Broken Strings

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E

"Why would you even doubt....I just don't even understand where all of this came from." She finally looked at Andrew and she hated looking into his eyes.

Better than anyone, Anisha could read his eyes. She could see the regret, the guilt, the pain, the fear and the loss.

She watched as he awkwardly ran a hand through his hair and looked everywhere but at her.

"I ended things with Amanda. She was mad but I wanted to work things out between us, me and you. Not for the kids, but for us. I want to try and save our marriage."

Anisha snorted as he paused and gave her an intense look, clearly irritated with her and her lack of interest in trying to save their already failed marriage.

Work things out. He wanted to work things out. After years of breaking her heart and fucking her over, he wanted to work things out.

"And she said that Mira...I just don't know." He really didn't. And saying it all out loud made him feel stupid.

He had no right to doubt Anisha. It was all because of the mistakes he had made anyway. It was all his fucking fault.

Anisha smiled sadly and looked down at the floor once again. There were a number of things she could've asked him. There were a number of things she wanted to ask him. There were a number of things she had to tell him.

But she just wanted to sleep. She wanted to forget about everything.

It was all too much. It all took too much energy. Energy that she didn't have. Nor did she even care anymore.

But still, especially now, Anisha always wondered how things would've turned out for her, how things could've turned out for her had just one small thing been different.

She just wanted to be happy. She wanted to be loved.

Of all things she had ever wanted in life, never had she wanted anything more than to have someone love her and only her.

Her mother had been right. Love made people foolish.

And maybe that was why she had held on. Because she had thought that love alone could've been enough.

But it hadn't been.

There were a number of other things. Things that she had simply not bothered with.

Like loyalty. Like compassion. Like acceptance. Like forgiveness. And most of all trust.

Andrew didn't trust her one bit. He never had.

But for some reason, he trusted Amanda.

"Why do you trust her so much?" And that was what Anisha wanted to know more than anything.

"What?" Andrew didn't trust anyone. He didn't trust anything. He just didn't.

But doubts are hard to remove.

Not once did he trust Amanda. He trusted more than anything that Mira was his daughter.

And even if she wasn't, he'd still love her like his own.

He had raised her. The nights he had gotten up to help Anisha feed her. The days he had made her a deal to buy her a new Cinderella doll if she finished all her veggies. The evenings where he had read her a bed-time story, a Cinderella fairytale to be exact. The times she had easily convinced him to take her to Disneyland just by pretending to hand-write him a business report, demanding that her father take her to Disneyland.

He loved Mira. She was his and Anisha's.

Over and over, he had fucked things up. With his wife. With his parents. With his sister. With his son.