A week after her father’s funeral, Maya returned to his house alone.
Her mother and her husband had left for Haridwar that morning for the asthi visarjan.
Maya stayed behind.
Officially because she wasn’t feeling well enough to travel.
Unofficially because she didn’t want to.
Instead, she decided to clean her father’s library.
Partly because she realised how little she knew about him.
The room looked exactly as he had left it.
Books lined every wall.
Many had notes scribbled into the margins.
Even after retirement, he never seemed to stop studying.
Papers sat in neat stacks.
Near the back of a cupboard, she found a shoebox.
Inside sat a pair of blue baby shoes.
Tiny.
Pristine.
Never worn.
She stared at them.
Her father had never mentioned them.
Her phone rang.
Husband.
Maya flipped it over.
An hour later she was still sitting in the library staring at the shoes.
The next day she left with the shoebox and her father’s laptop.
The shoes sat on her dining table that night.
She couldn’t stop looking at them.
Nothing about them fit the man she thought she knew.
She picked up the box to put it away.
A moment later it was back on the table.
As a child, Maya had wondered whether her father wanted children at all.
The thought lingered longer than usual.
She spent most of the next day searching through the laptop.
At first, she wasn’t looking for anything specific.
She just wanted to understand him.
The advertisement was the first thing that made her stop scrolling.
For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
The photograph showed the same blue shoes.
Her father’s phone number sat beneath it.
The advertisement was decades old.
Something tightened inside her.
She searched again.
More advertisements appeared.
Years apart.
Always the same shoes.
Always the same words.
Always the same number.
No price.
A familiar suspicion resurfaced.
One she had carried for years.
Maybe her father had wanted a son.
The blue shoes made the thought difficult to ignore.
Then another possibility followed.
Maybe there had been another child.
A son!
One who died before she was born.
The theory settled into place with unsettling ease.
What bothered her was how quickly she believed it.
She searched through most of the night.
The advertisements became an obsession.
By the time morning arrived, she had barely slept.
Folders.
Scanned records.
Old files.
Years of fragments.
A sudden wave of nausea rolled through her.
She barely noticed.
There were still files left to open.
The breakthrough came that evening.
A folder she had overlooked.
Three files.
A birth certificate.
A death certificate.
A hospital record.
She opened the death certificate first.
Then froze.
Cause of death-
Complications during childbirth.
Maya looked at the date.
Then she looked at the birth certificate.
Same date.
Her father’s date of birth.
The hospital record completed the picture.
A newborn.
That same day.
For a long time, she sat without moving.
The room had gone completely silent.
The shoes.
The advertisements.
Everything shifted.
The child had never been a son.
The child had been her father.
The shoes were his.
The first and last gift his mother had ever bought him.
Maya leaned back in her chair.
For the first time since opening the laptop, she stopped looking for answers.
Then a thought occurred to her.
If the shoes meant so much, why keep trying to sell them?
She opened the advertisements again.
She kept scrolling through them, searching for a reason.
Then one date caught her attention.
Her annual day dance.
Years ago.
Only her mother came.
Maya stared at the screen.
Then checked another date.
Then another.
Slowly a pattern emerged.
The advertisements appeared after he had disappointed her.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She remembered the way he used to watch her when she was with her mother.
And the way his attention sometimes drifted elsewhere.
A little boy holding his mother’s hand.
A child asleep against his mother’s shoulder.
As a child, Maya thought he was wishing for a son.
For years, she thought she was competing with a ghost.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She imagined him years later opening the shoebox.
Creating another advertisement.
Trying once again to sell it.
Trying once again to let go.
Not of a son.
Of a mother.
The first relationship of his life.
One he never got to have.
That night Maya sat alone at the dining table.
The blue shoes rested in front of her.
She picked up her phone and called her mother.
Her mother answered immediately.
“Maya?”
A pause.
Then
“He’s truly gone now.”
The ashes were in the Ganga.
Maya looked at the shoes.
“No” she said softly.
“I feel much closer to him now.”
Her mother said something in response.
Maya barely heard it.
Her eyes remained fixed on the shoes.
“Mom…”
“Yes?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Silence.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“Are you keeping this one?”
Maya smiled.
“Yes.”
On the other end of the line, she heard her mother crying.
The conversation drifted on.
Baby clothes.
Blankets.
A crib.
Then
“We have so much shopping to do.”
Maya ran a finger across the faded blue leather.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry about the first shoes.”
A pause.
“I’ve already got the perfect pair.”
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