AVNEIL.SHORT STORY - Chapter 4: Chapter 4

For the first time since their wedding, the Khanna mansion felt quieter than usual—not because of the grandeur, but because of her silence.
Avni had stopped trying.
She no longer waited for Neil at dinner. She no longer asked if he wanted tea. No more gentle knocks on his study door. No more sweet smiles, no more stammered attempts to talk to him.
She had learned.
And Neil noticed.
It started subtly.
She wasn’t at the breakfast table anymore. Not even quietly seated in a corner.
“Where’s Avni?” he asked one morning, trying to sound casual as he scrolled through his phone.
Swetha looked up with a knowing smile. “She’s in the kitchen with the staff, helping them prepare Bebe’s sugar-free sweets. She didn’t want to disturb your breakfast.”
Bebe chuckled from her seat. “That girl is a treasure. She listens more than she speaks. Learns fast. Even made halwa for the staff yesterday.”
Neil didn’t comment. But he noticed the empty chair beside his mother. The silence of her absence was louder than her presence used to be.
That evening, when he returned home late from a business meeting, the house was dim, warm-lit, peaceful.
He walked past the living room where Swetha was helping Bebe with her knitting, then past the kitchen. No sign of Avni.
Finally, he paused at the pooja room.
There she was—kneeling in front of the small idol of Ganesha, eyes closed, head bowed in prayer. The oil lamp flickered gently beside her. Her dupatta was draped over her head, and her hands were joined with a quiet reverence that made him pause.
She didn’t hear him.
She didn’t look up.
She didn’t even know he was standing there.
And strangely… that bothered him.
Later that night, he passed by the guest room on the way to his own, the door slightly ajar. He paused.
Inside, Avni sat on the floor, folding laundry. She looked peaceful. Unbothered. Distant.
He knocked lightly on the doorframe.
She looked up, startled for a second, then quickly stood. “You need something?”
“I just...” he hesitated. “You weren’t at dinner.”
“You didn’t want me to pretend,” she said quietly. “So I stopped pretending.”
Her voice held no sarcasm. Just calm truth. And that somehow stung more.
“I didn’t say you have to hide in your room.”
“No,” she replied, looking down at the sari she was folding, “but I know I don’t belong in yours. Or at your table. Or your office. I’ve accepted that.”
A pause.
“You win, Neil.”
And with that, she gently shut the guest room door.
Neil stood there a second longer, something tightening in his chest.
It wasn’t guilt.
He didn't believe in guilt.
But for the first time… her silence was louder than any of her words.