That afternoon, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried quietly into a towel so she wouldn't hear.
Not because she forgot me.
But because she forgot that she loved me.
And I didn't know which was worse
It was raining again.
Rain has become my least favorite sound.
I was on a work call when I noticed the house was too quiet.
Too still.
"Ma?" I called.
No answer.
Her slippers were missing from near the door.
My heart began to pound so hard I thought I might faint.
I ran outside barefoot.
The street was wet, empty, gray.
"Ma!" I shouted.
I checked the grocery shop. The temple. The park bench where she used to sit in the evenings.
Nothing.
With shaking hands, I called the police.
"How long has she been missing?"
"Thirty minutes," I said, but it felt like thirty years.
They found her two hours later.
Two hours of imagining her alone, frightened, confused.
She was sitting at a bus stop six kilometers away.
When I reached her, she looked annoyed.
"Why did you follow me?" she snapped.
"I wasn't following you," I said, breathless. "You left home."
"I was going to pick up my daughter from school."
Her daughter.
Me.
I knelt in front of her, rain soaking my clothes.
"You don't have to pick her up anymore," I whispered.
"Why?" she asked.
I swallowed.
"Because she grew up."
She stared at me.
And for one second — just one — something shifted.
"Aarohi?" she whispered.
My tears mixed with the rain.
"Yes," I breathed. "Yes, Ma."
She touched my face.
Then her expression clouded again.
"You look like someone I used to know."
And that hurt more than if she had said nothing at all.