Right down the hallway, in the next room, was Amma and Keerthi, who had heard almost all of this outburst.
Amma burst into the room, with Keerthi right behind her as soon as she heard Pallavi slam an upstairs door, "Raghav, kya tum paagal ho!"
Keerthi jumped in, "Why would you do this? What is WRONG with you?"
Amma pulled Raghav close and whispered, "the biggest mistake of my life was letting that innocent girl ruin her life by marrying you, an even bigger mistake than letting you back into Keerthi and my life again. How could you do this?"
"Listen, Amma, it's not like this."
"It's not like what, Raghav," Keerthi demanded, "I know you might not like Pallavi, but no one held a gun to your head to marry her, no one can force you to do ANYTHING, so if you wanted to torture her, why did you have to marry her?"
"No, no, no, no. Listen, that girl is who poisoned my food and took that video of me on the news."
"So why did you invite her here?" Amma asked, "Are you crazy?"
"I thought Pallavi had something to do with it, so I had to ask, because—"
"You are crazy," Keerthi added, "How can you POSSIBLY think, Pallavi, who doesn't even hurt the flies on the windowsill who try to get at her food, would poison you? Also that happened before she even knew you, right? Why would she?"
"No she knew me before this, I had...destroyed some of her things because she got in the way of Harish—"
"Who was following me!" Keerthi yelled, "God."
Amma held her head in her hands, even though she wanted to slap Ragahv, she knew it would make no difference, he would never change.
"We can't stay here Keerthi," Amma started to say.
"What?" Pallavi came downstairs. She hadn't heard the whole conversation, but now she was even angrier at Raghav, what did he say to Amma now?
"Amma, you said, you promised. You are just out of the hospital. Listen, if you don't agree to live here I don't care, I'm not sending your stuff back to your old house. The movers dropped it off this morning already, and I spent hours decorating your rooms."
Keerthi looked at Amma. Amma glared at Raghav, she thought, if I leave now, this son of mine will destroy my beautiful and perfect bahu from the inside out. "Ok, ok, baba, you convinced me. Keerthi, go set up some of my stuff in the guest room with Pallavi, I need to talk to Raghav."
Pallavi and Keerthi went upstairs, Pallavi avoiding Raghav's eyes the whole conversation, and Keerthi glaring at him with so much power Raghav thought he would just burst into ashes right there.
"Raghav, if you don't stop this crap, these women, this don-like behavior, you won't just lose Pallavi, you will lose me and Keerthi, forever."
Raghav, still trying to explain himself, tried to calm his anger as his mother turned and walked upstairs to her daughter and daughter-in-law.
