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“Virat... I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Not like that and not tonight of all nights.”
“You should have told me a long time ago,shahzadi,” he added, and regretted the demanding words immediately. The last thing he wanted was to heap more accusations on her, to make this all about him. “Zara, the last thing I want is to hurt you. Even before you told me about this. That’s why I made myself stay away.”
“I know that. I do. It’s just that if I had told you about what a disaster my first marriage had been, how long it has taken me to gain my confidence back, you’d look at me as you’re doing now. As if you had to weigh every word you say to me. As if I was nothing more than a victim.” Frustration painted her face. “I’ve earned the right to be seen as more than a sum of my past. Don’t take that away from me now, Virat. I couldn’t bear it if you...looked at me like that.”
“No one can take that away from you, Zara.” He understood her perfectly in that moment. And all he felt was that same inadequacy that had haunted him since she’d asked him to leave the bedroom ten days ago. He chose his words carefully. “I won’t ask you to talk about it,” he said. “Not tonight. Not ever if you don’t want to. But, Zara, I would like to know. When you’re ready. When you think I’ve earned the right to share that episode of your life.”
“Yes, okay,” she said, clearly eager to get away from the subject. “Now can we talk about the...baby?”
He pushed a hand through his hair, a knot of uncomfortable sensations sitting like a damned weight on his chest. God, there was so much to unpack, so much waiting to drown him. But the wariness in her eyes gave him the anchor he needed right now.
This wasn’t about him or the ground being pulled away from under him, or whether he wanted to be a father or not. This was about Zara and what she needed from him now. What she wanted from him. And that was what he should focus on.
He went to her then and took her hand in his. Gently squeezed the long fingers. There was still a fragility about the fine angles of her face but also a quiet spark of resolve that made him relax. Clearly, she was handling this better than him. “You have decided to keep the baby, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have.” She sighed. “I’ve never thought of myself as a mother but...it’s strange how right it felt once it sank in. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life never works out the way we expect.
“I met Saleem at a wedding and fell in love overnight. I went against my parents’ warnings that we were too young and married him. I had so many plans for my life with him. And then...a few days into our married life, he changed. He refused to let me pursue acting. Even though he knew it was my passion. He...knocked my confidence in everything.
“Since he passed, I’ve learned to count my blessings as they come to me, Virat. Ten years ago, it was meeting you in line for coffee.
“Now, it’s this chance to be a mother when I didn’t even plan for it.
“I choose to see this as a good thing. Can you understand that?”
There was such sheer confidence and joy in her words that Virat had no words, for a few seconds. And he knew without doubt that his child was indeed fortunate. That Zara would be a wonderful mother.
And the clarity of her vision began to clear his own doubts.
“How do you feel?”
She smiled. “Good. Now that I know the reason for the strange headaches and the lethargy, really relieved. I... I’ve never fainted before in my life and it took everything I had to get Vikram and Naina to leave me alone so that I could talk to the doctor.”
“And she said everything...with the...” he cleared his throat “...baby is good?”
That smile in her eyes again. “Yes. In excellent health. I...” she sighed “...I told her I’d never missed the pill, not one single day. But I did do a round of antibiotics when I caught something while I was traveling just before Vikram’s wedding, and she said...”
He cupped her cheek. “You don’t owe me an explanation as to why or how it happened, Zara.”
“I know. It’s just that I’ve known for three days, and there’s so much to talk about...and I was worried that we’d left things in such a bad place. But I...” Her hesitation made his rollicking thoughts come to a halt.
“What, Zara? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m glad...you see that this is my decision. I’m the one taking on this responsibility and...you don’t have to...” Virat didn’t know what she saw in his face because that wariness came back again. “I want to make it clear that there’s no pressure on you at all. You...you can decide how much of a role you want to play in the child’s life. You can...”
Virat stood up, a restless energy crawling under his skin. A strange anger was coiling around his limbs and he didn’t even understand at what, or why.
He looked out into the night, his emotions just as dark and unruly. All his life, he’d possessed a thorough awareness of his dreams and fears. Even as a child, he’d had to develop the sort of emotional intelligence to deal with his father’s cold distance.
And yet, suddenly it felt as if he didn’t know himself at all. As if there was a hungry cavern inside of him that wanted what it wanted. “I don’t want any child of mine to go through what I did. I don’t want him or her to ever doubt its roots, its family, its very existence. That’s nonnegotiable, Zara.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of denying our child that knowledge. Or you of whatever relationship you wanted with her or him.
“You know what calmed me down when the magnitude of this hit me? When I thought,Oh, my God, I’m going to be a mother and I don’t know the first thing about it?”
“What?”
He felt her move behind him. Her arms came around his waist, as if she knew that the calm persona he was showing her right now was nothing but a facade. Her breasts pressed up against his back, her cheek against his shoulder, she draped herself all over him.
