Fiction: In the shadows of their turbulent pasts, three women find their destinies intertwined

And just like that, one dark early winter afternoon, when the fog had begun rolling in from the distant mountains, bringing with it the damp, unsettling sensation of being underwater, there was a frantic knock on the front door. A woman’s voice called out to Teja, begging him to open the door, to let her in. I recognized the voice, it came from the woman who had come to meet me a couple of days ago, asking for a room to live here, a request I had thought absurd but had strangely found myself acquiescing to despite all my initial misgivings. I could be a sucker like that. Teja had returned after two weeks away just this very morning, the beard thick on his face, his eyes heavy with the lack of sleep from being on the move for the past fourteen days. Part of the job, I told myself. If he wanted a settled life he should have become a bank clerk.

“I went to ten different places before I could come back to you,” he told me. I smiled. If he expected gratitude he wouldn’t get it. He hadn’t left me as I constantly worried he would. And anyway now,...

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