[SilverArrow]

Chapter: The deadly suspicion


Rakesh woke to the quiet flat.

The afternoon light was already slanting through the curtains of his room. His mouth was dry. The residual weight of the fever sat behind his eyes. He lay still for a long time, listening. No voices. No movement from the kitchen or the living room. Monica had left for her meeting. Ranga had left with her, The apartment felt emptied out.

He needed water.

The prolonged days in bed had left his legs soft and unreliable, but the restlessness was worse. He pushed the blanket aside and swung his feet to the floor. The first attempt to stand sent a fine tremor through his knees. He caught the edge of the side table, breathed through it, and took one careful step, then another.

The hallway was longer than it should have been. He kept one hand on the wall. When he reached the master bedroom the door was not fully closed. He pushed it open with his fingertips.

The bed stopped him.

The large queen mattress still held the shape of recent use. Two pillows lay at the head, both clearly indented, both with the faint creases of heads that had rested there. The top sheet and the heavy blanket had been pulled into a disordered heap toward the centre, the kind of tangled mound. On the far side— the side Monica did not usually sleep on— the fitted sheet was badly crumpled, dragged loose from the corner, the fabric twisted as if someone had gripped it hard and repeatedly.

Rakesh stood in the doorway and felt the first cold drop of something that was not fever.

He moved closer, one slow step at a time. His hand reached out and touched the nearer pillow. The cotton was cool now, but the depression was unmistakable. He looked at the second pillow. Then at the centre of the bed where the sheets had been forced into that chaotic pile. It was not the neat, single-person disturbance Monica left when she slept alone. It was the aftermath of weight and movement shared across the mattress.

The question arrived fully formed and refused to leave.

Had they slept here last night? After the movie? On this bed?

A second, worse question followed immediately behind it.

Had they done more than sleep?

His pulse climbed in his throat. The room tilted once. He gripped the foot of the bed and forced himself to keep looking. The evidence did not change. Two pillows used. Sheets ruined in a way that single occupancy did not explain. The faint, ordinary scent of the room mixed with something else he could not name and did not want to name.

He turned to leave. His balance failed on the second step. His right foot caught the edge of the door frame with a dull, sickening impact. Pain flared white and immediate. He looked down. The toenail had split; blood was already welling and running along the side of his foot onto the floor. He made a small, involuntary sound and hobbled back toward his own room, leaving a thin trail of red dots across the hallway tiles.

By the time he reached his bed the fever had begun to climb again. He sat on the edge, breathing hard, the damaged toe throbbing in time with his heart. The image of the master bed stayed behind his eyes and would not dissolve.

The next days blurred into one long, low-grade ordeal.

The fever came and went in waves. Mornings offered brief windows of clarity; afternoons and nights took them away again. His legs remained unreliable. Standing without support was impossible for more than a few seconds. The doctor ordered fresh blood work. Twice Monica and Ranga helped him into the car and then into a wheelchair at the diagnostic centre. Ranga handled the forms and the payment. Monica sat beside Rakesh in the waiting area with the quiet, practical focus she brought to every crisis. Rakesh watched them from the corners of his vision— the easy way they moved around each other, the short exchanges of information, the absence of any visible awkwardness— and tried to decide whether what he was seeing was simply efficient cooperation or something else.

Ranga began appearing most evenings with a plastic basket of fruit— pomegranates, chikoos, the soft pears the doctor had said were easy to digest— and sometimes a paper bag of electrolyte sachets or protein supplements. He would set them on the dining table, ask after Rakesh’s temperature, and then settle into the living room with his laptop. Monica moved between the kitchen and the sick room. The three of them existed in the same small flat like pieces on a board that had been rearranged and not yet settled.

Rakesh said very little. When he did speak it was about the medicines or the water or the ache in his legs. Inside, the question from the master bedroom continued its slow, corrosive work. He studied Ranga’s face in the moments when the other man thought he was not being observed. He looked for triumph, for guilt, for the private knowledge of a shared bed and a shared night. The eyes gave him nothing certain. Only the same steady, practical calm Ranga had always carried.

At night, when the fever rose and the room felt too warm, the image returned: the two indented pillows, the sheets dragged into that impossible central heap, the crumpled far side of the mattress. He told himself it was the medicine. He told himself it was the fever inventing connections that did not exist. He told himself that Monica would never— that Ranga, for all his roughness, would not. The arguments were thin and grew thinner each time the temperature climbed.

