Frogs. Tiny frogs going about their nocturnal business.
This was definitely not the city.
No, this was the place where a provincial cop had covered up a little girl’s death because the assailant had also been a child—but the child on whom he’d pinned the blame had been the wrong one. Diya was petite even now. She would’ve been tiny back then, certainly not strong enough to bring down a rock on another child’s head with enough force to crack it.
Kamal had to have known that, too, so why had he never looked at Bobby?
…a good family…ruin their name…
Good old-fashioned chauvinism?
My brother, Raja, had never once been held to account for anything, but neither had I—at least when it came to my extended family. Inside the family, of course, it was a whole different story.
Raja had put the blame on me plenty of times when we were children. Though his subterfuges had been about petty matters, I could see how the same sense of entitlement could lead to the belief that the eldest son didn’t need to be held responsible for anything…not even murder.
It was always someone else’s problem.
Bobby, six years older than Diya, would’ve been plenty big enough to do what had been done to Ani. And Shumi, his ever-devoted follower, would’ve never betrayed him. No, she would’ve done exactly what he wanted.
Oh, you choose, Bobby. You always choose the best options.
Sure, my love, we can leave if you want.
Of course, darling!
Those last words, I’d heard over and over again. Bobby loved his wife’s masala chai and had requested she make it at least three times in my vicinity. It had struck me because all three times, they’d been guests in the Prasad home…but Shumi had never been treated like a guest.
The Prasads treated her as they did Diya—like a daughter. She also referred to them as Amma and Pitaji, which to my ear seemed more formal—or maybe just more traditional—than the Mum and Dad that Diya always used, but the affection between the elder Prasads and Shumi was clear. That part had given me hope that one day, I, too, would have a similar relationship with my in-laws.
Bobby, on the other hand, had treated his wife like she was at his beck and call. And Shumi had appeared more than fine with that. She’d jumped up to make the time-consuming chai at a moment’s notice—beginning with hand-grinding her special mix of spices.
The fact that she’d had all the ingredients at hand in the Prasad pantry had told me how often Bobby sat chatting to his parents while Shumi worked in the kitchen. And still, I might not have noticed any of it consciously if I hadn’t had to force down more than one cup of chai—which I hated with a vengeance.
“They’ll take away your Indian card,” Diya had said with a giggle when I confessed to her after the first time Shumi handed me a cup of the chai she’d made with such love. “Are you sure you’re even half-brown?”
“Ha ha.” I’d tickled the bottoms of her feet in vengeance, sent her squealing.
Despite her teasing, however, she’d grabbed my chai the next time it was thrust on me and gulped it down while no one else was watching. “The things I do for love,” she’d whispered afterward.
What, I thought around the pulsating ache in my heart, had Shumi done for love?
Chapter 34
Susanne
Connelly West, attorney-at-law, pushed up his reading glasses even though he already knew the contents of the will verbatim.
His small audience waited in silence.
“Mrs.Susanne Eliza Winthorpe was of sound mind when she updated and verified this last will and testament four months ago. She insisted on recording herself in the process so that no one would dare imply that she’d—and I quote—‘lost her marbles at the end.’ ”
A sniffle of laughter from the red-eyed woman Connelly knew to have been Susanne’s dearest friend. “That sounds like Sue.”
“It does,” Susanne’s nephew said, his face florid and his suit ill fitting.
The much younger man who sat behind the two, next to another woman, said nothing, but his expression was stark. Susanne had planned her own funeral and given Connelly that plan during the same session in which she’d updated her will. “If I give the responsibility to anyone else, Lord knows who will browbeat them into pomp and ceremony. With you, it’s a legal imperative and they won’t dare interfere.”
Connelly had enjoyed Susanne as a client and appreciated her as a woman of strong character.
