."
That was the first time someone said it out loud.
"I see her absence everywhere," my mother whispered. "Ali."
Hearing her name after so long felt like reopening a wound that never healed.
"She loved you," my mother said. "And you loved her. Your father didn't see it, but I did."
My chest tightened painfully.
"I didn't stop him," she continued, tears falling freely now. "And now my son walks around like a ghost. If your father were here… this is the one thing he would regret."
I finally looked at her.
"I lost her, Ma," I said quietly. "And I can't get her back."
She held my face like she did when I was a child. "Some losses don't ask to be fixed. They only ask to be remembered."
After that conversation, nothing changed.
And yet… everything did.
I stopped pretending I would ever be happy the way society expected me to be.
Latika and I continued our arrangement—polite, distant, transactional. She lived in headlines. I lived in silence. Neither of us interfered in the other's life, and that mutual distance became our unspoken agreement.
People stopped asking questions eventually.
Time does that.
And somewhere far away—unknown to us—Ali was living her life.
She worked with an NGO now. Helping people who had nothing. Teaching children. Healing others in ways she once healed me. She had moved on—not by forgetting, but by accepting.
She had chosen purpose over pain.
And I was glad.
Because even though I lost everything, I never wanted her to suffer.
My life never returned to what it could have been.
But it became something else.
Quieter.
Lonelier.
Honest.
Love doesn't always get a future.
Sometimes, it only gets a memory.
And sometimes, that has to be enough.
This is where our story ends.
Not with reunion.
Not with revenge.
Not with regret.
But with people learning to live with the choices they made—and the love they could never replace.