SEAL THE DEAL

chapter 37

Abhi:-"What do you want to say? What is there for you to say?" He questioned, his voice rising until he was shouting the last word, making his mother flinch.

His patience was clearly starting to thin as the seconds passed by and it was no secret to manisha that he was dangerously nearing his breaking point. She put her other hand on his shoulder affectionately and he instantly relaxed a little under her touch.

The action didn't go unnoticed by his mother, and despite the heavy atmosphere,
she couldn't help but smile. But it quickly vanished when she started speaking again.

Mom:-"I know that you probably hate me...I'd hate me too if I was you. I'm not going to justify myself or give you any excuses. I'm just so sorry for everything, I really am. I chose myself, I was selfish and I...I should have never left you. I should have fought harder to take you with me," she said, every word feeling like a dagger repeatedly being stabbed into Abhishek's gut.

Mom:-"I chose to leave your...father twelve years ago because I fell in love with somebody else," she began, and abhishek detested how she hesitated at the word 'father', he absolutely despised it, "He's a really nice man, he always has been. He didn't have an issue with me
being a divorcee with a child, but he comes from a conservative family and his mother had a big problem with it. And I just caved under the pressure...which I shouldn't have," she said ruefully, looking outside the window as regret weighed down on her chest, "I was happy with
my new life but I swear to God I missed you a lot. I don't know if you'll believe me, but I
really did miss you. You're my son after all and I thought about you every single day,"

Abhishek saw red and he was about to
retort but Manisha tugged on his arm and halted him in his tracks. When he looked at her questioningly, she simply shook her head, silently urging him to just listen quietly for a while. And begrudgingly, he obliged and allowed his mother to continue.

Mom:-"You know I phoned you a lot, but my husband and I ended up moving to America two years later and that's when I stopped phoning. I called the day before my flight but nobody picked up, so I assumed nobody was home. It all went wrong when I misplaced the phone number
during the move," she revealed in a trembling voice and manisha breath hitched in her throat.

Abhishek blinked, wondering if this was a cruel joke being played on him; but one look at the tears that were pooling in his mother's eyes and he instantly knew that it wasn't.

Mom:-"I had no other way to reach you. I guess you moved to Mumbai in the meantime, and by the time I managed to get your contact details again, you and your father had packed up and left, and nobody I could get in touch with knew where you had gone or how I could reach you. I tried to find out anything I could but it was hard because I wasn't in the country, and even
harder because it was like you two had just disappeared into thin air," she said as the tears finally tipped over and steadily streamed down her cheeks.

Abhishek could hear his heartbeat thundering loudly in his ears, his brain tripping over air as the implications of her words set in.

She hadn't abandoned him on purpose. She hadn't intended to leave him in the dust. She hadn't meant to erase her existence from his life.

His mother paused and briskly wiped at her cheeks before turning to face Abhishek again, "So many years passed but I still thought about you, I still wondered how you were doing, I still missed you with all my heart. I have two more sons, one is 10 and the other one is 8, and the older one looks so much like you, it's actually crazy," she said with a sad, grievous smile on her face as she divulged information that made abhi's stomach turn.

He felt a split-second of intense envy course through his veins at the thought of these two boys, his...half-brothers, being able to spend their days happily and share their memories joyfully with both of their parents; a privilege that he'd been deprived of for half of his life.