Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Everyone else seems to have a high opinion of him.”
“Ask people his own age if you want the truth. Not his friends. The others.” He put down his arm, rubbing absently at the scar with the fingers of his other hand. “He knew how to play nice for adults, too, be the perfect eldest son. No one ever believed us when we complained about him.”
“Your mother mentioned that his father was abusive.”
“Never yelled or anything that I saw, but back then, it wouldn’t have mattered.” Yash shrugged. “Doctor, you know. Big important man. Never spotted any bruises on Bobby, either, but one time I saw him crying because he’d scored ninety-seven percent instead of a hundred percent on a test.
“Not angry tears. Scared tears. A kid can tell, yaar.” He rolled the r in that last word the same way I’d heard my father’s friends use it when speaking to him; the direct translation was “friend,” but used this way…maybe “bro”?
“He punched me in the mouth when he realized I’d seen him,” Yash added. “Told me he’d kill me if I told anyone else.”
“I never saw any hint of that in their adult relationship.” If anything, Dr. Rajesh Prasad had struck me as an indulgent father…but I’d only ever watched how he related to Diya—she was my wife, my priority.
“Wouldn’t know about that.” The other man sat back up. “I hope Diya and Shumi make it. Tell Shumi that Yash Dayal says hi. Always thought it a shame she fell for that bastard.”
My instincts caught more than the obvious bitterness. “Your mother seems to think she was always sweet on him.”
“Rich doctor’s son, yaar, all the girls wanted him.” A hard wave before he carried on with his tractor, and I got into my vehicle.
Despite his apparent need for rest after his pills, Kamal was back in his rocker by then, his wife beside him. Neither waved as I pulled out.
* * *
—
I finally met Kushma when she brought me lunch. A slender woman with silky hair worn in a bun whose English was broken at best, she laughed without malice at my halting attempts at Hindi but seemed pleased that I wanted to put her at ease.
“Bobby?” she said in her preferred tongue when I asked about whether she’d known him growing up. “I was too old, already married by the time he was in high school.” Despite the words, her gaze was thoughtful.
“I did know him a little before,” she said a few moments later. “After I finished school and couldn’t find work, I used to come help clean the house with my amma. The doctors were so busy with the clinic and Mr. and Mrs. Prasad-ji, the elder ones, they were already looking after the children. So the doctors hired Amma to clean.”
I invited her to sit at the table, but she waved it off to remain on her feet. “Bobby was a nice boy,” she said, the tray on which she’d brought me sautéed okra, dhal, steaming jasmine rice, and homemade mango pickles tucked under her arm. “Funny, too—he used to do the dialogues of Dr. Sarita’s favorite actor. That’s how everyone started calling him Bobby.”
I absorbed that unexpected little piece of information with dull resignation for something that couldn’t help me.
“He even helped us mop sometimes,” Kushma added. “But mostly he was at school when we came, so I didn’t talk to him much. He always had a lot of school papers in his room—he studied hard.”
She had nothing much more to tell me when it came to Bobby, and when I asked about Ani and Diya, all she said was, “Oh, such sweet babies, they were. It was so sad what happened to Ani.”
“Would anyone else know more about the family?” I dared ask.
Kushma, already heading down the stairs, shook her head. “Most of the doctors’ friends went overseas already, and other people they knew from around here moved away to work in the cities.”
Despite the fact that Kushma hadn’t told me anything useful, she had given me one idea: papers.
I spent the rest of the day methodically searching the house for hidden journals, notes, paperwork of any kind that might shed light on the events that had taken place close to two decades earlier.
All I found was a box hidden in the closet of the upstairs master bedroom that held a small stack of photos, a bracelet of tiny black-and-white beads small enough to fit a child’s fragile wrist, and a birth certificate…for Annika Sonakshi Prasad.
Ani.
* * *
—
If I’d imagined I’d sleep easy again a second night, I was proven very wrong.
The house creaked and groaned, the wind chime shivered its sorrowful music, while the ocean’s pounding surf sounded like it was right on top of me. I tossed and turned, snatching bits of sleep here and there.