CHAPTER NINE
"Echoes of the Past"
Priya sat by her cluttered desk, the events of the past few days pressing down on her like accumulated weight. The ouija board sat across the room, staring back at her silently, as if it too were waiting for her to figure something out.
She had tried reaching out through it several times after that night with Taron, but each attempt had been met with silence.
The connection had not returned. Whatever window had briefly opened had closed again, and Priya was left with a single incomplete word and the growing certainty that it was more than enough to work with if she was careful.
Her word for the day, scrawled at the top of her notepad idly, was DANGER. She had been writing it over and over in different orientations, turning it, examining it.
Until it finally landed.
Her eyes went wide. She held the notepad up.
DANGER. GARDEN. The same letters, rearranged.
It couldn't be a coincidence. Tao had been spelling garden on the board before Monica's interruption cut the connection.
And now the word danger had arrived through the board in a separate session, as though the message was being delivered in installments, parcelled out through whatever thin channel existed between the living and the dead.
The dark circles around her eyes were evidence of the sleepless nights. Seeing Monica in the garden had confirmed her suspicions in a somewhat shapeless and intuitive way. But she needed hard proof. She could not move on feelings alone, not against someone as composed and careful as Monica.
"Miss Priya, Mister Montgomery is here," the maid said softly from the doorway.
"Let him in," Priya replied without looking up.
The maid's eyes moved briefly over Priya's attire "Miss, would you like a change of clothes? "
She hadn’t showered in over a day and was still wearing her night clothes from the previous day, which was unusual for her. The task at hand was taking so much of her time.
"I didn't ask for your input," Priya snappily replied feeling immediate regret.
The maid withdrew, walking away quickly. Priya sighed, rubbing her forehead before making a mental note to apologize sometime later.
Taron walked into the room a moment later and took in Priya’s room, the clutter her desk, her walls lined with sticky notes, the completely filled out whiteboard in the corner along with the random articles of clothing thrown over just about every surface in the room.
"Rough night?" he asked.
"Hmmm," She replied.
They sat in complete silence for a while, the rays of the sun coming gently through the window and landing on the desk between them.
"I was in the garden two nights ago," Priya said finally. "Trying to understand what Tao meant by saying garden. Whether it was a location, a person, a memory." She paused. "Monica was there."
Taron stood up so abruptly that the chair scraped back across the floor. The sudden movement startled them both.
"Monica, that’s a long way from her house" he said, mentally recounting the events of that night, looking for the intersection.
"Alone. At night. A long way from her own house," Priya said. "Yes."
She listened intently as Taron recounted his own encounter with Monica on that evening, the car ride, the breakup and the way she had talked about Tao with such distaste. When he finished, Priya's expression was grim.
"She used you," Priya stated.
"She used everyone," Priya continued. "The difference is that she used you specifically to reach Tao. To lure her. To create the exact circumstances she needed," Priya stopped, turning directly to him.
"She knew fooling around with you would piss Tao off. "
Taron clenched his fist around the pen he was holding so that it snapped. He looked down at the broken pieces of plastic his hand and said nothing.
"She's not getting away with it," he said, rising to his feet, his mind coming to the conclusion Priya had led it to.
Priya was across the room before he could reach the door, her back pressed against it.
"Taron, no."
"Priya, move."
"No." Her voice was calm and firm. "Listen to me.
As much as I want to watch you walk out of here and shake the truth out of her, it won't work.
Monica is smart. Smarter than she lets on.
If you go to her now, angry and without evidence, she will close every door and we will never get her.
We will have shown our hand for nothing. "
Taron stood very still. His jaw was tight. His eyes were dark.
"Being emotional is how we lose," Priya said softly. "You need to regulate first. Then we can make actionable steps."
A long silence passed.
"Fine," he said. "What do we do?"
Priya stepped away from the door and pulled her phone from the desk, pushing it toward him.
"Monica has feelings for you. Real ones, I think, underneath all of that fakery.
That is her one genuine vulnerability and she cannot help it.
If you stay close to her, if you let her feel like she is being seen and wanted, she will talk eventually.
She cannot help but talk to the people who make her feel seen. "
Taron looked at the phone. He looked at Priya. "You want me to get close to the person who you think killed my sister?"
"I want you to stay close to the one person who may actually know the exact details surrounding your sister’s death," Priya said. "It is not manipulation. It is keeping your enemy close, which is a strategy as old as time."
Another silence. Longer this time.
"What do I actually have to do?" Taron asked.
"Nothing that isn't already somewhat genuine," Priya said. "You cared about her, before all of this. Not the way she wanted, but you did. Let that show. Be present. Be warm. Let her feel like something between you is still possible. She will do the rest herself."
Taron nodded slowly. The understanding behind his eyes was not comfortable.
"Okay," he said. "But what about the police? Won’t we be messing up their investigation?."
"I’ve already thought about that and I’ve come to the same conclusion every time, they just don’t have as much skin in the game as we do,” She replied "Look at how long it’s been since Tao’s body was found, they haven’t pulled me for an interview, I highly doubt they’ve done the same with Monica. It’s up to us to bridge that gap. "
Taron listened to hear reasoning and though he agreed to a certain extent, he was still on the fence.
"I’ll think about it. "
?
After he left, Priya stood alone in the room for a long time. She looked at the notepad. DANGER. GARDEN. She looked at the board in the corner.
"I'm working on it," she said quietly to no one.
She told the driver to get the car ready.
She was going back to the garden. This time she was going to search every corner of it for whatever Tao had meant to tell them before the connection was cut.
She had a no clear image of what she was looking for.
But she hoped to find a thread, one so sufficiently integral that when pulled carefully, would unravel everything.
She was on a hunt.