No one knew. No one ever suspected her. Swapna had gotten away with the theft rather easily. The speculations and the conclusions all said it had to be somebody from the inside. Everyone had looked at each other suspiciously. But the accusing finger was never pointed in her direction. However, she was never able to use the crystal bracelet. She didn’t dare retrieve it.
Over the years, the topic was dicussed and dissected with much zeal by everyone in the family and neighborhood. A theft of something that valuable went on to become a legend in the family. For some reason police was not involved and Swapna thanked everyday all the gods known to mankind for that. Despite the excitement around the loss of the crystal bracelet no one’s theory was ever close to what happened in reality. Except for her and the God Almighty, there was no one who knew the truth.

It was her, who opened the secret locker of her mother’s cupboard and took the first thing that came in her hand. She was 21 and crazily in love. When Javed came and told her how he had gotten himself in a fix and needed a lot of money to escape, she didn’t know how to help him. She had offered him her own gold chain, but money from that would not be enough. Javed was angry and scary. He was in trouble and she wanted to help, she had to help, somehow. It was he who asked her to bring her mothers ornaments. He saw her weakness and immediately set about convincing her on how he would only pawn the gold and take it back immediately when he got the money.

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