By the end of the week the spikes had become less violent. He could stay awake for longer stretches. He could sit up against the pillows for twenty minutes at a time before the fatigue pulled him down again. The doctor, on a follow-up call, used the words “slight improvement.” The virus was still present, still active, but its grip had loosened by a fraction

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The days after the worst of the fever settled into a quieter, heavier rhythm.

Rakesh could leave the bed now. He could walk to the bathroom without help, sit on the sofa for half an hour at a stretch, and on the better mornings even reach the kitchen and pour his own glass of water. But the improvement was fragile. His eyes stayed puffy. Any longer than a short walk left his legs trembling. Sitting upright for too long made the fatigue roll back over him like a thick net. He moved through the flat carefully, always aware of how easily his body could still fail him.

Monica and Ranga had fallen into an unspoken division of labour. Ranga handled the outside work— grocery runs, medicine refills, the occasional trip to the diagnostic centre for follow-up blood work. Monica on the other hand cooked, timed the tablets, changed the sheets, and kept the quiet, practical order of the house.
Rakesh watched them from the sofa or from the doorway of his room. He saw the easy way Ranga set the grocery bags on the counter and how Monica, without looking up from the stove, told him which items needed to be put in the fridge.

At night his fear grew teeth.

He would wake in the dark after a filthy nightmare with his heart already racing. The worst fear he had.
Monica having sex with Ranga in their master bedroom!


The dream was always vivid enough that the residual fever-sweat on his skin felt like someone else’s. He would push himself upright, wait for the dizziness to pass, and walk the short distance down the hallway on unsteady legs. The master bedroom door was usually left ajar so the air could circulate. He would push it open with his fingertips, pulse hammering, prepared for the worst.

Every time he found the same thing.

Monica asleep alone on her side of the bed, one arm tucked under the pillow, breathing evenly. The second side of the mattress empty and undisturbed. No second person in the house. No tangled sheets of the kind he had seen that afternoon.
Only his wife, only his Monica whom he loved so much!

sleeping the ordinary sleep of someone who had worked all day and still carried the quiet weight of looking after an unwell husband.

He would stand in the dark for long like a ghost appreciating the beauty of his sleeping wife.
Then he would tell himself like a bipolar maniac, as he had told himself every night that week, that the fever and the medicines were still inventing things.


Ranga and Monica are just business partners, or at most friends. Nothing more.
He would turn, walk back to his own bed, and lie awake listening to the distant sound of the fan until sleep finally returned.


And the next night, again he would stand silently in the dark after the same nightmare like that same deranged ghost silently observing Monica from the edge of the door.


In the morning, the nightmare would vanish leaving Rakesh confused.
Does he walk in his sleep ?

Why does he stand on the edge of the door and silently observe Monica ? Is he awake that time ? Or is it actually the dream working over time ?
Does he really do that every day ? Why is he so suspicious if there is no sign of Ranga at night ?

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Monica mentioned it casually over breakfast on Tuesday.

“Ranga is in Jaipur for three or four days. Some site visit he has and a meeting with some political party people. He left early this morning.”

Rakesh looked up from his plate. The information should have eased something in him. It did not. The fear had already learned how to live without evidence.

That night, and the nights after, the same sleep walking sequence repeated.

He woke in the dark with the dream still vivid and walked the short hallway on legs that still trembled after only a few steps. The master bedroom door stood ajar. He pushed it open.

Monica slept alone. Always alone. Ranga was thousand km away in Jaipur.
Some nights the compulsion went further. He would continue past the bedroom, unlock the main door of the flat, and stand in the corridor near the apartment gate, staring at the lift lobby as if Ranga might step out of it even though the man was a thousand kilometres away. The concrete floor was cool under his bare feet. The building was silent. Eventually he would turn back, lock the door, and return to his own bed with the same thin reassurance he repeated every time: the medicine was making him like this!


That Friday was Karwa Chauth. Just a week left for Diwali. Karwa Chauth was the most auspicious tradition in a married life of a woman.

Monica told him in the morning while she set the thali out on the low table in the living room.

“I’ll keep the fast the same as every year.”

Rakesh, still pale, still moving carefully between chair and sofa, frowned.

“What’s the need? You have office. You have that client meeting. You’re already tired looking after me.”

Monica looked at him, the practical expression softening for a moment.

“I do it every year. Why not this year? And look at your health. If there is any year I should do it properly, it is this one.”

Rakesh tried to laugh. The sound came out thin.

“I’m just okay. Recovering fast.”

