Circle of Trust

Chapter 18

“Ria, please come for dinner. Bring Vansh too,” shouted Naina from the kitchen, hoping her shaky voice reached the kids in the playroom in the far end of the house.

She cleared her throat that had remained clogged since Tej had given her that awful news this morning. Chugging down a glass of warm water, she recounted her exact words – I’m sorry Nains, the release date has been postponed indefinitely.

Naina squeezed her eyes shut. This was an unexpected blow to her heart; the first time the publishing house has ever delayed a project. It made no sense even though they sited her reluctance to accept their revision requests as the reason for the delay.

Her first instinct had been to reach out to Varun like she always did whenever something troubled her. But, her husband has been virtually absent from her life for the last few days appearing at mealtimes and bedtimes.

Nights were torturous without him beside her. She lay awake till the wee hours of the morning waiting for him till exhaustion claimed her. The mornings were the same – she would wake up to find him gone – only the crumpled state of the bedcover next to her, a proof of him having been in the bed at all. By the looks of it, he wasn’t getting much sleep either.

She needed him now, to hear his reassuring words, the soft lilt in his voice when he says her name. Her body craved his touch, his warm embrace, and the whispered words of sweet nothings in the dead of the night when he thought she was fast asleep. She missed that the most – his confessions when he thought no one heard, his fingers in her hair, massaging her scalp, his breath whispering in her ear as he clutches her close to him.

His possessiveness even in his sleep was something she cherished – one leg wrapped around her hooking her to him, his palm pressing into the small of her back ensuring she stayed glued to him even in their sleep. After endless lonely nights as a married woman spent in the cold company of blankets and stony silence of their bedroom, she eagerly welcomed the obsessive imprint of himself over her senses.

“You can’t sit there, Vansh. My papa sits there. Here mamma, here dadima.” She heard Ria explain the family’s seating arrangement at the dining table to Vansh.

Her daughter inherited her father’s stubborn sense of routine, while she was queen of impromptu. There was not a fiber of regular in Naina.

The kids chatter dragged her out of her melancholy. Truth be told, she would have slipped into minor depression if it was not for the presence of Vansh and Ria.

Vansh Grewal, her seven year old next door neighbor was once again spending his evening with them. It was three days in a row that no one had come to pick him up. His home was locked up, and every evening around 5, their maid picked him up apologizing profusely for being late.

This evening, instead of the maid coming to pick him up, his mother had called requesting them to keep Vansh with them till she could pick him up in the night. Even though she frowned at a parent trusting absolute strangers with her child, she had readily agreed since she had grown fond of the boy in just a few days.

“Ria…it’s okay. Let him sit here,” said Naina, pulling out Varun’s seat. Ria pouted up at Naina.

“It’s okay. I will sit in that chair,” said Vansh so softly, Naina had to strain her ears to listen.

There was something about this boy - probably the rare glimpse of a twinkle in his wide innocent eyes hidden behind a pair of round rimmed spectacles – that made her smile every time she looked at him.

Clasping both his shoulders affectionately, she nudged him towards Varun’s chair. “It’s okay. Ria has simply forgotten her manners. Her papa isn’t here now and if he comes late for dinner, he’ll not get a chair to sit anyways. We’ll make him do duck squats as punishment.”