The Wrong Woman

27. Dhruv

I'd made it a habit of visiting Anish and Sandra more and more to somehow get away from the suffocation that was being at home.

Home.

Could I call it that anymore? Home was made by the people inside and Rani and I were nothing but strangers.

I shook my head. I wanted to sleep. Sniffing the air as soon as I shut my front door, I furrowed my eyebrows. There was cooked food in the house...food that I hadn't cooked before I left. I looked up the stairs. My feet ached to charge up and see if Rani was sleeping, just to make sure she was okay with my own two eyes. As much as I was worried about her, there was a disconnect between the two of us more than ever before. Where we ignored each other doing daily tasks, I knew her. I knew who she was.

Now that she was being warm and kind and completely unlike herself, it was like I didn't know who she was anymore. Still, that part of me that always wanted to make sure Rani was okay and protected took over and I flipped off the switch. Only to step back at what I was seeing; the usually empty dining table laid out with food.

For me.

I assumed it was for me, anyway, considering that none of it was touched and I hadn't made anything beforehand.

What the hell happened while I was away? I thought. No. The better question was, what happened to Rani? Since when could she cook? The woman that made faces at just the mere word of dishes and cooking not only willingly offered to help me with the chores but cooked food, too?

There was biryani, a cucumber-onion-tomato-and-yoghurt salad, mango pickle and what looked like gajar ka halwa.

She made all of this? I thought, bewildered. Not only did she make food but it looked good. I stood in the middle of the area between the kitchen and the dining table like an idiot. Had she taken cooking courses without telling me? None of it made sense. Wait. I found myself heading over to the rubbish to check if she had bought the dishes from Uber. That would make the most sense and would answer all the questions I had. And bring the order of the universe back.

But there was nothing.

No sight of anything bought. And looking at the dish rack, there were pots and pans there that weren't there before. They all looked like appropriate appliances that were used to make all the dishes on the table.

God, so she really did make all of this, I thought, staring at it as if it had been poisoned. Going near it, I saw something sticking out nearby the plate. A yellow stick-it note that said 'thank you for always making meals!' in chicken scrawl. Terrible penmanship I didn't know Rani had. I stepped away from it as if I had been burnt. I didn't touch it. Nor did I eat the food. I couldn't. This...I need to go brush my teeth, I thought. Yeah, that'll help.

Pretend I didn't see it. That's what I was going to do.

I headed up the stairs and opened the door to the bathroom to grab my toothbrush. Rani was taking a shower, heat coming off in steam above her and painting the glass cover.

"Oh, sorry, didn't know you were inside," I said casually, going further to grab what I needed and head on out. She whipped around. "How are you feel--" she let out an earth-shattering scream, covering her body with her hands, cutting me off.

Oookay.

"P-Please leave!"

At her abnormal reaction, I did just that and shut the door. I stared at the closed door for a good while. I mean, I had expected her to ignore me, not scream like I had tried to kill her. We were married. I'd seen her naked multiple times. So why—

Then it hit me. Her temporary memory loss. Obviously, that was the cause of this. It meant I was practically a stranger to her—more than I already was before. My hand reached up to knock on the door, to make sure she was okay after that fright I gave her. The last thing I wanted was for her to feel violated in her own body and house.

'You hover and care so much that I feel like I can't breathe.'

I hesitated; that was said before this whole issue with her memory loss. I couldn't very well abandon her. "Rani? I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have done that without warning. It's just something so normal that I wasn't thinking. Are you okay?"

A voice in the form of a squeak came out later, "I-I'm fine. I was...very surprised."

I'd bet, I thought, grimacing. "Sorry. I won't do that next time."

She didn't say anything and for the most part, I was glad she didn't.