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)
The Hindu priest—or pandit, as Shumi had called him—who officiated over the ceremony gave a speech about parenthood and the love parents had for a child, and it was only then that Diya stirred. She, like Shumi, was yet under medical care at the hospital. The doctors had authorized their attendance at the funeral service only because the counselor who was working with the women said it would help with closure.
“He’s right,” my wife said dully, the dark shadows under her eyes all but purple. “The pandit.” A painful inhale, a slow exhale. “My parents did love Bobby that much. I think they’d forgive him his day of insanity.”
I thought of a child locked in a small room under the stairs, of a boy crying because his exam results weren’t a hundred percent. It seemed to me that the Prasads had expected perfection from their only son—and what Bobby had done was about as far from that ideal as it was possible to get.
But if believing in their forgiveness gave my wife peace, then I wasn’t going to argue. Because in the months and years that lay ahead, she’d have to come to terms with her own complex emotions toward her brother as well. “Yes,” I said quietly. “From what I saw of how he was with your parents, I don’t think they could do anything but forgive him.”
She leaned her body into me from the wheelchair we’d parked near the end of the front row of seats, with me acting as the bookend. Shumi sat next to Diya, her brother Ajay next to her, alongside their parents.
Diya’s hand was interlocked with Shumi’s.
The rest of the padded chairs in the large room were filled by friends and strangers both. No more family, Diya the sole survivor of both her maternal and paternal lines. The funeral home’s overflow room—the service fed into it via a television screen—was also full, and there were people standing in the parking lot listening to the service through the hastily arranged loudspeaker system.
All but a rare few were here to pay their respects to Sarita and Rajesh.
I’d spotted Richard and another one of Bobby’s friends in the crowd, but no one spoke for him…at least not till the very end, when a red-faced Richard got up and walked to the podium that had been opened only to a strictly limited short list of people. Richard had a quick conversation with the funeral director before the solemn man waved him to the microphone.
“I know no one wants to hear good things about Bobby,” he began, to a stir of whispers from the audience, “but you know what? Even if he lost his mind at the end, he was a good friend to me, and to many of you, and that should be remembered. His parents would want that, too.”
His voice hitched. “They were always so proud of him.” The tears rolling down his square-jawed face stopped the whispers, as others began to cry, too. “So, yeah, I think they would’ve forgiven him—after giving him one hell of a bollocking for what he’d done.”
A hint of laughter in the crowd at the blunt speaking.
“I don’t know what went wrong in Bobby’s brain that day,” Richard said. “But I’ll remember him as the friend who never let me down, the man who quietly donated five percent of his profits to the city’s food banks, the son and brother who would do anything for his family, and the business owner who took a pay cut so he could keep on several long-serving employees.
“I love you, mate, and what happened that morning, it wasn’t the you we all knew. I’m going to remember the you from before.”
Chapter 68
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Nov 18
Time: 23:47
Got it! Clear evidence of malfeasance, with transfers from Virna’s accounts at times she simply couldn’t have authorized them. In one instance, she was under general anesthetic in the hospital for a minor procedure.
Added to that, the bastard’s own accounts show a constant pattern of dives into the red, only to be topped up with a transfer from Virna’s accounts. She might even have gifted him some of that money. But not all of it. Some of it, he took.
We’re not ready to charge him yet, but his days of freedom are numbered.
Chapter 69
Violet Long turned up a week before Diya was set to be released from the hospital. She still had the same blunt-cut bangs as in the photo I’d seen, though her bob was now asymmetrical and her cheekbones could cut glass. Diya’s fellow event planner wore an ankle-length dress in an antique cream with small needlework flowers of a dusty pink.
It hung on her gaunt frame.
“Violet!” Diya, mobile now though still healing inside, got up to give her a hug. “You came.”
Violet hugged her back with careful arms. “I was so ashamed that I couldn’t even attend your family’s funeral that I really ramped things up with my counselor.” A hot flush on her cheeks.