Mission Forensic
Part 36: Where the Distance Ended
Morning did not arrive so much as gather—thin as silk, pale as milk poured into tea. The heater hummed its low, steady note in Ahana and Shawn’s flat; somewhere a kettle ticked as it cooled. Cardamom drifted through the air, faint and familiar.
Catherine woke first.
She sat by the window, knees drawn up, the winter’s thin sun brushing her cheek. A scooter coughed in the lane below, then faded. The building’s terrace caught the light like a quiet thought. She watched the city come awake, not with longing, but with that rare steadiness that follows a night of speaking honestly and then choosing not to speak anymore.
In the hall, Edward slept on the spare mattress—one arm flung over his eyes, the other draped across his chest, as if holding himself still. He looked younger like that, unguarded, all the careful lines of effort smoothed by sleep. Catherine did not move toward him. She allowed the sight to exist. Recognition, not ache.
She rose, wrapped her shawl closer, and went to the kitchen. The cardamom tea had been left ready—water hot, leaves in a tin, two cups set beside the stove as if the house itself had decided on gentleness. She poured one cup for herself. Then she poured another. Carried it back to the hall. Set it down within reach of his hand, where the steam would curl against his palm and wake him softly.
She sat a little distance away, the window light falling across the blanket in quiet rectangles.
Edward stirred. Blinked. Saw the cup. Saw her.
No apologies passed between them. They had used those up last night.
He pushed himself up on an elbow, reached for the tea, and held it for a moment as if the warmth itself were an answer. When his eyes met hers, the look was simple. Thank you. I’m here.
She shifted closer until their shoulders touched.
They drank in silence. The kind that heals something small and essential because it is neither forced nor afraid.
Ahana appeared first, hair pulled into an efficient knot, the calm of someone who carried the morning like a responsibility and a kindness both. Shawn followed with the cautious shuffle of a man unsure whether he’d been accused of snoring in the night.
“Good,” he announced, taking in their faces, the cups, the air. “We’re all alive. I shall now contribute to society by toasting bread.”
“Do it without burning the house,” Ahana said, moving past him to the kettle.
“Your faith in me is touching,” he replied, then nearly dropped the knife.
Breakfast was a gentle, unremarkable thing—toast, butter, a quickly scrambled egg, tea poured into mismatched mugs. Conversation stayed low, warm around the edges, never pressing. Shawn made small, ridiculous claims about his culinary genius; Ahana corrected him without heat. Catherine listened, her mouth tipping at the corners in the way that meant yes, this helps. Edward offered to wash the cups and was told to sit.
For several minutes they were not four people holding last night’s weight. They were simply a small, improbable family.
When it was time to go, there was no ceremony. Ahana hugged Catherine with a brief, firm hold that said you can come back and you know it; she nodded at Edward with an expression that landed halfway between warning and faith. Shawn handed Catherine a paper packet—two biscuits, a joke scribbled in pen on the outside: In case of emotional emergency, eat sugar.
“Subtle,” Ahana murmured.
“I’m an artist,” Shawn said, as if that explained everything.
The stairwell was cold, the concrete holding the memory of night. In the basement, the lights hummed. Their steps echoed.
Edward unlocked the car. Catherine slid into the passenger seat, arranging her shawl, her hands neat in her lap. He settled behind the wheel, turned the key, let the engine find its even note. Neither of them filled the air with words.
Delhi unspooled around them—morning vendors setting up, schoolchildren tugging at scarves, a dog asleep under a rickshaw. The heater breathed warm air into the cabin; a tiny cloud of fog clung to the corners of the windshield before clearing.
At a red light, Catherine let her hand rest lightly on his knee. No claim. No script. He set his palm over hers, just enough weight to say I feel this, and you.
The light changed. The car moved forward. Something in them, too.
