Kalarikkal House [3] - [Thread 4 link - p. 144] - Page 40

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Chapter 39: Heart's Blood

She imagined that it must be around 4 in the morning. The light blue of the dawn was sneaking in from the far end of the hallway.

He was still in deep sleep.

She wanted to brush back his hair, but hesitated. It was not a hesitation borne of anything short of her desire to have him sleep… his sister and a nameless woman whose infant had been snatched away had kept him awake the two previous nights…

She knew that the one thing that could make a human mind weak was lack of sleep. There was a reason why it was such a preferred torture method in some countries. Not to mention the fact that it was the second leading causing of hallucinations short of schizophrenia or some such major mental illness. She wanted him to be at no disadvantage in the days ahead. Especially now that she suspected that his arrival here had been no unhappy accident.

Her father must know… it was the only reasoning that explained why he had let a stranger, a bachelor at that, stay in their house…

She wondered if her sister knew … she wondered whether her sister knew that the same boy whose screams had kept her awake all those nights when she was young was the same boy who was now keeping her awake by sleeping so trustingly on her lap.

"Paranju manasilakkan patthatha nashtangal ellavarkkamundu kutti." (Everyone has losses that others will never understand.)

She remembered what her sister had said earlier that night. She had mistaken it for her remembrance of Anandan Namboothiri. But her sister had been talking about Arnav… of course… It appeared that her sister knew as well…

She felt a bit of a fool and not a bit angry… but then she looked down at his face and her irritation dissipated… maybe he was the one who got the worse end of the deal…

She wondered what his reaction would be when he found out to whom his sister had donated her eyes to…

She had, of course, briefly considered the possibility that maybe his sister and her brother were not the main leads in his story… that maybe he spoke of a different 'unnamed boy' and that the girl smiling in the photograph in her family's prayer room for the last 15 years was someone else's sister and not his… but she didn't believe in such coincidences… especially at the Kalarikkal illam.

He would be enraged when he found out what her father had done. She didn't think he would want anything to do with the family who had 'disappeared' with his sister's eyes. Especially now that he would know that the 'unnamed boy' had had the nerve to go and get himself killed due to 'unknown reasons' and had thus truly laid his sister's eyes to rest.

He didn't need any more reason to hate this house than he already did, but he would once he realized the truth. He would hate her a little too, she knew … he would also run from her… that much was predictable…

He would run from her… the thought replayed in her head in a loop…

She didn't realize that she had given into her urge to run her fingers through his hair until she looked down and found him staring at her.

He would run from her… and from this place…

She hardened her heart against the vulnerability that she could see on his face and said mechanically, "Your sister gave sight to my brother. Unniyettan was the unnamed boy and we were the family that disappeared with her eyes."

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