"Who said I am lying? I'm not. I was sleeping and just woke up," Mary lied, hugging Priya tighter.

She wanted to take it all in, to feel everything, as if it were the real Priya, not the one she had been hallucinating about.

She had been struggling to sleep, and when she did force herself, all she kept having were delusions of Priya being there. She could hear her voice, and it was suffocating.

"If your meeting is done, maybe we should go inside, sit, and talk," Priyank, who had kept his mouth shut until now, finally decided to speak.

Feeling agitated because they hadn't even acknowledged his presence,...