Home wore its quiet as if it had been waiting. The lilies in the vase caught the pale sun, their edges still new. Catherine set her bag on the chair by the window, fingers lingering on the strap. Edward walked to the kitchen and clicked the kettle on. The sound was ordinary and decisive. It meant stay.
They stood there for a moment, each listening to the small sounds that made their place their own: the kettle warming, the curtain ring ticking faintly along the rod in a draft, the neighbor’s radio murmuring a bhajan through thin walls. The air was not empty. It was soft with return.
When the water began to sing, they moved: cups down, tea in, milk measured, sugar the way they knew. They carried their mugs to the table and sat across from each other, knees almost touching under the wood.
“I don’t want us to turn last night into a rulebook,” Catherine said. Her voice was steady. “But I do want us to remember it.”
“I will,” he said. “I already do.”
She looked at the lilies, then back at him. “When I ask for a night, I need that to mean something. Not a promise on paper. A door you actually close.”
He nodded. “I’ll close it at the calendar, and then I’ll close it in my head. If I forget the second part, you’ll remind me. And I’ll listen.”
No defense. No exhibit list. The agreement sat between them like a small, precise tool they both knew how to use.
“And if the work is urgent?” she asked. Not as a test—just because life was what it was.
“Then I’ll tell you it’s urgent,” he said. “Not by leaving. By sitting here and saying it. And if you say tonight matters, I will make it wait. Or we’ll decide together.”
“Together,” she repeated, the word landing with weight. “I want that to be our habit.”
“It will be,” he said. “Because I want this—” he gestured to the room, the table, her “—more than I want to be the first person to reply to everything that asks for me.”
Her mouth softened. “I don’t need declarations.”
“I know,” he said. “I need to practice them anyway.”
They didn’t reach for each other. The tea cooled a little. The room warmed.
They cleared the living room the way people do when they’re reclaiming a place from the night before: folded blankets into squares that would never be this perfect again; stacked stray books in a neat, forgiving pile; opened the windows to let winter in and the stale edges out. The curtain lifted and fell, lifted and fell, as if proof of breath.
Catherine shook out the rug at the door, the dust rising into tiny, bright motes that hung and then drifted. Edward set the cushions back where they belonged, then stepped onto the balcony to beat one lightly against the rail. A sparrow landed on the wire with its practiced, light-footed boldness. The city sounded like itself again.
She wiped the table. He took the mugs to the sink. It was a choreography they had not rehearsed because it had always been inside them.
When the rooms were in order, Edward reached for his phone. Sat at the table. Typed slowly.
Ma’am,
I’m available for the BPR&D proposal and committed to the timelines.
I’ll be scheduling one evening each week off-campus for a personal commitment and will block it on the calendar in advance.
Abstract v1 attached; happy to review post 11 a.m. tomorrow.
Regards,
Edward
He turned the phone so she could read. Not for approval—for inclusion.
Catherine scanned the lines, then looked up. She didn’t say good or thank you or finally. She placed her hand over his, the gentlest pressure. He sent the message.
The whoosh of it leaving filled the small room like a held breath released.
They didn’t do anything grand after that. They didn’t claim a date or plan a trip or post a photograph to persuade themselves they were fine. They sat on the sofa. He leaned back; she tipped toward him until the side of her face found the hollow where his shoulder met his chest. The afternoon found them there, warming the far wall, catching in the water of the lilies, laying a soft gold across the spine of a book.
A scooter bell rang on the street. Somewhere a pressure cooker hissed and fell silent. A child laughed on the floor above them, then was shushed with a conspirator’s whisper. The city was itself again, and so, slowly, were they.
There would be more conversations. There always are, for people who are trying. There would be small failures, and the work would surge again, and one of them would forget something the other thought obvious. They would have to remember to return, not just to apologize.
But the distance had closed. The door had been opened and stepped through, not just held ajar.
For now, that was enough.
They drank the last of their tea without hurry. The lilies brightened a little in the light. The winter afternoon settled its weight on the ledge and did not move them along.
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