Each word was acid on my skin.
The only good news that day was that Shumi’s parents would be landing in Auckland early that afternoon. The Kumar clan had intended to rent a car to drive the three hours to Rotorua rather than waiting for the next flight to the city, but I’d talked them out of it.
“It’s a long drive and you’re not in the best frame of mind.” I’d driven like a maniac after being notified of Jocelyn’s death, and almost plowed straight into a concrete freeway barrier. “The last thing Shumi needs is for you to get in an accident. The closest flight to your arrival into Auckland will get you here not that much later than if you drove.”
It had been Shumi’s younger brother who’d convinced her parents I was right. “We need to be there for Shumi,” Ajay had said. “None of us are thinking straight. We shouldn’t be driving.”
Now I took Diya’s cold hand in mine, held it. “I’m here, baby,” I said in a quiet tone that wouldn’t reach Hazel. “I’ll find out what happened.” I pressed my lips to her skin, wishing I could give her the life that pumped inside my body so she’d laugh again, dance again.
My wife loved to dance, had pulled me into a dance on the sandy edge of Lake Tarawera just the other night, the only music a faint hint of a guitar being strummed somewhere along the lakefront.
Her eyes had sparkled as she looked up at me. “I never thought I’d meet my soulmate; never thought I’d get the chance to know someone like I know you. I love you, Tavi.”
No one knew me.
Susanne had come the closest, but I’d been different then. Younger, more vulnerable.
I hadn’t tried to hide myself from Diya…but I hadn’t wanted her to know about the murky corners, the places where the darkness gathered and churned. Hadn’t wanted to scare her, lose her.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I whispered to her, emotion a thick lump in my throat. “So you really will know me inside out. Just wakeup.Please.” Rising, I pressed a careful kiss to the undamaged slope of her cheek, then opened up the curtains so all the nurses had an unobstructed view of their patient.
My eye snagged on the vista through the large windows behind her bed as I finished—trees bright with spring green leaves, even a glimpse of water.
Lake Rotorua.
I struggled with the disconnect—how could my young, beautiful, and talented wife lie so badly wounded in a place where sunlight slanted through the windows, while a lake lapped peacefully beyond?
“Tavish?” Hazel’s soft voice. “Are you all right?”
Turning away from the surreal view, I said, “I have to leave her for a little while. Please take care of her.”
“She’ll never be out of our sight, I promise. If I have to get up, one of my colleagues will keep their eyes on her.”
It hurt to walk away from Diya, but after that talk with Detective Ackerson, I knew I couldn’t rely on her to unearth the truth. She’d zeroed in on me. The new husband. The outsider. The man whose last two girlfriends had died in accidents that had emblazoned his name across the headlines.
Before I left, however, I looked in on Shumi. My sister-in-law seemed, to my nonmedical eye, to be in a worse state than Diya, even more tubes going out from her body, even more bandages—including one on her face.
I didn’t try to find out if that had been a stab injury, didn’t want to know.
Having already asked the ICU staff to contact me should there be a significant change in either Diya’s or Shumi’s status and received their agreement, I went outside the hospital and called a car using a rideshare app.
If I was going to figure this out, I had to start at the beginning.
“Damn,” the twentysomething driver said as he pulled up outside the gates of the Prasad property a half hour later. “Was this your place?” His faded blue eyes were huge as he looked over the steering wheel. “Sorry to hear what happened.”
Not saying anything, I got out.
The driver lingered as I crossed the street to stand in front of the crime scene tape that was a visual fence across the property. I could see a police cruiser a bit further down the drive. A couple of cops were sitting in it, but they stayed put when I made no move to step past the tape.
From here, I couldn’t glimpse anything of the house.
“Tavish, isn’t it?” It was the neighbor who’d run toward the fire with me. “I’m Tim—I know it must be difficult remembering so many new people.” He followed my gaze. “We can see the property from our place. Did you want to…”
“Yes.” I didn’t know why; it wouldn’t make any difference to my knowledge of the situation, but I had to see.
Tim didn’t talk as he led me to his house and up to the back deck using the external steps. That deck would’ve previously looked down on part of the roof of the Prasads’ single-level residence, the rest of the property obscured by trees. Now Tim’s family had an expansive view across what had been Rajesh and Sarita’s home.
Ash and charred beams, blackened grass and dead trees, that was all that remained. The lake lapped placidly to the left, a silent witness to the horror that had taken place here twenty-four hours ago.
