Her face was pale.
Eyes swollen from endless crying.
Her body still weak after childbirth.
Gone was the glamorous woman Raghav’s family had once treated like royalty.
She sat across from me silently for several seconds before finally whispering:
“They told me you were the problem.”
I said nothing.
“They said you were selfish. Cold. Disrespectful.”
Her lips trembled.
“But now I realize they only hated you because you refused to obey them.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she quietly placed a folder on the table.
Medical documents.
Old reports.
Private hospital records.
Proof that Raghav’s family had known about the genetic condition for years before either of us married him.
My stomach turned as I flipped through the pages.
Dates.
Diagnoses.
Warnings from specialists.
One report even recommended that future partners be informed before pregnancy.
But they hid everything.
Because protecting the family name mattered more than honesty.
More than women.
More than children.
Then Shreya whispered the sentence that haunted me the entire drive home:
“If the baby had been a girl… they probably would’ve abandoned us already.”
And deep down…
We both knew she was right.
Every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking about those medical files spread across the table between us.
Years of lies.
Years of silence.
And two women forced to pay the price for a family’s obsession with preserving their “perfect bloodline.”
But what disturbed me most wasn’t the disease itself.
It was how calmly they had hidden it.
How easily they had continued arranging marriages… pregnancies… futures… while fully aware of the risk.
I tried focusing on my daughter instead.
Little Aashi had started smiling in her sleep.
My mother swore it meant angels were playing with her dreams.
Sometimes at night, I would sit beside her crib and just watch her breathe.
And every single time, the same thought hit me:
I escaped.
Barely.
Then one rainy evening in Kanpur, my phone rang again.
Raghav.
For a moment, I considered ignoring the call.
But something inside me told me to answer.
His voice shocked me instantly.
Weak.
Hoarse.
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