Giggling, she pressed a kiss to his chest, the curly hairs there tickling her lips, but she didn’t answer with words. Because while, yes, it was fun having sex with him, they weren’t actually trying as he believed—she’d had her doctor put her on long-term birth control the day Bobby began to talk about having kids.
It wasn’t that Shumi didn’t like kids—it was that she had her priorities in life and knew she couldn’t give a baby the time and attention it deserved.Not now, not when Diya needed her so much. First she had to extricate her vulnerable best friend from the clutches of her stranger of a husband, then she’d have to settle her down in the no-doubt emotional aftermath.
It wouldn’t be hard. She’d been digging into Tavish Advani, had an entire dossier on the computer with all kinds of damning information. She’d thought about showing it to Rajesh and Sarita, but her in-laws didn’t know how to handle Diya. They’d yell at her and demand things and then Diya would get rebellious.
Shumi knew her best.
Diya’s heart was soft and generous and ready to love.
Shumi would have to go delicately, drop a little piece of information here, an ounce of doubt there, until Diya began to worry. Only then would Shumi show her the pages and pages of articles and other data she’d collected about Diya’s new husband.
The Jocelyn Wai situation spoke for itself.
Everyonethought he’d murdered the woman; they just couldn’t prove it.
It wouldn’t take much for Shumi to make Diya understand that Tavish had targeted her because of her fragile mental state, that he got a kick out of hurting and controlling women.
Shumi knew exactly what to say to make Diya question her impulsive decision. After all, she’d made it without Shumi’s counsel. In some part of her, she already knew she’d messed up.
Shumi just had to bring that awareness to the surface of her consciousness.
Once Tavish was gone and Diya back where she belonged…yes, Shumi might have a child. It’d keep Bobby happy, and he’d be a good father, would pull his weight. Diya would be a wonderful aunt, too, the baby bringing them even closer together. Perhaps she’d even suggest Diya move in to help Shumi with the baby. Such a loving reason. One that made sense in every way.
Diya would finally be where she belonged: under Shumi’s loving care.
Life would be perfect.
Chapter 77
They told me later that they found me on the lawn on my front, with a huge knife sticking out of my back and an unconscious Diya beside me. I’d have died if I hadn’t made that frantic call to emergency services.
My luck, it seemed, had finally come in.
“Jesus Christ, I fucked this one up.” Detective Ackerson, who’d come to visit me at the hospital, put her hands on her hips, her suit jacket flared out. “But in my defense, your batshit sister-in-law did a good job of looking as innocent as Mother Teresa. She’s still protesting her innocence even though she got caught on that emergency call as good as confessing to it all.”
“Any chance she’ll escape the charges?” I winced as I tried to make myself more comfortable in my seated position on the bed. “She didn’t actually say she murdered everyone.”
“What she did say is plenty,” Ackerson reassured me. “Her obsession with your wife, though…” She shook her head. “The word ‘stalker’ doesn’t quite capture it. The shrinks are having a field day with her.
“Apparently, she thinks she’s Diya’s protector, the only one who understands her. Extreme maternal urges. I say unhinged, but, hey,I’m just a mum who never murdered my daughter’s friends for daring to take her away from me.”
I thought about Shumi’s own mother, the complete lack of a mother-child bond. Because Shumi’s obsessive attachment to Diya hadn’t appeared out of thin air; it had been born in the cold abandonment of her own childhood. “Her family still supporting her?”
“Only one she’s willing to see is Ajay. Poor kid. He’s shattered.”
I hadn’t seen Ajay since the events in Taupo—I’d been in the hospital. That final knife strike? It had perforated my lung and nicked other things. I’d made it worse when I’d slammed into Shumi. “How is she doing physically?”
“Better than you.” Ackerson folded her arms. “She only made it out because you called 111. Otherwise, she’d have died from smoke inhalation well before the fire got to her. House is only a little damaged—your sister-in-law had to make do with what she could find in terms of accelerants, and it wasn’t much. I think the plan was to make it look like a terrible accident.”
“A second fire?” I asked skeptically. “She really thought people would buy an accident?”
“Yeah, she was decompensating by the end. Shrinks say she wasn’t prepared for the impact of losing the support structure of the senior Prasads as well as her husband. They propped her up in ways she didn’t understand before she destroyed that structure.”
It made sense; Rhiannon and Violet, those crimes had been so well planned that not even a droplet of suspicion had fallen on Shumi. The Lake Tarawera Incident, in contrast, had been a mess that I stilldidn’t understand, while Lake Taupo had been a full-on psychotic fantasy that would have put the spotlight firmly on her even if it had gone exactly as she’d wished.
“What about the drugs?” I asked. “Where did she get those?”
“Plain old sleeping pills. Her doctor prescribed them to her for insomnia, but she must’ve stocked them away at her and Bobby Prasad’s home—her family confirmed that she did go back after she was released, to get some clothes, personal items, that kind of thing.” The cop scowled. “I hate shrinks but I can see why someone would need some head shrinking after this. You and your wife should get therapy.”
