The sky was heavy with clouds as Kanya's taxi rolled up the winding driveway to the old family house. Rain threatened to spill, thick and gray like the memories she'd tried so hard to bury.
She hadn't been here in nearly ten years.
The house stood like a fortress, its peeling paint and cracked windows whispering secrets in the wind. The garden, once wild with her mother's carefully tended roses, was overgrown and tangled.
Kanya's fingers clenched the strap of her bag. Every step toward the front door echoed louder than she expected, as if the house was holding its breath, waiting.
Inside, the air was thick with dust and something else — a faint scent of lavender and old paper. Her mother's scent.
She paused by the faded family portraits hanging crooked on the walls. The faces looked familiar, yet something was off — like a photo that had been tampered with, shadows shifted where they shouldn't be.
"Kanya," a voice came from the hallway.
Her brother, Praneet, appeared, older, heavier, but with the same sharp eyes she remembered.
"You're late," he said, but the words felt more like a warning than a greeting.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I had to… finish things in the city."
He nodded slowly. "Mother left instructions. You're not to go into the locked room."
That phrase made her chest tighten. The locked room. The one door she'd always wondered about — the one her mother never let her enter.
Praneet's eyes darkened. "Some things are better left buried."
But Kanya was already moving toward the staircase.
This time, she wasn't running from the past. She was chasing the truth.