Father tells me straight away that I wasn't his biological daughter, no, he didn't have me with his girlfriend, or whatever she was. But I was related to her, in a way. She was on her way back from work in the evening. The train was empty except her and another woman who was accompanying two girls. The woman looked too old to be their mother, and she was wearing some fancy clothes while the girls were dressed in bedraggled ones. The rough demeanor of the woman towards them made her suspicious, and when the cops took away the child smuggler and she brought the girls home, she knew she was in trouble, for she didn't earn enough to raise both of them. She also knew at that moment, that she would never need any child of her own. But, her parents never accepted the girls as she was unmarried, and she left her home at the young age of twenty-three. That's when she met father and they hit it off. Father was already having troubles in his married life when he met her. Mother wouldn't talk to him, and father was planning to leave the house for good. This woman never married because of a certain individual in her life, whom she never gained enough courage to tell about her feelings, and father was suffering from woes of a failed marriage. Their relationship was more like that of friends than of lovers, but father promised to take care of one of her "daughters" and raise her like his own. Of course, mother thought I was his child, and father didn't think it was necessary to tell her the truth. They fought, but father says he was used to it. The fight died down in the end, and mother reluctantly let me stay. He sits there, looking awkward opening up after a lifetime of silence that we've shared. I want to ask him so much, more about his life, more about mother, but the only thing I ask him is about the woman he loves.
"Why doesn't she check up on me anymore? You make it sound like she cared for me, but I've never yet met her. Is she... I mean, she is...?"
"She's alive. And well." He says.
"Then why doesn't she..." I begin.
"She does," father cuts me off. "She's your aunt, Sayani."