The End Of Us

Chapter 1

A woman in her fifties was sitting on an armchair with her head leaning on the headrest and her eyes shut. An eight-year-old girl came running to the room with a trophy in her hand.

"Granny, Granny look I won a trophy", she told with an enthusiasm in her voice.

But her grandmother didn't reply. The girl thought she might have fallen asleep, so she went beside her and shook her gently. But, the women's head fell from the headrest and her hands were icy cold.

The little girl got frightened and ran downstairs to the living room where she found her mother, sitting on the sofa and reading magazines.

"Mumma--Mumma----something has happened to grandma", she told panting heavily.

"Selina, what are you saying baby?" asked her mother concernedly. Selina held her mother's hand and led her upstairs, to grandma's room.

Selina's mom, Zeenia, was shocked to see her mother sitting on the armchair motionless with her head fallen from the headrest. She ran towards her, and, tapped her cheeks gently.

"Mom, please open your eyes."

Listening to Zeenia's screams, her husband Alexander came running to the room and saw the entire scenario. He checked whether his mother-in-law was breathing.

"She---she is dead", he declared, with tears in his eyes.

Zeenia kept her head on her mother's lap and cried bitterly, while Alexander tried to console her.

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By evening, they buried her dead body and performed the funeral ceremony. Zeenia went to her mother's room and sat on her armchair, holding her mother's stole close to her. She was missing her presence a lot. She began to recollect all the memories, how her mom used to sit on the same armchair and knit woolen caps for her, how she used to narrate her stories. Everything in the room, made her miss her mother even more. Suddenly, she spotted a diary kept on the table. She took the diary in her hand and sat on the bed.

It was a brown handmade leather diary and " NANDANI'S DIARY", was written on the cover. Zeenia never knew that her mother wrote a diary. She opened the diary and saw a bunch of photographs and letters on the first page. She took the photographs in her hand and started looking at it carefully.

In the first photograph, she saw eight students in school uniform. She quickly recognized her mother in the photograph, but she couldn't recognize the other seven people. In the next photograph, she saw a boy on his knees, proposing to her mother. She was about to keep the pictures aside when her eyes fell upon another guy in the same picture who was at a distance looking at her mother while the first guy was proposing to her.

She kept the photographs aside and took the letters in her hand when suddenly a locket fell from the diary.

Zeenia picked up the locket from the floor and examined it carefully. It was a golden colored pendant that had the initial of "M". She kept the locket aside with the photographs and took the diary in her hand. When she was about to open the diary her husband entered the room.

Zeenia was startled when he called her out.

"Baby, are you okay?" Alexander asked, his voice laced with concern as he watched his wife intently.

Zeenia gently set the diary aside, her fingers lingering on the cover for a moment before she looked up.

"Yes, I'm fine, Alex," she replied, forcing a small smile.

"The cab is ready, and I've loaded all our luggage," Alexander informed her.

Zeenia hesitated, taking a deep breath before speaking. "Alex, would you mind if I stayed here for a few days?" she asked softly.