I found her hanging from the ceiling fan, her sari still neatly draped, her feet bare and pale. The room was silent, the clock ticking like a heartbeat. I didn’t scream. I just stood there, staring, as if waiting for her to open her eyes and tell me this was a dream.

Now, I sit at the dining table, the same one where we never spoke, trying to remember the first crack. Was it when I told her not to open the balcony door? When I made her return the scarf her friend gave her? Or was it earlier—on our wedding night, when I looked at her not as a person, but as mine?

She was seventeen. An orphan. I thought I was giving her a home. But now I wonder: did I bury her alive in this apartment, one silent rule at a time?

I need to understand what I missed. What she wanted to say. What she saw in me—before she chose to leave.