My Wife Died Years Ago. Every Month I Sent Her Mother ₹25,000. Until I Found Out…
Arjun Mehta stared at his phone screen as if it were an alarm that refused to stop ringing.
₹25,000.
Same day. Same amount. Same account number.
Five years. Sixty transfers. Sixty times pressing “Send” with the same knot in his throat.
The promise had been pulled out of him by Maya in the hospital—her voice rough from chemotherapy, her hand trembling in his.
“If I’m not here… please don’t leave my mother alone. Send her something, even if it’s little. She’s tough, but… she’s my mother.”
Arjun had nodded through tears. A vow made in a room that smelled of antiseptic felt sacred. And he was a man of his word.
But that Thursday afternoon, a bank notification pierced him like a needle.
Not because of the transfer.
Because of what followed.
Electricity bill overdue: ₹18,700. Power cut scheduled Monday.
Arjun swallowed hard and leaned against the kitchen counter, staring at the refrigerator covered with old magnets and school drawings. He worked as an electrical technician in Pune—earned “decently” by local standards—but raising an eight-year-old girl alone was like stretching a wire past its capacity. Eventually, it overheated.
“Papa, can we order pizza today?” Anaya asked, walking in with her backpack and a smile identical to Maya’s.
That smile always disarmed him.
That day, it hurt more.
He crouched down, fixed one of her braids, and forced a smile.
“Let’s make cheese toast with that bread you like. Deal?”
Anaya hesitated, then nodded—resigned in a way no child should be.
“Okay,” she said, washing her hands without asking more.
Arjun stared at his phone. Send still glowed—easy, familiar.
But his finger wouldn’t move.
Then it vibrated.
Leela Sharma: “I need to speak with you about the payment method. Call me today.”
His mother-in-law never needed to talk. For five years she had accepted the money coldly—never asking about Anaya, never about school, never once saying How are you? When Arjun tried, her answers were sharp, as if he were to blame for her daughter’s death.
That night, after Anaya fell asleep, Arjun opened the top shelf of the cupboard and took down the box labeled “Maya’s Things.”
The wedding ring.
Two photographs.
A hospital wristband.
And at the bottom, a crematorium card with a note on the back:
“Collect cremation certificate — L.S.”
He froze.
Because that handwriting—
It wasn’t the same as the handwriting on the paper where Leela had written the bank details years ago.
Not even close.
A chill ran up his spine, the way it does when you sense a short circuit but don’t know where it is.
“No…” Arjun whispered. “That’s not possible.”
But his body already knew what his mind resisted.
Something was wrong.
The next morning at 7:30, someone knocked on the door.
It was Rohan Iyer, his old college friend, holding two coffees—his face unusually serious.
“Don’t panic,” Rohan said, stepping in. “But we need to talk… about the account you send money to.”
Arjun’s stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
Rohan worked in customer operations at a bank—not an investigator, but good with patterns, the way Arjun could smell a burnt wire before seeing it.
Rohan handed him printed sheets.
“I checked what I could without crossing lines. Arjun… that account doesn’t behave like an elderly woman’s account.”
Weekly deposits: ₹5,000, ₹10,000, ₹15,000.
And the worst part—every time Arjun sent ₹25,000, it was transferred out the very next day to another account he didn’t recognize.
“This isn’t for bills or rent,” Rohan said quietly. “It’s transit money.”
Arjun clenched the pages.
“The address?”
Rohan hesitated.
“It’s registered to an apartment complex in Noida. Not a family place. One of those buildings where nobody asks questions.”
“And Leela’s phone number?”
“Registered under another name. Leela Sharma doesn’t exist on record.”
Silence pressed down on them.
Rohan slid a card across the table.
“Hire someone. Valeria Cruz. Private investigator—financial fraud. And… Arjun, that account receives payments from others too. You’re not the only one.”
On Monday, Arjun parked outside the Noida apartments, fear and resolve tangled together.
He wasn’t there to shout.
He needed to see.
The tired caretaker flipped through his ledger.
“Flat 214. Same tenant for three years. Pays on time. Keeps to herself.”
“Name?”
The man didn’t look up.
“Maya Mehta.”
The world went dark for a second.
“Say that again.”
“Maya Mehta,” the caretaker repeated. “Relative?”
Arjun nearly collapsed.
Security footage.
There she was.
Not a ghost. Not a look-alike.
Maya.
Shorter hair. Thinner.
But the way she tilted her head when thinking—that was her.
Alive.
Laughing on the phone. Carrying groceries.
And in one clip, leaving with a man who placed his hand on her back with an intimacy that made Arjun nauseous.
Five years of mourning.
Five years of double shifts.
Five years of telling Anaya her mother was “in the stars.”
And Maya was twenty minutes away.
The rest unfolded like a controlled explosion.
The investigator.
The recordings.
The confrontation at Lodhi Garden.
Leela didn’t come alone.
Neither did Maya.
When Maya saw Arjun, there was no remorse in her eyes.
There was calculation.
The arrests followed.
The truth spilled out.
Fake deaths. Small insurance claims. Monthly “promises” extracted from grieving spouses.
The ashes Arjun had kept for years belonged to a stranger.
The hardest part was Anaya.
“There’s no pretty way to say this,” the child psychologist advised.
“Your mother made bad choices,” Arjun told her gently. “She’s alive. But she’s not here. And that is never because of you.”
Anaya cried. Raged. Asked if her mother loved her. Asked if Arjun would leave too.
He held her like he could weld the world back together.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “Not ever.”
A year later, they built a small remembrance—not for the lie, but for what Anaya had loved.
She placed a note, written in crooked letters:
“My voice matters.”
Arjun smiled through tears.
The ₹25,000 transfer still existed.
But now it went into a savings account titled:
Anaya Mehta — Education Fund
“Pizza tomorrow?” she asked.
“Pizza. Ice cream. And maybe… that puppy.”
Her scream echoed down the street.
And for the first time in years, Arjun felt peace.
Not because the past was fair.
But because it no longer controlled him.