She came around the table, “I know, jaanu. Sometimes the wife’s prayer helps more than medicine, baby.”
She leaned down and kissed him— soft, closed-mouthed, lingering only a second longer than a casual kiss. Then she straightened and returned to the day’s preparations. The fast began.
It was evening when the door bell rang!


Rakesh heard her voice first from his bedroom, bright with the particular ease she used only with one person.
“How was Jaipur? You were completely unreachable.”


Ranga’s laugh carried clearly down the short hallway— open, familiar, the laugh of a man who had no need to measure his words in this house.

“Site was a horrible mess Monica. The contractor tried to change the marble at the last minute. I had to sit on him for two days. Then the meeting with the political party team ran long. I took the late bus back. You should see the samples they sent— one of them is actually good for the café counter.”


They continued talking in the same unhurried, shared rhythm: details of the trip, a complaint about the hotel, Jaipur’s famous badaam milk. The conversation sounded like the private language of two people who had already built a daily life around each other. Rakesh lay still and listened to every word.
A minute later Ranga stepped into the bedroom. He came straight to the bed and gave Rakesh’s shoulder a firm, almost rough shake.

“How are you doing, bhai? Looking better I think ”

Rakesh nodded, the movement small.
“Yes Ranga Saab lot Better.”

“Is the temperature coming back in the middle of the night ? ”

“Not much. Normal since last week. Nothing to worry.”

Rakesh lied, no one knows about those ghost walks!

Ranga straightened, then glanced toward the doorway where Monica had appeared, still in the clothes she had worn for the fast, the thali already arranged behind her in the living room.

“Oh Rakesh bhai , today is Karwa Chauth,” Ranga said, the smile still present. “Look how your sweet wife is fasting the whole day for you” He looked at Monica when he said it, the gaze steady and open, carrying more than the words themselves.

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As evening settled, the sky cleared and the moon began to rise— pale and sharp against the dark. Monica moved into the master bedroom to prepare for the sighting. She had already bathed and reapplied the sindoor; the thali waited in the living room. She stood in front of the open cupboard in her petticoat and the modest full-sleeved blouse she had worn all day, deciding whether to change again before the final ritual.
The bedroom door opened. Ranga stepped in, still carrying the faint travel dust of the long bus journey on his clothes. He closed the door only halfway behind him.


“I got something for you from Jaipur,” he said.


Monica looked up, one hand still on the cupboard door.


“Oh?”
He reached into the bag he had brought and took out a folded packet of tissue paper. Inside lay a deep red Banarasi-style saree and a matching blouse piece. The fabric caught the light as he held it out.


“I thought this would look proper on you for Karwa Chauth night. Bought it specifically thinking of you.”


Monica’s eyebrows rose. Genuine surprise flickered across her face, followed almost at once by the familiar dry edge.
“Really? Since when did you start knowing about sarees and blouses?” She let out a short giggle, soft and disbelieving. “You walked into some shop in Jaipur and picked this?”
“I know what looks good on you,” Ranga answered simply.


They stood facing each other in the half-closed bedroom. Monica touched the edge of the blouse piece, feeling the weight of the silk, the cut of the neckline already visible even in its folded state.
She glanced up at him, the teasing tone returning.


“And what if I decide not to wear your gift tonight? What if I wear something Rakesh gifted me instead?”
Ranga’s mouth curved in a slow grin. He did not answer. He only looked at her, the same steady, open look he had given her earlier in front of Rakesh.


Monica held the packet against her chest for a moment, then nodded once toward the door.
“Go. I need to change.”


She closed the bedroom door fully behind him.


Ranga walked the short distance to Rakesh’s room. Rakesh was sitting against the pillows, the laptop still open but the screen dimmed. He looked up when Ranga entered.


“She is getting ready for the moon,” Ranga said, pulling the single chair closer and sitting. “Temperature still normal?”
“Yes. No spike since morning.”


“Good. You should eat something properly tonight after she finishes the ritual. You still look thin.”
They spoke for a few minutes in the same practical register they had used all week— medicines, the café file, whether Rakesh needed another blood test next week. The conversation was ordinary, almost dull, yet every sentence carried the quiet knowledge of the woman changing clothes on the other side of the wall. Time moved. The clock on Rakesh’s side table passed eight.


The bedroom door opened.

Monica stepped into the living room first, then came to the doorway of Rakesh’s room so both men could see her.
She had worn the gift.


