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)
Only to fall into the past.
I dreamed of Susanne and how she’d been at the end, so emaciated beneath her glamorous makeup that she’d been bones and tendons held together by skin gone translucent. She’d done a stellar job of hiding the ravages of the cancer our final night out. No one at the bar to which we’d gone to drink her favorite champagne had blinked an eye at a woman they’d probably taken to be fashionably thin.
But Susanne had been far beyond thin at that point.
“I’m ready to die, Tavish.” A phantom whisper from the past. “And I’m going to do it on my own terms. A raised finger to the universe.”
Husky laughter that morphed into a hacking cough so terrible it jerked me to wakefulness. “Fuck.”
Susanne’s hollow eyes stared at me from inside my memories, the pill bottles scattered all around her as she lay on the cotton throw of her bed dressed once again in that glittering red dress she loved, her makeup flawless.
I’d never seen her that way, her nurse the one who’d discovered her body, but I’d read the coroner’s report.
And I knew Suzi W.
It wouldn’t have been pajamas or underwear for her. Only sophisticated, independent beauty, all the way to the very end.
“Nothing that’ll make me vomit, dear,” she’d told me when talking about her requirements for a painless drug-induced death. “How utterly embarrassing to go out with such a lack of style.”
Shoving off the thin sheet I’d been using as a blanket, my boxer briefs my pajamas, I picked up my phone to look at the time: four a.m.
I should’ve tried to go back to sleep, but I got up and walked out onto the front verandah instead…and realized that I’d never been in darkness such as this. The only light came from the small bedside lamp I’d turned on in my room. A soft glow that was already attracting moths, their fluttery shadows as powder soft as their wings.
The rest of the world was pitch-black. No streetlights, no car lights, nothing but a blackness broken only by the starry pinpricks above. Even the wind chime had gone silent, the surf a distant thunder my brain had finally learned to tune out at some point during my fitful sleep.
Something croaked so close that I jolted.
More croaks came from everywhere all at once.
Then the lawn started to move.
Frogs. Tiny frogs going about their nocturnal business.
This was definitely not the city.
No, this was the place where a provincial cop had covered up a little girl’s death because the assailant had also been a child—but the child on whom he’d pinned the blame had been the wrong one. Diya was petite even now. She would’ve been tiny back then, certainly not strong enough to bring down a rock on another child’s head with enough force to crack it.
Kamal had to have known that, too, so why had he never looked at Bobby?
…a good family…ruin their name…
Good old-fashioned chauvinism?
My brother, Raja, had never once been held to account for anything, but neither had I—at least when it came to my extended family. Inside the family, of course, it was a whole different story.
Raja had put the blame on me plenty of times when we were children. Though his subterfuges had been about petty matters, I could see how the same sense of entitlement could lead to the belief that the eldest son didn’t need to be held responsible for anything…not even murder.
It was always someone else’s problem.
Bobby, six years older than Diya, would’ve been plenty big enough to do what had been done to Ani. And Shumi, his ever-devoted follower, would’ve never betrayed him. No, she would’ve done exactly what he wanted.
Oh, you choose, Bobby. You always choose the best options.
Sure, my love, we can leave if you want.
Of course, darling!
Those last words, I’d heard over and over again. Bobby loved his wife’s masala chai and had requested she make it at least three times in my vicinity. It had struck me because all three times, they’d been guests in the Prasad home…but Shumi had never been treated like a guest.
The Prasads treated her as they did Diya—like a daughter. She also referred to them as Amma and Pitaji, which to my ear seemed more formal—or maybe just more traditional—than the Mum and Dad that Diya always used, but the affection between the elder Prasads and Shumi was clear. That part had given me hope that one day, I, too, would have a similar relationship with my in-laws.
Bobby, on the other hand, had treated his wife like she was at his beck and call. And Shumi had appeared more than fine with that. She’d jumped up to make the time-consuming chai at a moment’s notice—beginning with hand-grinding her special mix of spices.
The fact that she’d had all the ingredients at hand in the Prasad pantry had told me how often Bobby sat chatting to his parents while Shumi worked in the kitchen. And still, I might not have noticed any of it consciously if I hadn’t had to force down more than one cup of chai—which I hated with a vengeance.