The untold story ch 3

I opened the diary. The first page contained a beautiful, familiar script written in my mother's handwriting. But right at the top, instead of her usual name, there was a completely different one: Chandini.
My breath caught. Chandini? Who was my mother, really? Why would she hide behind a different name?
My eyes darted down to the text below, scanning the neat handwriting until my gaze locked onto an old, half-faded address stamped at the bottom of the page, anchored to a place I had never heard her mention: Kizhakkan Kav.
Before my mind could even process the words, a shadow fell over the room.
A hand shot out from the dark, snatching the leather-bound book right out of my trembling fingers.
"What are you doing here, Anu?!" My mother’s voice was sharp, cracking with a frantic, desperate terror I had never heard from her before. "Go! Go! Why are you going through my things?!"
Before I could say a single word, she shoved me backward out of the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame.
I stood there in the dark hallway, my heart pounding against my ribs. Her panic wasn't just anger. It was raw, unfiltered fear.
For two agonizing hours, absolute silence settled over the house. She didn't speak to me, didn't look at me, treating me like a ghost in our own home. The heavy weight of it crushed my chest until I couldn't take it anymore. Walking up to her door, my voice small and tight, I whispered that I was sorry.
She turned to look at me then, her expression impossibly weary. “It’s okay. It’s fine,” she murmured, her voice hollow. “There are just some things I don't want you to know.”
I thought the storm had passed. I thought we were safe.
Until later that night.

Waking up to a strange, acrid smell drifting through the dark, I slipped out of bed and crept toward the back window. Down in the courtyard shadows, illuminated only by a vicious, flickering orange glow, my mother stood hunched over a burning metal drum.
In her hands, curling and turning black against the greedy flames, was the leather-bound diary.