The deep red saree sat perfectly against her skin, the rich colour making her complexion warmer and brighter. The blouse was the clear centre of the change— sleeveless, cut with wide, generous armholes that left the smooth, clean undersides of her arms and the shaved hollows of her armpits fully visible whenever she moved. The back was almost open, a low scoop that ended only a few inches above the waist of the saree. The neckline dipped just low enough to show the soft beginning of cleavage. Her hair had been redone in a traditional style, the parting sharp with fresh sindoor, a few loose strands framing her face. Gold bangles and the small festive earrings completed the look. She was beautiful in the exact way the ritual demanded— feminine, traditional, and unmistakably sensual at the same time.


Rakesh’s mouth opened slightly. The residual weakness and the sudden sight of her left him staring. It was not only the skin the blouse revealed; it was how completely bride-like and deliberate she looked, as if the entire day of fasting had been building toward this precise image.

“Nice saree,” he managed. “Nice blouse…”.

Monica’s eyes flicked briefly to Ranga, then back to her husband. A small, dry smile touched her mouth.
“Someone gifted it,” she said.

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Monica did not wait for further comment.

She turned and walked into the living room, the red saree moving quietly around her ankles, the open back of the blouse fully visible for a moment as she passed under the light. Ranga rose from the chair without a word and followed. Rakesh pushed himself higher against the pillows, the residual weakness in his legs making the movement slow. He could hear them in the living room— the soft clink of the thali being lifted, Monica’s practical voice telling Ranga to bring the water glass, the low answering murmur.

They came back into the bedroom together.

Monica set the thali on the small table beside the bed. The sleeveless blouse shifted with every motion; the wide armholes left the smooth undersides of her arms completely exposed. She helped Rakesh sit up a little straighter, her bare arm brushing his shoulder as she adjusted the pillows. Ranga stood at the foot of the bed, watching.

“Temperature still all right?” Monica asked her husband, the same dry, caring tone she used for medicines.

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we finish this properly.”

She picked up the sieve and stepped out onto the narrow terrace. The night air cooled the bare skin of her arms and the upper curves of her breasts left open by the neckline. She raised the sieve, found the clear moon, and looked at it through the mesh for the required moments. When she returned, the living-room light caught the red saree and the revealing blouse fully. She stood in front of Rakesh, but her body had already angled slightly toward the man standing beside the bed.

Rakesh tried to straighten further. His arms trembled. He could not hold the position steadily.

Monica’s voice carried the crisp edge of a woman who had fasted all day and had no intention of letting the ritual become clumsy.

“You can’t sit properly. You’ll drop the glass. Ranga, hold the sieve. Hold the thali as well.”

Ranga stepped closer and took both from her hands. His fingers brushed hers— deliberate, unhurried. Monica looked through the sieve. The traditional lines came out clear and steady:

“Main apne pati ki lambi umar, sukh aur samriddhi ke liye yeh Karwa Chauth ka vrat rakhti hoon. Bhagwan unhe lambi umar de, swasth rakhe.”

Her eyes, for the longest beat, were not fixed only on Rakesh. The mesh framed the man holding the sieve as much as the husband on the bed.

She lowered the sieve. Rakesh’s hands were still shaking too badly to offer the water. Monica did not glance at them. She simply picked up the glass and held it out to Ranga, the movement causing the neckline of the blouse to dip further.

“You give it. His hands are useless right now.”

Ranga took the glass. He stepped in close. One hand held it to her lips; the other settled lightly on the bare skin of her upper arm, just below the wide armhole, steadying her. His thumb moved once across the smooth underside of her arm. Monica tilted her head, the open neckline presenting the soft inner curves of her breasts clearly, and drank— three slow, deliberate swallows— while Rakesh watched from the bed.

When she finished she accepted the small piece of sweet directly from Ranga’s fingers. Her lips touched his skin for a fraction of a second. Then she spoke the final lines in the same clear voice, still standing inside the circle of Ranga’s presence:

“Jeete raho, swasth raho. Bhagwan tumhari umar lamba kare.”

The words were the correct ones. The direction of them had already shifted.

Monica set the glass down, adjusted the pallu with a small, sharp tug, and turned to Rakesh. Her tone returned to the practical, slightly scolding register she used for the household.

“It’s done. Lie down properly. I’ll bring you fresh water in a minute. And don’t look so dramatic— someone had to help. You couldn’t even hold the glass.”

Rakesh’s throat worked. No coherent sentence came. The image of the red saree, the open blouse, Ranga’s hand on his wife’s bare arm, and the easy way she had drunk from the other man’s hand stayed fixed behind his eyes. A stunned, helpless heat mixed with the deeper humiliation of having watched the ritual performed toward someone else while he lay there unable to rise.

