Another truth Diya hadn’t yet shared with me, our relationship too new, the two of us yet learning each other. “No, but honestly, that’s not unheard-of with some Indian fathers,” I said with a shrug. “And how could he stop her anyway? Yeah, he could turn on the parental guilt, but she runs her own business, has her own income.”
She tapped her pen against the notebook she’d pulled out when talking to Diya. “That business is barely breaking even. Most weeks, she can’t cover even her most basic expenses. Her parents funded herentire life—and used that money like a leash. They threatened to cut her off if she tried to move out.”
A storm of nothingness in my head, a buzz. “Don’t you dare try to pin this on her. Even if they were controlling her before, she has me now. We wereactivelylooking for a rental place of our own, and regardless of what you might think of my prospects, Detective, I can support both of us.”
Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot. “So you don’t know anything about the threat of financial disownment?”
“No—and even if they said that during a fight, they’d never have gone through with it. She was too precious to them.” Never would Rajesh and Sarita have allowed their daughter to stumble through life without a safety net. “Who told you that nonsense?”
“A reliable source.”
“Fuck that. My wife’s best friend is currently in the next unit over, and her family is dead. And Diya’s not the kind to blab family business to just anyone. Whoever told you is shit-stirring.”
I could see her struggling to decide something. Finally, she said, “Do you know Kalindra Renata?”
“Diya’s old school friend?” I snorted. “She wasn’t even at our engagement party. If she’s passing on that so-called threat, it must’ve been from back when Diya was a teenager.”
A deep furrow between her eyebrows. “Ms.Renata says she and Diya talk every week on the phone for at least an hour, and have since Diya returned from the States and reinitiated contact. She wasn’t at the party because Sarita and Rajesh Prasad didn’t like her. She got caught smoking in high school, was suspended.”
“I’m calling bullshit on long heart-to-heart calls,” I said, because protecting Diya was a primal compulsion—but the truth was that I had no way to know for sure. We hadn’t been attached at the hip.She’d gone out for hours at a time to talk to suppliers, check venues, all the things an event planner needed to do.
“Even if there was some threat,” I added, my face hot, “I hope you’re not implying Diya murdered her family because of it. She wasstabbed, and those weren’t self-inflicted wounds.”
“I’m just trying to get my finger on the intricacies of the family.” Ackerson showed no signs of backing down. “It’s difficult. The parents don’t seem to have been close to anyone—friendly, yes, well-liked and respected professionals, but so far, I haven’t managed to unearth a single deep friendship.
“My Indo-Fijian colleagues tell me that’s unusual in their community, where even unrelated people can become family over time—especially so when we’re talking new immigrants. The Prasads seem to have made no attempt to forge connections within that tight-knit group.”
I knew she was right. It was why Los Angeles had a Koreatown and Little Armenia among other neighborhoods. Because people sought the comfort of the familiar, others who could make a new land feel like home. It had been years before I’d realized that the man my paternal grandfather called his brother was no blood relation whatsoever; the two had just met on their first day in America and become fast friends.
“Maybe they were just snobs,” I suggested, though I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was about hiding a single terrible family secret.
Ani.
A secret so damaging that the family had become a closed bunker.
“They invited plenty of doctors and other professionals to the engagement party.”
“But they didn’t talk to any of those professionals,” Ackerson insisted. “Even Dr.Rajesh Prasad’s closest colleague—one of the twoother partners at the firm—could tell me nothing about his so-called friend that wasn’t public knowledge. Said he always felt as if he was being held at arm’s length. The Kumars, too, are in the dark about the family’s internal dynamics.”
“You have to know I’m not the person to ask. I barely knew them.” Sarita talking about her love of beautiful high-performance cars, Rajesh telling me about his lawn, all I had were fleeting snapshots…and the horror of what I’d learned in a tropical nation of aquamarine seas and palm trees. “Could be their real friends are back in Fiji, and they stay in touch via email and during the times they visit.”
No one would’ve done what Kamal had done and covered up the murder of a child just because the Prasads were a respected family. There’d been more there, a bond of friendship of some kind.
“If you think of anything else, call me,” Ackerson said.
“Sure.” Despite my agreement, I had no intention of dropping my defenses and becoming friendly with the detective; in all likelihood, she was probably playing me. Baxter had tried that, too, right back at the start.
Look, just talk to me, Tavish. I’m not here to stitch you up—I just want to know what happened to Virna.
However, once I was back beside my wife, the rhythm of her breathing deep and even in sleep, I thought about what she’d told me of her family’s controlling tactics—and what I’d learned on my own.
Kalindra cut off because she was a bad influence. Risha acceptable only because she’d lived under their control while in this country and was otherwise on the other side of the world. Shumi permitted because she had, as her own mother had so callously put it, followed the entire family around “like a little pet.”
Not a woman who would’ve gone against Rajesh and Sarita.
The other friends, the ones I’d met, had all been shallow acquaintances.
Iwasn’t a shallow acquaintance, wasn’t a person they could control. And Diya…Diya trusted me, had slowly been giving me more and more pieces of herself.
