“No, Tavish. You’re setting me free.” Taking his hand, she pressed it to a part of her that should’ve been soft and smooth. “Feel that? It’s a tumor.” So small on the scans, it was now a hard rock she could feel through her skin. “This thing is eating me up until I won’t be Susanne much longer.”
His breath hitched, his throat moving. “You’ll always be you.”
Stubborn, loving man. “No, Tavish. Because I won’t be able to maintain my dignity.” That, to her, was worth more than life.
After kissing him one last time, she pushed at his shoulders. “You know what you have to do. Get that bag, get on a plane, and make sure you’re onplenty of security cameras on the other side.” She wouldn’t end her life by making his a hell. “I’ll wait until you call me to say you’ve landed safely. Grace will be gone within the hour, too.”
His hug was a jagged thing that hurt her because of how strongly he held her, but she didn’t protest. Not for this final hug.
“Thank you for teaching me love.” A rough inhale as he stepped back.
Oh, how she wished she could stay, and watch him grow ever deeper into his skin, fall in love with a woman who could walk with him through life, get married, have babies. “You’ll make a wonderful husband and father, Tavish. Never ever doubt that. You just need to find the right woman.”
A shaky nod.
“Safe journey,” she said, drinking him in with her eyes.
He picked up his bag, looked back at her. “You, too, Suzi W.”
Chapter 79
One week after the doctors released me, Diya and I sat on the white sands of the beach behind the Prasad family home in Fiji. Turquoise waters lapped at the shore, their foaming tops a pure white.
A coconut had rolled in to shore on one of those waves, and now it moved with each new reach of the water, attempting to stay on sandy ground rather than being pulled back in. Shells glittered on either side of us, but there was only white sand below, this beach the kind that featured in magazine shots.
Above our heads waved the fronds of twin coconut palms, the air balmy.
It was paradise.
And Diya’s hand was as cold as ice in mine. “Hey.” I rubbed at it with my other hand. “What’s wrong?”
Leaning her head against my upper arm, the pale brown slopes of her shoulders exposed by the strappy top of her sundress, she said, “I was thinking about Shumi.”
We hadn’t seen Diya’s sister-in-law since that night.
The wheels were still turning there, but it was starting to look like while she might be mentally ill, she wasn’t insane in the legal sense. Ackerson was sure she’d known right from wrong when she’d done what she had, and was confident the medical investigators would confirm her feelings.
If so, Shumi would be going on trial for the murders of her husband and in-laws, and for attempted murder when it came to me and Diya. The charge relating to Diya had to do with her original stabbing, not the Taupo incident—because there, Shumi had intended to save her.
The prosecutors were keeping the arson and assault charges in their back pocket for now.
“My brother never hit her.” Diya lifted the sand with her other hand before allowing it to whisper through her fingers in a glitter of silica. “She’ll never convince me of that. If anything, he pampered her too much—would drive her anywhere she wanted, would wait in the parking lot while she went shopping though it bored him out of his skull, would call her back each time she texted him with some small question.”
All things I’d taken to be controlling behavior could, I realized, be seen from a whole different lens—that of a husband so devoted that he’d allowed his wife to run roughshod over him.
“She always agreed with whatever he wanted.”
“You know what I realized after Taupo?” Diya’s smile was tight. “She always got her way in the end. The house they lived in? Bobby thought it was too big and old-fashioned.Hisfirst choice was a sleek modern town house. His car? He showed me all the booklets he’d picked up on a Jeep Wrangler, was excited about owning one. The fact they were even in Rotorua? Bobby always said he wanted to live in Auckland.”
She dropped her hand to the sand. “You know what hurtsthemost? Bobby wanted a big family, was open about the fact that he wanted to start young so they’d be done young. But Shumi had difficulty getting pregnant, so he shelved his dreams—only it turns out she was on birth control all along. Mrs.Kumar told me by accident when we talked on the phone—she was thanking God that Shumi always kept up the birth control, because she couldn’t imagine what this situation would do to a child.”
I held her close, just let her speak.
“Ajay wants to believe her, so much. He told me about a set of bruises she allowed him to believe came from Bobby, but I remember those particular ones because I was there when she ran into the edge of the counter in the kitchen of the Lake Tarawera house.”
Her voice shook. “It went black-and-blue, and I joked with her that her parents were going to think her in-laws were beating her. She laughed.”
“She didn’t want her family to like Bobby, remain close to him.” Harder to maintain certain lies if all parties were in communication.
