Diya hadn’t touched her dinner.

“Meera’s moving to Bangalore,” she said, pushing rice around her plate. “Next month. Forever.”

Bhoomi, who had been trying to make her sister laugh for twenty minutes with increasingly terrible faces, finally gave up and sat down properly.

Dadi set her cup down. “You’ll have another friend.”

“I don’t want another friend. I want Meera.” Diya’s voice cracked on the last word.

“There’s one friend you already have,” Dadi said, “who isn’t going anywhere. Not to Bangalore, not anywhere.”

Diya looked up, half-annoyed. “Who?”

“You’ll find out tomorrow. Go to sleep. Your grandfather’s birthday food has to reach the temple by nine, and there’s a mountain of puris still to fry.”

Diya went to bed unconvinced, turning the riddle over the way she turned over everything — loudly, and out loud.

By morning, the kitchen smelled of hot oil and turmeric. Bhoomi carried stacked steel tins to the car, counting them under her breath, while Diya trailed behind balancing a tower of banana leaves that kept sliding sideways.

At the temple steps, the line of people waiting for food was longer than any of them expected. Bhoomi served first — rice, then dal, then a puri laid flat like a small gold coin — moving fast, keeping the line steady.

Halfway down the line, she looked into the last big pot and went still.

“Dadi. This is the last of it.”

More people were still arriving, drawn by the smell, holding out their leaves and tins.

“Fold your hands,” Dadi said, not looking worried at all. “That’s all we can do now.”

Diya folded hers immediately, screwing her eyes shut so tightly her whole face scrunched.

A horn sounded behind them. Their driver, Ramesh Uncle, jogged up holding a steel box over his head like a trophy.

“You forgot this one! It was under the front seat the whole time!”

Bhoomi opened the box. Puris, still slightly warm, stacked to the lid.

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Bhoomi laughed, the kind of laugh that comes out before you’ve decided to let it, and went straight back to serving.

Diya stood with her hands still folded a moment longer, looking at the box, then at the sky, then at Dadi.

“Was that Him? The friend you meant?”

Dadi only smiled and handed her the next banana leaf.

Diya didn’t get an answer in words. But she served the rest of the line with her hands steadier than they’d been all morning, and that night, when she thought about Meera leaving, the ache was still there — just a little smaller, sitting next to something else she didn’t have a name for yet.