Monica walked out of the room first. The open back of the blouse and the smooth bare arms were the last things visible before she turned the corner into the living room. Ranga followed a moment later, his hand briefly resting at the small of her back as they passed through the doorway— an unthinking, proprietary touch that said everything the ritual had already made plain.

In the living room their voices resumed at a lower volume— ordinary words about the café file and whether Rakesh needed another tablet before sleep. The ordinary festival night continued, the red saree and the gifted blouse still carrying the quiet, irreversible shift that had just taken place in front of the husband who remained behind in the bedroom, staring at the empty doorway.

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Kudos to the pics..very apt and promising

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Seriously apt, promising and visual resemblance

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Monica knocked once and pushed the door open with her shoulder.

She stood in the doorway still wearing the deep red saree and the sleeveless blouse Ranga had brought from Jaipur. The wide armholes left the smooth, clean undersides of her arms completely visible. The low back showed the thin, dark straps of her bra clearly against her skin. Fresh sindoor and the careful traditional hair still framed her face.

“I’m going out for some light shopping,” she said. “With Ranga. There’s a small mall nearby open late. I need a few things for the house and for Diwali.”

The two words "with Ranga" landed heavier than the rest of the sentence. Rakesh felt them settle in his chest like a sudden drop in temperature. Shopping. Together. On Karwa Chauth night. The same easy pairing he used to have with her years ago when they were still dating— evening out, no real destination, just the two of them moving through lighted shops. Now the man beside her would be Ranga.

Before he could answer, their voices continued in the living room, clear enough to reach him.

Monica: “I’m actually hungry now that the fast is over. Should we eat outside?”

Ranga: “Whatever you want. There’s a new place that does proper Rajasthani thali, or we can do the Chinese one you like.”

Monica: “Chinese. Something spicy. I don’t want anything heavy.”

Ranga: “Chinese then. I’ll drive.”

The conversation was ordinary, domestic, and completely paired. Rakesh’s stomach tightened with a sick, slow kick. They were deciding dinner the way a couple decided dinner.

Monica came back to the doorway a minute later, adjusting the pallu over her shoulder. The movement made the blouse shift; the wide armhole opened further and the soft hollow of her armpit and the side of her breast were briefly, clearly framed.

“Do you want me to get you anything? Fruit, or those biscuits you like?”

Rakesh shook his head once. He could not trust his voice yet.

His eyes moved over her without permission— the way the sleeveless blouse sat against her skin, how little coverage it offered, the thin bra straps visible along the almost bare back, the smooth shoulders and the clean shaved underarms that the cut displayed every time she lifted her arm. He imagined, with sudden and unwanted clarity, Ranga’s large hand settling on that same bare arm as they walked, the thumb moving the way it had moved earlier when he gave her water, then travelling higher, under the armhole, across the soft skin, then lower to the side of her breast while they stood in some poorly lit parking area or inside the car.

The image made his hands tremble on the blanket.

Monica noticed the change in his face.

“Rakesh? Dude, are you okay? What happened?”

He forced his expression back to neutral, the same weak, polite mask he had worn for weeks.

“Nothing. Just tired. You go.”

Ranga appeared behind her in the doorway, already holding the car keys. He looked at Rakesh over Monica’s shoulder, the same steady, almost friendly expression he always used in this room.

“Don’t worry, brother. I’ll get your wife back home safely.”

Monica gave a short, playful giggle at the phrasing, then leaned in slightly toward the bed.

“Eat the dinner I kept on the table, take your medicine on time, and sleep properly. We won’t be late.”

They left together. The front door closed with a soft, final click. The sound of the car starting and then pulling away reached him faintly through the window. After that the apartment fell into a thick, complete silence.

Rakesh lay exactly where they had left him, the open laptop still beside his leg, the untouched plate of food cooling on the side table. The flat felt larger and emptier than it ever had. Every few minutes the same images returned without mercy: Ranga’s hand sliding under the wide armhole of the blouse, fingers spreading across the smooth armpit and the side of her breast, Monica not stopping him because the night and the saree and the private history between them already allowed it. The way she had laughed in the living room. The way she had said *with Ranga* as if it were the most natural arrangement in the world.

He stared at the dark ceiling and felt the full weight of his own body— still weak, still slow, still unable to rise and follow them. The words came in a low, private rush of self-disgust: too weak, too inadequate, too little, too useless. The ordinary Karwa Chauth night continued somewhere outside the silent apartment, while inside it the husband remained exactly where the other two had left him, listening to the quiet and imagining the hands that were no longer in the room.