The tall and strong young man absorbed her weight without impact.
Connelly frowned…and wondered if Harold wasn’t the only one who’d done the math on Grace’s new financial status. Not only was Grace now rich by most standards, but she was also nearing forty, was single, and had nothing of Sue’s confidence.
All it would take were a few kind words and a smile from handsome Tavish Advani, and she’d fall like ripe fruit into his hands.
Chapter 35
My hand clenched on the verandah railing, the night balmy around me and the air heavy with a scent I couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t the ocean, was thicker, sweeter than the salt-laced whispers I caught when the wind turned.
But Bobby sahib, oh, he could talk and talk—and that Shumi, she thought he was better than a movie star. The girl would’ve parroted anything Bobby told her to say.
How could Shumi have lived with herself all this time knowing that she’d put the blame on Diya’s innocent head? Even more so when Diya loved her so much, saw her as her best friend? How could Shumi haveprotectedBobby after he’d done a thing so vicious that it was beyond comprehension?
I wanted to shake the other woman, make her speak the truth. Because I knew that there was no point in telling any of this to Ackerson. The original police report was a fabrication, and no one had to tell me that Kamal wouldn’t say anything on the record. Neither would his wife. Because Kamal had committed a crime by filing afalse report, and no matter what his wife might say to my face, what she’d say to the authorities was a whole different scenario.
Ani’s body was long gone.
I wondered now what Diya remembered of the murder. She’d only been five. My memories from that age were fuzzy at best, overwritten by things other people had told me they remembered about me.
The sole crystalline memory I had was of standing outside the living room, watching through the crack in the door as my mother surprised Raja with a mass of toys she’d bought him on her latest shopping spree.
Toy after toy, gift after gift, for her “best boy.”
It had been my birthday.
That was why I remembered. Because later that same day, I’d been excited to get my own haul of gifts from her. Instead, I’d been given a bakery cake that the adult me knew must’ve been ordered by the nanny who looked after me most of the time, and three generic “little boy” toys that the same nanny had likely ordered online.
Funny, what the mind chose to remember.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
My throat grew tight, choked up. Because my wifedidremember enough about what had happened to Ani to be distressed about it. Yet, how many times over the years had she been told that she’d done that awful thing?
Had the lie overwritten her childish memories of the truth?
Did she believe herself a murderer?
The horror of it twisting her up until maybe it had become the reason for the medication she’d tried to hide from me. What she’d been told was the truth tangling up what she knew to be the truth, until she could no longer separate them, her memories a field of broken shards that didn’t fit together no matter how hard she tried.
My poor sweet Diya. “I’ll fix it,” I vowed as that thick, sweet smell laid itself on my tongue.
Mangoes.
Ani’s tree.
My fingers tightened to bone whiteness. “I’ll make sure the blame falls on the person who deserves it. Not on you and not on me.”
This time, there was no Kamal to hush things up, and no Sarita and Rajesh Prasad to allow the lie to exist even when they, too, had to have known itwasa lie.
Diya had beenfive years old.
—
I was already up and showered by the time first light crept through the curtains. I’d tucked the religious statuette Ravi had suggested I take in a clean facecloth from the pile Kushma had left me by the bed, then put that safely in the middle of my duffel, where it’d be protected on all sides by my crumpled clothing.
But as I went to leave the house, I hesitated and returned to the prayer alcove to pick up the photo of the smiling couple with the little girl. It was a posed shot probably done in a mall or in a photographer’s home studio, complete with a fake background that looked like Venetian canals. The woman had dimples and shiny black waist-length hair that she’d allowed to fall over one shoulder, while the man had black curls and a thick mustache.
Their little girl was laughing in the picture, her dimples an echo of her mother’s.
