Doubts.

"I am in love mom."

Dalias bowed her head as she said these words. The night was cold and there was an annoying silence in the way her mother kept quiet after hearing this. They walked past the closed shops and dark alleys. 

"I am sorry mom." Dalias knew how her mother had been cheated by love. How love had taken away her smile. How love had crumpled her and left her broken and empty. Yet her daughter had dared to love. 

Malini was a strong woman. She had faced many raging storms to see the sunlight again. Her greatest strength had been her daughter. But now the daughter had fallen into the pit where in every thing seemed perfect initially, but which snatched away the very reason for your living later. Malini was a strong woman. But she doubted whether Dalias was strong enough. 

Malini had had a failed marriage and to make matters worse, she had profoundly loved her man, and still does. "Why do people cheat?" Malini would often wonder to herself. He had loved her once. He had so beautifully convinced her to marry him. Not just her, even her family adored his flamboyant nature and his air of perfection. But four years into their marriage, all the affection somehow wore off, like a statue kept in a desert, which got buried in the sand with time. Dalias was a year and a half old when Malini saw those roses in his drunken hands with the note that smoldered their relationship with the spiteful beauty of carving alphabets saying, "Can't wait for tomorrow to happen. I love your everything. Be mine. Signed-Evy"

No, he hadn't apologized. He said she bored him. That he needed more than just three meals and some sweet talk to please himself. He said he loved Evy. "But I love you." A tearful Malini had countered. "But I don't."

He filed a divorce with her soon after. He had said he didn't want to bear the responsibility of the kid. So Malini left the city, because her entire life had been brutally uprooted and thrown in the fire of loneliness to burn. 

So when Dalias, now aged 16, spoke of young love, Malini didn't know if she was strong enough to handle the menacing pain of a heartbreak. 

Dalias knew she had made a mistake by telling her mother about the new emotion that she was experiencing. Bereft of love herself, Malini had taken every pain to give Dalias everything she ever desired. But doubts about love remained. 

'Then be in love, sweetheart.' 

Malini smiled, as they walked on together.