I knelt down beside her, took her hand.
Pale, clammy, limp.
“—another survivor!”
The words made no sense, not when the house hadblown up.
By the time I turned to look over my shoulder, one of the paramedics had picked up his gear and was racing over to join the fireman who was walking over with someone in his arms. Not from the house. Fromaroundthe house.
Long dark hair, a sleeveless navy blue jumpsuit, both dripping wet.
Shumi.
Diya’s sister-in-law and best friend had done what I’d hoped Diyamight have—jumped into the lake as the only safe option. But from the limpness of her in the fireman’s arms, I couldn’t tell if she was alive or not.
I should’ve gone to her, checked, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave Diya. “How bad is it?” I asked the paramedic as he worked on my wife. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”
The middle-aged man gave it to me straight. “Look, son, it’s serious. More than ten stab wounds from what I’ve seen so far. I can’t tell how deep they are, but they’re all in dangerous places. We have to get her to the hospital.”
A shadow fell over me.
“Hey, I got you your phone and wallet from the car.” It was the teenager…Joseph, that was it. Tall and lanky with hair that fell into his eyes and the beginnings of a peach fuzz beard. “I figured you might need it to, like, call people and grab stuff? Your passport was with your wallet, so I grabbed that, too.”
“Thanks, Joseph.” I stuffed the phone into my back jeans pocket, the slim leather wallet into a front one. The passport I shoved into my other back pocket.
Another ambulance screamed into the street just then, and there was no real choice—I went into the ambulance with Diya, while Shumi was placed in the other one. A second fire truck turned into the drive of the Prasad home even as the ambulance’s siren pierced the air, the peaceful lakeside now a chaos of people and vehicles.
Shutting it all out, I held my wife’s hand and brushed back her hair. “Don’t you dare let your light go out. Don’t youdare. Not now, not when we’ve come through the worst of it.”
To say that the Prasads hadn’t been pleased with our rapid-fire courtship and Vegas elopement was an understatement of magnitudes. Their treasured daughter, who’d only just turned twenty-four, had left for seven days in Los Angeles for a friend’s bachelorettecelebrations—and returned six weeks later with a husband who was a total unknown to them.
Her family’s initial disapproval had dimmed Diya’s light, made it flicker in that dangerous way that kept me awake at night, but she’d refused to burn out under the pressure, refused to agree with their belief that she’d made a horrible mistake.
“It’ll be okay, Tavish,” she’d told me when I’d sat at the edge of our bed with my head in my hands, terrified their words would get to her, thrusting a wedge between us. “My family just needs time.” A kiss on my bare shoulder, her body pressed up to my back as she knelt behind me. “But they love me, and once they see how happy you make me, they’ll be your biggest fans.”
We hadn’t quite gotten to that stage, but her parents and brother had thawed enough to throw us a huge party, and preparations were well under way for the “big, fat, totally extra Indian wedding” that would truly cement our relationship as husband and wife in their eyes. The description of the wedding was Diya’s, my wife excited about the celebration to come.
“Come on, baby,” I said to her today. “We’re getting married a second time, remember? No Elvis impersonator with purple hair and diamante eyebrows this time.” My voice hitched, my rib cage crushing my heart. “Then you’re going to take me on a tour of your favorite spots in New Zealand for our honeymoon. You promised.”
“We’ll drive to Milford Sound,” she’d said one dreamy night as we sat side by side at the end of their jetty while the stars sparkled overhead, the Milky Way so much brighter here than in the glitteringmetropolis in which I’d been born—and where I’d lived until I’d landed in New Zealand approximately a month and a week ago.
There was a poster in her teenage bedroom inside the main house that featured the lake and the sky, with the Milky Way caught in breathtaking detail by a camera lens. But even with my human vision, I’d seen an enormity of stars that night, the sky studded with diamonds.
“In the rain,” she’d added. “Milford Sound is best in the rain—waterfalls coming down all of the mountains that soar over the road as you drive in, the landscape so misty and mysterious that it’s straight out of a fantasy movie.” She’d leaned her head on my shoulder, warm and happy and so lovely that I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve her.
We both know you have blood on your hands.
I shoved away the memory of Detective Callum Baxter’s accusing words from eight months—and a lifetime—ago. Diya needed me sane and whole to fight for her; I couldn’t spiral into the black abyss that had been my life for far too long.
“We’re about to pull in,” the younger paramedic said.
I made sure not to get in the way as they unloaded Diya and rushed her into Emergency. The staff halted me when I tried to follow her through the doors inside, told me I had to wait because she was going straight into surgery. “We’ll alert you once she’s on a ward.”
Numb with fear, I was still standing in the public area when I saw the second ambulance turn in. I ran out in time to see Shumi being unloaded. Realizing that she’d probably be headed in the samedirection as Diya, I waited by the second ambulance until the crew returned.
“Can you tell me anything about Shumi?” I asked, and when they looked blank, added, “The patient you just took in. My sister-in-law.”
“Oh right.” The woman of the pair, a brunette of maybe forty, grimaced. “I’m really sorry about your family. Do you know who else was there?”
