A shrug. “It wasn’t hard. I was the senior policeman, and it was believable. No morgue here, so we had to drive her to Labasa and the doctor there knew me since I was a young officer, accepted what I said. Terrible accident.”
“Weren’t you afraid he’d do it again?” It took all my strength to keep my voice even. “Kill someone else?”
“He?” Taking out his cigarette, Kamal stared at me. “It wasn’t the boy. Little Diya got jealous of her cousin-sister being gifted a new doll and hit her. She was so small herself, had no idea what she was doing.” He sighed. “She was standing there with the doll in her hands when I got there, her dress all splattered with blood. Yellow hair and blue eyes, I remember that doll had yellow hair and blue eyes.”
Chapter 32
Susanne
Nothing tasted right anymore, not even the ginger drinks Tavish made her with such care. Susanne sipped this one nonetheless, unwilling to hurt his feelings.
“You’re in pain.” He tucked another pillow behind her. “How bad is it?”
Sighing, she put the drink on the bedside table. “It feels as if my spine is crumbling inside me.” She hadn’t been to the oncologist again, already knew what he was going to tell her—the cancer had spread, likely to her bones. “Be a sweetheart and open up the curtains a bit more.”
Tavish moved to do as she’d requested, Singapore a spread of glittering buildings and water on the other side. “You should see Dr.Chua,” he said when he turned back to face her. “This is moving too fast. He said you’d have longer.”
Oh, but he was having a hard time handling her mortality. “It’s too late now, Tavish,” she said gently, and patted the spot beside her on the bed. “I can feel the disease eating at me in greedy bites.”
He came, picked up the drink. “Have a little more,” he coaxed. “You’relosing so much weight—I tried to bulk this up with protein powder and honey.”
Susanne took another sip to please him but couldn’t stomach the taste. Nudging it away, she said, “I’d have had maybe a twenty-five percent chance of beating this if I’d started aggressive treatment straightaway, but I chose another path, and unfortunately, I gambled wrong.”
It wasn’t that she hadn’t had some good time after the diagnosis, just that the time had been too short, the end of her life a sharp and jagged descent rather than a gradual slope. Now the only thing left to discuss was how she would spend her final days.
In pain, slowly losing control of God only knew what function.
Or…“Tavish, my sweet boy, I need you to do something for me.”
Chapter 33
A rattle from inside Kamal’s house that felt like a drum in my head, the world too loud, too bright, the words the older man had spoken bile in my throat.
It wasn’t the boy.
Yellow hair and blue eyes…
…her dress all splattered with blood.
A thin and wrinkled woman in a loose floral dress followed the noise onto the porch. “You need to take your medicine.” She shoved a bottle into Kamal’s hand with those words spoken in Hindi, her tongue as sharp as the edge of a knife.
Grunting, Kamal said, “Fine,I’llget the water.”
My mind was still roaring when the woman spoke after her husband was gone. “Only English?” The question was hard and flat.
I somehow managed to comprehend what she wanted to know, and found the right words to string together in my grandparents’ mother tongue. “No. I…understand Hindi. Speaking…not…so…” I just shook my head at the end.
That seemed to be enough for her, however, because she began to speak in rapid-fire Hindi it took all my concentration to follow. “I never thought it was Diya beti—or that it was about a doll. She usedto play for hours with Ani, shared all her toys. Diya loved Ani.” She sniffed. “That brother of hers, now, he was a bully. No surprise after the way his own father bullied him.”
I stared at her, my focus snapping back into brilliant color. “You…” Halting, I fought to find the right words. “You…think…Bobby…hurt Ani?”
“Not my place to say. I’m not the police officer.” She picked up the ashtray and threw the butts into a little trash can under the table.
“Please,” I said.
Rubbing her back, she rose. “I’m just saying Diya beti didn’t talk too well even at five. They wouldn’t take her at the school even when they took other children her age, said she had to start talking properly first. But Bobby sahib, oh, he could talk and talk—and that Shumi, she thought he was better than a movie star.”
A roll of her eyes. “The girl would’ve parroted anything Bobby told her to say. And I know my husband likes to talk about the blood on Diya’s dress, but the poor child could’ve just been standing there when it happened. Or the boy could’ve put it on her on purpose. He was vicious even back then, and Diya didn’t talk at all for days and days after.”
