The Fallen Widow

Chapter 33: The Confession

The lamp was still burning under the door. She had known it would be as Shah Nawaz has removed himself from their marital room and slept seperatley for the past few nights. Shah Nawaz never slept before the rest of the haveli. Hoorayn pushed the door open without knocking.

He was on the bed, his black vest, his long legs stretched out, his phone in his hand, entirely relaxed in the way of a man who has not yet been told his evening is about to change. The room smelled of oud and hookah smoke and the particular settled warmth of a space that had been occupied for hours. He glanced up when she came in and something in her face made him cut the call without finishing the sentence.

He set the phone down slowly.

"Hoorayn." His voice careful, reading her. "What do you want? Can you not sleep?" His tone still harsh as a punishment for her choices. 

She walked to the centre of the room and stopped. 

"Did you know?" No preamble. No softening. Her voice stripped down to its bare structure. 
"Did you know Shafiq had a bottle of acid? Did you know he was coming for me?"

He moved to the end of the bed. Set his feet on the floor. His eyes on her face, measuring.

"Where did that come from?"

"Answer me." The thunder was close tonight, pressing against the windows, the glass flickering with distant light behind him. 
"I came to this haveli. I sat across from you and I begged you for his life. I remember every second of that day. You bought a dress from Praag, a silk black dress brown flowery print and made me dress immodestly. I remember what I wore, I remember how you looked at me." Her voice was not shaking yet. "And the whole time you already knew."

He stood up from the bed, feeling the tension from her voice. 

"Why are you bringing all this up tonight?" He took a step toward her, his voice low and deliberate.

"Because I have been calling it an accident for months and a frightened boy who worked in that garage called it something else." Another step from him, she did not move. "You are the one thing I have refused to question. So I am asking you now. Tell me what you did?"

He stopped in front of her. Close enough that she had to look up at him. Close enough to feel the warmth coming off him. He looked down at her face with the expression of a man deciding something.

"Ask me what you want to know." Quietly. Entirely still.

"Did you set him up?" Her eyes did not leave his. "For the killing of his partner?"

Silence. His jaw was set.

"Did you have him arrested?"

Nothing.

"Did you kill Shafiq?"

He turned away from her. One step, two steps, to the window, his back to her, his hands loose at his sides. He stood looking at the lightning moving in the dark sky.

"He was an evil, insecure piece of filth." He said it to the glass. "He changed your name. He locked you in the barn. Your father married you to a donkey! Why don't you question that?"

"That is not an answer." She moved toward him. "Turn around and answer me."

He turned.

"He had a bottle of acid in a bag." His voice went hard and direct, no performance in it, just the flat grain of truth. 
"With your name on it. He was going to ruin this face." He crossed to her in three steps and took her face in both his hands before she could step back, his palms against her jaw, his thumbs at her cheekbones, tilting her face up. She grabbed his wrists but could not move them. 
"He was going to pour it on you. Because his pride couldn't bear that a Choudhary wanted his wife and his wife felt something she had never felt for him."