I stared at him.
He laughed. “My cousin-brother’s uncle Ravi is the caretaker there. It’s easy to find. Just follow this way.”
Taking out a piece of paper, he sketched a map on it that had such landmarks as “the coconut tree that split in two in the big cyclone” and “Ali’s old house before he built his new one in town—it has grass growing through the windows” and “the river bridge with blue arches.”
“How long from here?” I asked. “I was told about three hours from the airport.”
He made a face while looking in the direction of the rectangle of light that was the open front door. “With the rain before…the tracks might be muddy. So, yes, I would say two more hours.”
Two more hours until I might have some semblance of an answeras to why Diya had gasped out her dead sibling’s name in what might well have been her last conscious moments on this earth.
Chapter 26
Susanne
Susanne turned in bed to watch her young lover on the carpeted floor beside it.
He was doing push-ups while clad in just his boxers, giving her a lovely view of his rather delicious musculature. He’d turned twenty a week earlier, and last night had been their private celebration—she wasn’t gauche enough to flaunt him to her social circle even if he was so pretty.
The signet ring she’d gifted him sat on the bedside table, beside the new phone she’d bought him only a couple of months after she’d first asked him to join her for coffee. It had been a year now, and she knew full well that she was what the younger generation called a sugar mama. She had no argument with the arrangement—he was, after all, definitely keeping up his end of the bargain.
“Come back to bed, darling.” Her body sighed with need. You’d think at her age, it’d be quieting down, but it turned out that she’d never gotten to full revs with her dear husband.
This was all an entirely new experience.
A sharp grin from the twenty-year-old who was currently holding a plank without effort. “I have to maintain my strength to keep up with you.”
Chuckling—and pleased by the charming comment—she let him finishhis workout while she sat up in bed and considered whether to buy him that vehicle he had his eye on. Perhaps in six months’ time. She was having fun, and so was he. No need to overdose when they could stretch it out.
She’d be seventy in two more years. God. Perhaps she might lose the itch by then, and he’d surely have moved on. Could be she’d give the vehicle to him as a parting gift, a shiny trophy for him to drive around in—she’d enjoy imagining him so handsome and young and suited to the fast car.
“How are your studies going?” That was another thing she liked about Tavish—he was very, very clever. Studying business and finance, and not just studying, butinterested. And that made him interesting. He could talk investments with her over breakfast, and pump her to orgasm at night.
Truly, he’d be her perfect man if only he wasn’t almost five decades her junior.
“Aced the latest exams.” He bounced to his feet. “I’m a bit bored, to be honest, but I need to have these credits to get the kind of job I want.”
She also loved that he had all these plans, young Tavish Advani; he might enjoy having a woman spoil him, but he was planning to become a man who could spoil himself. Some younger woman would one day find herself with a very successful and driven husband. “With an eye to setting up your own investment firm down the road?”
Another one of those wide grins before he prowled over the bedspread toward her, strong and gorgeous and aroused. “Of course, Susanne with ans. You know I play to win.”
Smiling, she let him lower her to her back, and was proud that she’d kept herself toned and fit enough that he had no trouble with the physical aspect of things. If she’d been a more emotional type of woman, she might have made the mistake of falling in love with him. But she wasn’t a stupid girl.
Still…it was nice to pretend even as she faced her own mortality in the mirror every day. And especially this week, when her left leg was giving her enough pain to make life irritating.
His hand on there, massaging gently even as he put his mouth to her breast.
A little more, Susanne thought as her back arched, just a little more of him and of life, of youth.
Chapter 27
Any dust that had coated the road before the rain was gone, everything fresh and shiny. A small Fijian boy wearing blue shorts and a green T-shirt waved at me as I passed a village. I saw him race across the road in my rearview mirror, to retrieve a ball that he’d kicked to the other side.
No other cars even in the far distance, the road empty but for the two of us.
I turned the corner…and there was the tree split in the middle. As instructed, I took that exit off the main road. And kept on following the shopkeeper’s instructions as the landscape became ever more green and rural.
I hit the gravel road fifteen minutes into it, but the car hugged it with ease, no hint of a wobble. I was suddenly glad it wasn’t as shiny and new as advertised. It meant any fresh dents caused by stones flying up wouldn’t be noticeable even on close inspection.
