The old farmhouse stood alone on the edge of the village, its whitewashed walls cracked by years of monsoon rains, the tin roof groaning whenever the wind rose from the fields. Mira and Rohan had come back only after the telegram arrived—both parents gone in a single night, the truck that carried them skidding off the wet highway. No will, no distant relatives willing to take the land. Just the two of them and the house that had watched them grow.

Rohan was thirty-two, broad-shouldered from years of hauling sacks of grain, his jaw permanently set in the same stubborn line their father had worn. Mira was twenty-seven, thinner now after the months of hospital vigils, her hair still smelling faintly of the city she had left behind. The first week they slept in their childhood rooms, doors open, speaking in soft voices so the silence would not swallow them. By the second week Rohan began locking the front door at dusk. By the third he kept the only set of keys on a string around his neck.