It started, as many things do in families like theirs, with a photograph left conspicuously on a kitchen counter. Arjun's mother. Priya's aunt. A quiet arrangement that neither of them expected to feel so right.

Their first meeting was at a rooftop garden during Diwali — the city below them a carpet of light, the air thick with jasmine and smoke. Priya was laughing at something when Arjun arrived. He remembers thinking: that laugh should not be a stranger's.

By the time the last lantern burned out, they had talked for three hours. Neither of them wanted to stop. They haven't, since.