Signed, Envelope

Seven

She was the one who I gave up my freedom for. The one who had once won my heart. She was my lost wife. As I stared at her familiar side-tilted smile and peered into her magnetic eyes, I fainted with shock and collapsed onto her feet.

When I woke up after five minutes, I was in her clutches with a glass of lemonade beside me, presumably inside the house. "I can explain," she whispered. Familiar voice. Very familiar voice. But I was too down to even comprehend what she meant. After finally gaining a much-needed boost upon drinking the lemonade, the voice whispered again, "I can explain,". This time I finally understood. "Yes?" I asked.

"So, in a way this was and was not planned. I was captured and threatened at the airport for that work flight to Beijing five months ago. I was even locked up with scarce supply of food and water. I spent many restless days and nights that way. But then one of the guards chanced upon me. He told me he wasn't really a guard but one of pretense. I thought I was falling for some trick, but I went with him anyway. He told me in private: the only way I could escape was by altering how I looked as well as my name, because that fooled the guards.

"I did so by smuggling back hair and eye products, then changed my long blonde hair to short-cropped black, green eyes to brown ones. I thought of Jennifer Duncan as my new name. The guards were most certainly fooled and I came out of the confinement. I didn't know how I could go back to Mumbai, so I stayed back here in this rented apartment. After making some new friends and informing old ones of the situation, I was about to come back. Then I remembered what you love best: a full-blown mystery. So my friends planned and set it up, and here you found me. As for Leela's creepy code in the sand, it was a bit of a prank that was communicated to her through a pretty long process. By the way, the appearance changes wear off in a few days," she narrated.

And then we did some basic stuff in Gurugram and Delhi, later flying back to Mumbai. And then, I can truly say, we lived happily ever after. At least for the two weeks it has been since this book got posted online... Who knows what wild goose chase awaits you in the future?