Shattered Relations | Aru Shah AU |

XXVI

ARU
It had been half an hour, and Aru hadn't found anything worthwhile. Her parents' room was cluttered, thanks to the extensive search she was carrying out, but still, nothing even close to helping her discern what exactly had happened to her Mom had been unearthed. 

Ugh. Think, Shah. What have you learned from binge-watching movies? 

That you'll rot your brain and your eyes will pop out? Another part of her brain replied to the rhetoric question, as she crawled around, peering under their bed. 

NOTHING. Still nothing. 

"Chuckloo, I'm home!" Her father's distant voice rang out, as Aru got up, and sauntered towards the bedroom door. 

"Hi, Dad." She called back, carefully disguising her impatience with fake cheeriness. 

"Guess what I got you?" He asked, with thinly veiled excitement. 

"Ooh, what is it?" she asked, feigning the enthusiasm her father was showing. 

He pulled out a silver bracelet, with an elephant charm. "This used to be your mother's, before she..."

He trailed off, his smile fading.

Her heart stuttered. "Uh, what's for dinner?"

Suyodhana looked up, looking glad that she had changed the topic. "I'm planning on making chhole. How does that sound?"

Aru gave her father a thin-lipped smile, and said, weakly, "That sounds perfect." 

She twirled an old wedding invite in her hands, the golden words 'Sohail' and 'Vajra' glinting in the lighting of the hallway. 

"So I was clearing out your room—you subjected me to chores, remember—and I found some of Mom's old mail. Should I throw it out, or...?" 

Suyodhana took the wedding invite from her, and smiled slightly at the names. "Oh, I remember these two. Sohail and Vajra. Their wedding was... electric, is what the elders said." 

"That's besides the point," she said, hurriedly, "anyway, should I clean out your old mail?" 

Suyodhana gave her a frigid, brittle smile. "Uh... sure." He glanced at his watch, before clearing his throat. 

"Listen, beta, if you want to talk about anything..." 

Oh. This talk. She'd been dreading it since the moment her father had found out about what she'd been getting up to. She appreciated the fact that the people she loved were looking out for her, but it was conversations like these that unearthed the messy emotions that she was actively trying to avoid and hide. 

These types of conversations were the ones that usually severed the threads of what had been a tapestry of a relationship.

She returned the brittle smile, and said, in a fake, unnatural voice, "Of course! But, I don't need to talk about anything, so—everything's fine!" She said, her words stumbling, her thoughts sticking to each other. 

Suyodhana nodded, taking the cue that this conversation was over, and kissed his daughter's forehead. 

"I love you, beta." 

The words seemed hard to say, but that was probably because she was out of practice. However, she managed to whisper out, "Love you too, Dad." 

————

The afternoon sun glared down at Atlanta, its sharp rays filtering through stained glass windows, as the long shadow of Aru Shah slid through the apartment. 

Her mother's office was kept under lock and key, but after twenty-four hours of browsing through YouTube, she was now armed with twisted paperclips and the knowledge of how to pick a lock. 

She checked her watch. It was 1:10, and her father's meeting was due to get over at 1:30, after which, he was going out for lunch with a couple of friends. 

Theoretically, that gave her enough time to check all of her mother's old mail, and to sort through it and smuggle it to her room.

After a few minutes of tinkering, one cut, hissed obscenities at the paperclip, and blinking back tears, the door opened with a soft click, and Aru silently celebrated her victory. 

She pushed open the door, and began searching through the documents in the desk drawer first. 

One file was dedicated to ownership deeds of various statues, while another was labeled 'Baby Pictures!!!'. 

She didn't dare open the latter, but made a mental note to destroy it before her friends got their hands on it. 

With her search proved futile, she turned to the cabinets, which revealed nothing but small statues of devi Lakshmi, and more and more ownership deeds. 

"Shit," she muttered. Her search had turned up nothing. Instead of feeling dejected, she felt slightly relieved. Maybe Kara was mistaken, and her mother's death hadn't been sinister. 

She sunk into the office chair, but before she could close her eyes, a file fell to the floor. Cracking one eye open, she saw it was the dreaded 'Baby Pictures!!!' file, and as she knelt to pick it up, a few sheets of paper fell out. 

"C'mon," she grumbled, picking up the stack of documents, but her heart stopped at the ones at the front. 

"...Divorce papers?" 

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