The decorator called at ten in the morning to cancel.
Veer was in the middle of three conversations simultaneously — one with the event coordinator about lighting rigs, one with Kabir about a supplier issue that required delicate handling, and one internal negotiation with himself about where to direct his attention at all times so that it did not drift toward whatever part of the haveli Meera Kapoor happened to currently occupy — when his phone rang and a man's voice said the words 'deeply regret' and 'family emergency' and 'unable to fulfil the contract,' and something in Veer's chest went very still and focused.
He excused himself from both conversations. He went into the courtyard. He stood under the neem tree and made four calls in rapid succession, and the information he gathered was: every decorator of the standard they required in Delhi was either booked or unavailable on the dates they needed. Every single one.
He was standing there processing this when footsteps on the stone behind him announced Meera.
He knew it was her before she spoke. He'd always been able to identify her footsteps. This was information he had never done anything with and had no plans to do anything with.
"Kabir bhai told me about the decorator," she said.
He turned. She was dressed practically — not in the kind of outfit you wore to a family function, but jeans and a kurta with her dupatta tucked efficiently into her shoulder, which meant she'd already shifted modes from 'guest at a wedding' to 'person who has a problem to solve.' She was holding her phone.
"I'm handling it," he said.
"I know. I've also made some calls." She held out her phone. On the screen was a name and number. "Saurabh Mehra. He's based in Faridabad — I know, it's a drive, but he did the Sharma wedding last year, the one Naina went to. Very good work and he's available because the NRI family that hired him for a sangeet in Gurgaon cancelled yesterday. He's looking for work."
Veer looked at the name. Looked at her. "How did you know about the cancellation?"
"Naina knows everyone." She shrugged. "We should go today. Talk to him in person, see his portfolio, negotiate the contract properly. If we go now we can be back by evening."
He considered the options. The options were: go with Meera to Faridabad, or spend the rest of the morning making calls and probably arriving at the same conclusion anyway. He was practical. He was always practical.
"Give me twenty minutes," he said.
— ✦ —
The drive to Faridabad was approximately forty-five minutes through Delhi traffic, which in practice meant closer to an hour and fifteen minutes while the city did what Delhi always did and treated every road as a negotiation. Veer drove. Meera sat in the passenger seat with her phone and the vendor details and a list she'd apparently already started making of questions to ask.
They had been alone together before — in a technical sense. The same room, the same corridor, the same dinner table. But not like this. Not with no buffer, no family, no function to attend to. Just the car and the traffic and the particular quality of silence that happened when two people who knew each other and didn't quite know each other were in a small space.
The silence lasted about twenty minutes. Not uncomfortably — he was used to silence, he was fine in silence, silence was usually better than whatever came out of it — but then she said, without looking up from her phone: "What's your non-negotiable?"
"What?"
"For the decorator. When we get there. What's the thing you won't compromise on?"
He thought about it. "Timeline. We need everything installed two days before the wedding, not the day before. The day-before installation always creates problems."
She nodded, making a note. "Agreed. And if he can't commit to that?"
"Then we thank him and keep looking."
"Good." She was quiet for a moment, scrolling through something. "I won't compromise on the mandap. Whatever else we adjust, the mandap design has to be what it was in the original brief. Baba chose it."
He glanced at her. She was looking at her phone. He looked back at the road.
"He talked to you about it?" he asked. His father talked about personal things rarely and selectively.
"Last month. He showed me the design he liked and said it reminded him of a wedding he attended when he was young, before—" She paused. "Before things got complicated. I think it matters to him more than he's said."
Veer was quiet. He knew what she meant by 'before things got complicated.' He knew his father's history, the parts that were difficult and the parts that his father kept close to himself. The fact that Baba had shared something connected to that history with Meera — had shown her the design, had explained why it mattered — said something that Veer found he couldn't entirely think about directly.
"The mandap stays," he said.
"The mandap stays," she agreed.
The meeting with Saurabh Mehra took ninety minutes and went well — he was good, his portfolio was solid, his prices were reasonable given the circumstances, and he agreed to the timeline without negotiation, which Veer counted as a success. Meera handled the creative details — the flowers, the colours, the specific arrangements — with a confidence and a specificity that made the decorator respond to her as an equal rather than a client's representative. Veer handled the contract terms and the logistics. They did not discuss strategy in the meeting; they simply moved through it in a way that worked.
Afterward, in the car park, Meera said: "That went well."
"Yes."
"He's going to do a good job."
"Probably."
She looked at him. "You could say 'yes' to that too."
The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. "Probably is more accurate."
"You are — deeply difficult to compliment," she said, and there was no malice in it, just observation — the direct, honest delivery she'd always had that he found, consistently and inconveniently, disarming. "Also genuinely impressive to negotiate with. The clause about the deposit — most people wouldn't have thought to structure it that way."
He looked at her. She looked back. This happened sometimes — moments when the careful distance he maintained became aware of itself, when the specific distance between them felt not like a choice but like a problem.
"Thank you," he said.
She smiled. Not the social smile, the real one — the one that was slower and slightly off-centre. "You're welcome."
The drive back was longer. Traffic had thickened. They'd run out of wedding logistics to discuss about forty minutes in and for a while they sat in the stop-and-go in a silence that was different from the morning's silence — less formal, warmer. Meera put on music at some point without asking, something familiar and low, and he didn't say anything about it.
He was somewhere between the AIIMS roundabout and the turn toward South Delhi when he glanced over and found that she'd fallen asleep.
She'd been talking — something about Naina's schedule, something slightly funny — and then she hadn't been talking, and he'd assumed she was looking at her phone, and then he'd glanced and she was asleep. Completely asleep, her head tipped toward the window, her dupatta slipping off her shoulder.
He drove the rest of the way very carefully.
When they arrived at the haveli, he pulled into the garage and cut the engine and sat there. She was still asleep. The household sounds were distant — the evening activity of a family in full wedding preparation. In here it was quiet.
He sat in the car for ten minutes. He was very particular about not examining why.
Then he said, very quietly: "Meera."
She woke up slowly, in stages. Blinked. Looked at him with the unguarded expression of someone who had just surfaced from sleep before they'd fully organised their face. Then at the garage around them. Then back at him.
"We're back," she said.
"Yes."
"How long have we been back?"
A pause. "Not long."
She pushed herself upright, rearranging her dupatta with the slightly embarrassed efficiency of someone who'd fallen asleep somewhere they hadn't meant to. "Sorry. I don't — I shouldn't have—"
"It's fine."
"I didn't mean to—"
"Meera." His voice came out steadier than he felt. "It's fine."
She looked at him for a moment. Something in her expression shifted — not much, just slightly — and then she nodded and got out of the car, and he sat in the driver's seat for another moment before following her.
The mandap, he had decided, would be exactly as Baba had chosen it.
He didn't examine the rest.