“No, but I will.” She looked up to give me a soft smile. “I’m not going anywhere, Tavi. I just…I just have bad moments.”
“Do you want me to hold your drugs for you and just give you what you need for now? Until you feel steadier?”
I half expected her to be furious, but she nodded. “Yes, I think that’s a smart idea. I don’t want to do anything, but my emotions are all over the place. It’s not only the grief…I just don’t understand. Bhaiya loved me. He used to call me his tagalong when he was in high school and I wanted to hang out with him and his friends at the lake—but he never told me to get lost. He’s the one who taught us how to swim, back in Fiji.”
Then she laughed. “You know the irony of it? He was a great teacher, but a terrible swimmer himself. Got freaked going out into water where he couldn’t touch the ground with his feet.”
He drowned my Rhi, my sweet girl. She was such a strong swimmer that he had to have held her under or done something else to her. She used to swim out to that far buoy and back without problem.
I frowned. “I thought your brother loved the ocean.”
“He did, but mostly the beach. He liked to pretend he was cool with the water when his friends were around, but he stuck to the shallows most of the time or talked people into going out on the four-wheelers instead of into the water.
“That’s why I alwaysknewhe didn’t hurt Rhiannon, no matter what anyone said. They found her way out by the buoy, tangled up in the rope. Bobby bhaiya could’ve never made it there.”
Chapter 72
Rhiannon
“You want to come with me? I’m swimming out to the buoy,” Rhiannon said.
No one else was around, everyone having either headed off for a walk or to go take a quick dip and then sunbathe. And while Rhiannon didn’t mind swimming alone, it was more fun with company.
“Yeah, okay.”
Rhiannon smiled and grabbed her towel.
Chapter 73
Cups clinking in the kitchen.
Diya looked up, whispered, “Drink a bit of Shumi’s chai, okay?”
I indicated the potted plant by the television. “It’s okay—I already scoped out my next victim.”
Her lips twitched, and I was glad to see a flicker of her luminous light. “You have no taste,” she muttered, then wiped at her cheeks with her fingers to get rid of the evidence of our emotional conversation.
Trying to be strong for the sister-in-law who had lost everything overnight. All of Shumi’s love, all her hopes, everything she was, had been tied to Bobby and his family. Without them…
“Here we go!” Shumi walked out with three cups and a plate of cookies on a wooden tray. “I got the chocolate raisin cookies you like, Dee. You should eat something.”
Taking the tray from her, I put it on the coffee table. “This looks really nice, thanks, Shumi.”
She smiled that too-bright smile, picked up a cup, and gave it to me to hand to Diya. The next one, she put in my hands. “Extra sugar, just as you like,” she said.
“You’re the best.” Bringing it to my lips, I took a deep breath. The rich scent of cardamom flooded my nose—I liked the spice, just not in tea. “Too hot to drink right away, but it smells fantastic.”
“My special recipe.” She took her own cup and curled up in the armchair kitty-corner from us. “I had to make do with grocery store items rather than the blend that I make at home with fresh spices, but I did a taste test in the kitchen, and it’s good.”
Putting my chai on the side table, while Diya cradled hers in her hands, I picked up one of the cookies. “Diya?”
But she shook her head. “Not yet. The chai is what I need.” She took deep inhales of the aroma. “It’s the smell of home.”
Shumi accepted a cookie when I lifted the plate in her direction.
Then the three of us just sat there staring out at the lake while I ate two cookies to stave off the inevitable need to force down the chai, and Diya sipped at hers.
Shumi took a bigger sip of hers just then. “It’s not too hot now,” she said to me, and since she was staring straight at me, I smiled and picked up my cup, then, girding my loins, took a sip.
