Chapter 3: What the Phone Already Knew
The name on the screen was *Mom*.
Not Sayan's mother.
Tia knew that immediately, because Sayan's mother had been gone for six years and her name had been Priya, and Sayan still kept her contact in his phone the way some people keep a photograph — untouched, because deleting it felt like losing her twice.
This was Marissa's phone.
Tia looked at it.
Then she looked at Marissa.
Then she looked at Sayan, who had gone completely still, the scissors still open in his hand, the gold handbag still dangling from the other.
"Are you going to answer that?" Tia asked.
Marissa moved toward the table.
Sayan stepped in front of her.
"Let it ring," he said.
"That is my phone." Marissa's voice had dropped to something very flat and careful.
"And that is my mother calling.
You do not get to stand between me and my mother."
"Your mother." Sayan set the handbag down slowly.
He set the scissors beside it.
"Does your mother know you're here today?"
Marissa didn't answer.
"Does she know what you did to that dress?"
"Sayan." Tia put her hand on his arm.
"Stop."
He didn't stop.
He looked at Marissa with the kind of steadiness that had nothing angry left in it — just cold, clear, and waiting.
"Marissa.
How did you get into this building?"
"I was invited."
"By who?"
A pause.
The phone had stopped ringing.
The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago.
"By you," Marissa said.
"Your assistant sent the invitation.
Your name was on it."
Sayan turned to Tia.
Something passed between them — quick, private, not quite readable from the outside.
Tia looked at the torn fabric at her waist.
Her hands had stopped shaking, but her voice came out carefully.
"I sent no invitation to you," she said.
"I sent one to your sister."
Marissa's chin came up.
"Lena couldn't come."
"Then Lena should have called me." Tia's eyes were steady now.
"Not sent you."
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was full of something that none of them had named yet.
Marissa picked up her handbag from the table.
She checked the clasp, checked the stitching, turned it once in her hands.
She looked almost calm — the kind of calm that takes effort to hold together.
"You want to talk about invitations," she said.
"Fine.
Let's talk about the other invitation.
The one that went out three months ago."
Sayan's jaw moved.
"Don't."
"The one with both your names on it." Marissa set the handbag over her arm.
"The engagement announcement." She looked at Tia.
"Did he show it to you before it went out?
Or did you find out the same way I did — by seeing it on someone else's phone?"
Tia's hand dropped from Sayan's arm.
"What engagement announcement?" she said.
Marissa smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
It was the smile of a woman who had been waiting a long time to be the one holding information instead of the one receiving it.
"Ask him," she said.
"I'll wait."
Sayan turned to Tia.
The color had left his face.
He opened his mouth, and for the second time that afternoon, nothing came out.
The phone on the table lit up again.
May you like
This time it wasn't *Mom*.
This time the name on the screen was *Elena*.
