Chapter 10: The Unwanted Gift
The silence in the apartment had a texture now. It wasn’t just an absence of sound; it was a presence, a patient thing that waited in the corners, thickening around the scent of lemon polish and the static hum of the refrigerator. Priya stood before the oval mirror of her vanity, the one with the faint crack in the lower left corner. Her fingertip traced the skin just beside her eye, following a smooth plane where a network of fine lines had, until recently, been her morning companions.
They were just… gone. Erased. Like memories smoothed from a photograph.
It was the most unnerving part. The fillers and the implants were things she could feel, foreign masses under her skin. But this, the Botox, was an absence. A void where expression used to live. She tried to frown, to conjure the look of concern she’d give Dev when he was stressed. Her forehead remained placid, unmoved. A strange, placid mask looked back.
Work had changed first. Mr. Kapoor, the senior partner at the legal firm where she’d been a secretary for eighteen years, had called her into his oak-paneled office. He didn’t look up from a contract. “Priya. The client feedback from the Rajput merger. They noted your… professionalism. And presentation.” He’d cleared his throat. “A raise is in order. Effective immediately. Double.”
She’d stood there, the news not computing. “Presentation?”
He’d finally glanced at her, his eyes doing a quick, impersonal sweep from her newly styled hair to the pencil skirt that now fit her altered hips perfectly. “You look put-together. It reflects well on the firm.” He’d smiled, a thin, functional thing. “Keep it up.”
The raise had felt like blood money. The comments from the junior associates, overheard in the breakroom, were worse.
“Damn, Sharma’s had a glow-up. Like, a nuclear glow-up.”
“I heard it’s surgery. Total mommy-to-bombshell package.”
“Bimbo-fication at fifty-something. Mid-life crisis on steroids.”
The word ‘mommy’ had felt like a slap. They didn’t see the years of packed lunches, of sickbed vigils, of quiet sacrifice. They saw a silhouette. A project. She was no longer the invisible, reliable ‘Ma’am’ who knew where every file was. She was a spectacle. A ‘bombshell bimbo’ whispered about behind her back. The validation she’d naively hoped for tasted like ash.
Dr. Sneha’s follow-up appointments became less about healing and more about maintenance. “The work is excellent,” the doctor had said, her critical gaze scanning Priya like a mechanic inspecting a tuned car. “But structure is only half the battle. You must own it. The body needs a foundation of muscle. Tone. Here.” She’d scribbled an address on a card. “A gym. Ask for Rohan. Tell him I sent you.”
The gym was a temple of suffering. It smelled of iron, sweat, and aggressively fruity disinfectant. Bass-heavy music thumped through the floor. Rohan, a human sculpture of sinew and tank top, had no patience for hesitance.
“Again. Lower. You’re not here to tickle the weights, madam. You’re here to tell your body who’s in charge.”
She’d grunt, muscles screaming, pushing the barbell in a squat rack. Her new breasts, still strange to her, felt like awkward, unyielding weights on her chest. But she followed the regimen religiously. The pain was a purge. It burned away the thoughts, the whispers, the quiet horror of her own reflection. In the strain of a deadlift, there was no room for loneliness. There was only the next rep.
Her phone, propped against her water bottle, would sometimes light up with Dev’s face. A video call. Her heart would lurch, a confusing cocktail of yearning and panic.
She’d answer, breathless, wiping sweat from her brow. “Beta! How are you?”
His pixelated smile was her anchor. “Ma. You’re… red. Are you okay?”
“Just… climbed the stairs too fast. This old building.” She’d laugh, the sound tight.
One time, he’d squinted. “Your hair is different.”
“Oh, this? The parlour-walla did a new style. A change.” She’d tuck a strand behind her ear, her motion fluid where it once would have been hesitant.
Another call, late for him, early for her. She was in her robe, skin glowing from a rigorous scrub. “Ma,” he’d said, his voice soft with the blur of a German evening. “You look… really fresh. Did you change your creams or something?”
There it was. A direct hit. Her mind scrambled. “It’s the weather here, Dev. Less pollution. And I’m sleeping properly now, without worrying about your dinner.” She’d turned the camera slightly, showing the boring expanse of her living room wall. “How is Professor… what was his name?”
He’d let it go, each time, diverted by her questions about his studies, his shared flat, the strange food. She became an expert in deflection, in the casual ‘god explanation’—attributing the changes to rest, to water, to a new brand of moisturizer, to the simple, benign grace of a less stressful life. He wanted to believe her. She could see the doubt flicker and then die in his eyes, soothed by her familiar voice, by the maternal concern she could still project from behind the new architecture of her face.
But after each call, the silence was louder. She’d sit in the dim living room, the ghost of his face on the black screen of the TV. She traced the line of her jaw, now sharper, more defined. She was building a fortress of a body, a citadel of toned muscle and smoothed skin, to house a ghost. The transformation was working. It was pushing the world’s perception of her from ‘mother’ to… something else. But inside, in the quiet hum of the apartment, she felt more like his mother than ever, because that identity was now a secret she had to keep from him, a photo she had to hide in a new, polished frame.
She missed him with a raw, physical ache that no gym session could exhaust. And she dreaded the day he would come home, when the screen would no longer blur the truth, and her careful performance would have to face its only real audience. The ‘late Halloween’ he promised felt less like a celebration and more like a deadline.