Priya reached out and ran her hand through his hair, the same way she did when he was five and cried over the red bicycle.

The whir of the old ceiling fan was the only sound in Priya’s bedroom, a desperate lullaby against the humid Chennai night. Outside, the streetlights buzzed, but inside, the only glow came from her son, Arjun’s, laptop screen. He was nineteen, home from engineering college for the summer, and his fingers flew across the keyboard with a frantic energy she hadn’t seen since he studied for his board exams.

“You cried because it wasn’t the same,” Priya said. “The paint chipped. The bell didn’t ring. You knew it was a lie.”