Enwrapped

Chapter 24

Soon after breakfast, when Muzammil stepped into his room, he wondered if it was thick with the anger from last night.

Instead, he found it to be eerily hollow.

A strange pain settled in the bottom of his chest.

Closing the door behind him, he leaned against it, his eyes roaming across the space which they- he called his safe haven. The bed was neatly made on one side, as though no one had slept in it, and haphazard and messy on the other, the covers pushed halfway outward, as though trying to escape.

He had become the mess, the confusion, but he had a question- did she feel conversely normal and unaffected? As though nothing had happened?

He didn't think so.

She had cried, Baba had told. She was sobbing, and taking the blame for everything that happened. And while it would seem so to anyone superficially, Muzammil knew, that was not the case.

Something was brewing underneath all that fake hostility.

He just wanted to know what it was.

His gaze drifted away, and landed on the library.

Her little nook.

Almost instantly, his feet led him towards it.

She had loved it so much- one of the many things he had gifted her on their wedding- and she had spent many hours there. She spent hours at a stretch in the big chair, reading like her life depended on it, and when sleep took over her, she curled up and closed her eyes, just like a kitten. Sometimes, the book was neatly settled onto the mini table besides with a bookmark peeking, and sometimes, her fingers would still be in between the pages, refusing to let go.

She had made his dreams come true.

And then, she had left it all behind.

He sat in the big chair, and leaned back in the seat, wanting to feel anything that brought him back to her. Perhaps her scent, her warmth... anything. He picked up the book she was last reading, and the golden tassel hanging from it told her she hadn't even completed half of it.

His brows furrowed. His hands ran along the hardbound cover, the golden embossed title shining in the light of noon. The book was beautiful, no doubt, but his wife was a speedy reader. Many a times he had watched in awe as she finished books in one seating, and got up only when she had read the last word of the last page. He remembered her satisfied smile, which turned into a shy one as soon as she saw him watching her.

He also remembered that she had been reading this particular book since the past weeks, even before getting admitted into the hospital, even before visiting Singapore. What was in this book that took so much of her time, and yet didn't finish? He opened the book, flipping through. The pages, which contained mere philosophy. made no sense to him.

Before something else flashed.

In a split second, something fell into his lap.

A little paper chit.

He picked it up... and opened it.

And the ground beneath him vanished.

Please do a favour on yourself and everyone else, and die.

For a moment, Muzammil just stared at the tattered edges of the paper. The fold that ran neatly across the center.

The sweet, looping handwriting that was hers.

The same hands that had written little labels on his wedding gifts. The same hands that combed through his hair. The same hands that donned those pretty wedding rings.