Chapter 19
“I only know bits.” Ajay thrust both hands into the front pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunching up. “Shumi mentioned her to me once, said how sad it was that baby Ani had died at only three, or I would’ve had an in-law close to my age. Ani was two years younger than Diya.”
“She died as a child?” It made more sense now that Diya hadn’t mentioned her to me; to her, it would’ve been a lifetime ago.
Except that she’d said Ani’s name as she lay bloody and wounded in my arms.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
“I don’t know how she died.” Ajay pushed up the bridge of his glasses.
“Shumi only ever mentioned her in passing, and I was a teenager at the time and not interested in finding out more. But I remember that Shumi said how she couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Rajesh uncle and Sarita auntie to lose a child, even if she was adopted. ”
“Do you know why they adopted her or from where?”
“It was local—back when we all lived in Fiji.”
I frowned at the mention of the group of Pacific islands that—as I’d learned after meeting Diya—had a significant ethnically Indian population due to the vagaries of history. “All of you? For some reason, I thought Shumi was born here.”
“No, and neither was I. We were neighbors with the Prasads out in the boonies. That’s where Bobby and Shumi first met.” A slight smile. “God, she’s always been crazy for him.”
The smile faded. “But I wasn’t even two when Ani died, so I don’t know any other details. I’m sorry.” He removed his hands from his pockets, then didn’t seem to know what to do with them. “Why are you interested in Ani anyway?”
I didn’t see any point in lying. “When I found Diya, she mentioned her.”
“Oh.” Tears appeared in his eyes; Ajay hadn’t inherited either his mother’s intense ability to lock away her emotions or his father’s grim resolve.
“I guess it’d be natural to think about her sister when she was so hurt,” he said, “especially if she knew her parents were gone, too. And probably Bobby, too. God, can you imagine what Diya and Shumi must’ve seen?
” His voice cracked…and I noticed for the first time that he always used Shumi’s name, rather than the word for elder sister.
Diya had never used Bobby’s name except when first introducing him, always referred to him using the word for brother—“bhaiya.” It was just how she’d been brought up. But Ajay had clearly not been taught to refer to his sister with similar deference.
Probably nothing, just a difference between two families, but it struck me as odd, especially as both had come from the same small region. Some things were just expected when you grew up in the same culture in the same area.
“Ajay, beta!”
Ajay looked up at the sound of his mother’s voice. “I better go. They’re not doing as well as they’re pretending.” He held my gaze, his expression pleading. “I know they’re coming off as stiff and—”
“It’s fine.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I get it. I can be like that myself sometimes. I still haven’t cried even once—I’m scared that if I do, I’ll be useless.”
All the passion leaching out of him, Ajay turned to walk back to the motel rooms. His shoulders were hunched in, his hands thrust into his pockets once again, the height of him truncated by the curve of his spine.
As I watched, he stood in the open doorway to the two-bedroom suite and took a deep breath, as if bracing himself, before he walked in. Poor kid. Only twenty-one if I had my mental math correct, and having to handle his parents’ grief and worry on top of his own.
Getting into my vehicle on that thought, I drove back to the hospital, but there was no change in Diya’s status, her face serene in her wounded sleep.
As I sat beside her, my hand on hers, I thought about what she’d actually said.
It hadn’t just been Ani’s name, hadn’t just been a moment of her life flashing before her eyes.
She’d been trying to tell me something.
Ani…they said…about Ani…not…
I couldn’t make any sense of that, but it was all I had. And I knew I had to follow that fragile thread—even more so after I was called into the police station for a formal interview by Detective Ackerson.
I’d forgotten to make that call to my father, forgotten to get a lawyer. No matter. I could handle this first interview on my own—all I had to do was keep my cool and remember what Dad had told me prior to my first ever conversations with the cops in LA.
“Never flinch,” Anand had advised after Jocelyn’s fall, his brown eyes as hard as granite. “Cops are like wolves on the hunt. A single drop of blood and they start to smell victory.”
I’d almost asked him if he’d learned that lesson from his wife.
In the realm of film and television, my mother was an actress touted as the best of her generation, her reputation one of warmth and kindness.
Behind the closed doors of my parents’ strikingly modern Malibu home? The mask came well and truly off.
Audrey not only scented blood, she drew it with vicious efficiency.
Of the three men who lived or had lived in that home, it was my brother, Raja, alone who’d experienced Audrey as she was to the outside world. Ironically enough, in the end, my childhood had proved a gift—no cop could come close to the cold manipulation that was Audrey’s stock-in-trade.
“So.” Detective Ackerson’s tone was polite, even kind, but her eyes drilled into me in the confines of the interview room. “You’re doing contract work for a finance magazine.”
“Yes.”
“Were your in-laws aware of the downgrade in your employment status?”
I hated this windowless box of a room marked up by God knows what, my mind pushing to shove me back into the hellish seven-hour interrogation by Detective Gina Garcia that my father had told me I needed to white knuckle because if the case went to court, we’d have evidence of my cooperation as Jocelyn’s grief-stricken lover.
Give it up, Tavish. We both know you two had a volatile relationship—what went wrong that night? Did she do something that drove you to push her off the balcony? Provocation can be looked at as a mitigating factor, but you have to be honest.
Gina Garcia was the kind of tough-talking cop who didn’t let up. She just kept on pushing, her questions unrelenting. Drops of water wearing away stone.
But I’d walked out of her interrogation room and I’d walk out of this one.
“Sarita and Rajesh understood that I had to establish myself in my career here and that it could take time,” I said without acrimony. “They did the same when they moved to New Zealand.”
It had been a slender strip of common ground between us, Dr. Rajesh Prasad going as far as to slap me on the shoulder and say, “It’s hard to change countries and start all over again—it makes me feel good that our Diya’s found a husband who loves her enough to make the effort.”
It had been the night before the party, the two of us out on the back patio.
The sun had set, the water motionless under the dark orange light that was already fading to charcoal at the edges.
“I do, sir,” I’d said as two black swans took to the water, twin ripples in their wake.
“Love Diya. And she wants to live here, so that’s what we’ll do. ”
He didn’t need to know that Los Angeles had become hostile ground to me after Virna’s accident. The world of wealth and fame in which I existed had seemed far more angered by her death than by Jocelyn’s. For Joss, they’d wanted lurid stories and endless gossip. For Virna, they’d demanded justice.
Hypocrites.
“Care to tell me why you left your previous position?” Ackerson asked in a calm tone, her expression neutral, nothing accusatory about it.
Talk to me, it said, I’m no threat at all. Too bad for her that I’d played this game against far more experienced foes and won.
I just had to hold my nerve.