Alice pointed to the delicate gold clasp of her necklace—a gift from Rajesh decades ago that had always eluded her fingers. I stepped behind her, the faint scent of jasmine—the same scent that had lingered in St. Xavier’s library in 1964—filling the space between us.
My hands, roughened by years of engineering work, moved with careful precision. The clasp finally gave way, but Alice didn’t turn. Her eyes were fixed on a small, battered tin box on the nightstand.
“Brian,” she whispered, “before we start this new chapter, you need to see this. I found it in Rajesh’s desk after the funeral. It’s the reason I couldn’t look for you… for sixty-one years.”
The Letter That Never Reached Me
She opened the tin. Inside was a yellowed, brittle sheet of notebook paper folded into a tiny square. My own handwriting stared back at me—the slanted, desperate script of a seventeen-year-old.
“Alice, meet me at the station at midnight. I have the money from the cricket trophy and my grandmother’s savings. We can go to Mumbai. We can find a way. If you aren’t there, I’ll know you’ve chosen the life they want for you. I won’t ever ask again.”
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