Grandmother, Who, Me?

Grandmother, Who, Me?

Chapter 34: The Last Gift

Rajan’s POV

I had always known this day would come.

From the first week in the village, from the first night she stopped resisting the override and simply endured it, from the first time she handed me my lunch box at the door with a quiet “Go carefully” I had known the arrangement was temporary. The documents were real enough, the neighbours believed us, the tuition boys called me Master, but the foundation had always been borrowed time.

I expected to feel devastated when the end arrived.

Instead, standing in the living room of the city house and watching the complete family move around the new baby, I felt a deep, unexpected calm. A beggar who had once slept on temple steps now sat at a table with a daughter-in-law who served him coffee, a quiet “son” who called him Appa, and a wife who had prayed for his health in a village temple. I had been given months of dignity, work, warmth, and a woman who shared my bed every night without turning away. That was more than most men in my old life ever received. I was not sad. I was grateful.

Losing her would still hurt.

I had come to love her, not the way I once loved the wife who destroyed me, but in a slower, deeper way. I loved the soft weight of her body against mine at night. I loved the way she had begun to speak, the small tired smiles, the quiet competence with which she ran the house. I loved the scent of her used clothes and the sight of the thali resting permanently in her cleavage. But love, if it is real, also means respect. She had never chosen this life for herself. She had endured it for someone else’s longing. When the moment came for her to reclaim her own skin, I would not stand in the way.

The last morning she dressed with unusual care.

A deep maroon silk saree with a broad gold border. A matching blouse that fitted her heavy breasts perfectly. Fresh jasmine in her hair. The old weathered thali polished until it caught the light. Toe rings, anklets, the small nose studz every piece of the married woman she had been forced to become. She looked beautiful in the quiet, matronly way I had grown used to.

I was to return to the village alone. The house there would remain mine; the tuition work would continue. She would stay in the city for the reversal.

We met in the guest room one final time while the others were occupied with the baby.

I took both of her soft hands in mine.

“Thank you,” I said simply. “For the food. For the nights. For letting me feel like a husband again. For praying for me. I know none of it was what you wanted. But it gave me back a life I thought was gone forever.”

She looked at me for a long moment. Then a small, complicated smile touched her lips.

“Thank you too,” she answered in that warm, husky voice. “For not being cruel. For keeping the secret. For… everything else.” Her eyes flicked downward briefly, almost playfully, almost perversely. “You were very thorough with the override. Every single night. A wife notices these things.”

Before I could reply she stepped back, reached under the silk saree, and in one smooth motion slid the simple cotton panty down her legs. She stepped out of it, bent to pick it up, and placed the still-warm fabric in my hand.

The familiar scent rose immediately.

“Keep it,” she said quietly. “A reminder. Or whatever you need it to be.”

I closed my fingers around the soft cloth. My throat felt tight.

She adjusted the pallu, smoothed the saree, and gave me one last small nod, the gesture of a wife seeing her husband off.

I walked out of the room, down the stairs, and into the waiting cab that would take me back to the village. In my pocket the panty rested against my thigh, still carrying the heat and scent of the woman who had been mine for a season.

A wife who had finished a chapter for me.

I did not look back.