A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  Anahera narrowed her eyes. “Don’t try that tone of voice on me.” It came out cold, flat. “I was married to a man who grew up in the British ­public-­school system.” It had taken her time to get her head around ­that—­that what the English called public schools were actually exclusive private schools. “If you want to play the ­unemotional-­tone game, I can do it as well as you.” She demonstrated with her last sentence, saw his eyes wrinkle slightly at the corners in response.

  He took his time answering. “Kyle Baker is of the opinion that you ran back to Golden Cove with your tail between your legs because you couldn’t hack life in the outside world.”

  That, Anahera hadn’t been expecting. Eyebrows drawing together, she did what he’d done and took a drink before answering. “He was very respectful at the meeting this afternoon,” she said. “Even made a special effort to welcome me back to Golden Cove.” Anahera thought back, recalling his apparent discomfort with the situation, the way he’d shrugged and moved his feet.

  “Kyle is a little psychopath.” This time the flatness of the words was hard, the edge of a blade. “It took me this long to see it and I’ve had experience with the personality type. He does a very good job of covering it up with charm, and with his perfect, shining golden boy act.”

  Putting down her wine, Anahera leaned forward with her arms braced on the table her mother had found on the side of the road and polished back up by hand. “You sound sure.”

  Chewing and swallowing a bite of bread he’d just torn off with his teeth, Will said, “He’s decided I’m not worth ­cultivating—­I think it gives him a perverse thrill to expose himself to me. He knows no one will believe me if I speak against him.”

  Anahera had known Vincent her whole life, which meant she’d known Kyle peripherally since his birth. The rare times she’d ever thought about him, she’d just dismissed him as a spoiled brat, but she did remember Vincent telling her that Kyle was the perfect ­son—­Vincent’s parents had often held up their younger-­by-­ten-­years second child as an example to Vincent. But there were other things.

  “Back when I was thirteen, ­fourteen—­so Kyle would’ve been only three or four at the ­time—­Vincent told me and Keira that his brother threw a huge tantrum if he didn’t also get lots of gifts on Vincent’s birthday.” At the time, they’d rolled their eyes and told Vincent his brother was just being a baby.

  The only reason Anahera even remembered the conversation was because Keira had suddenly said, “I had a brother. He died when he was three, before I was born. His name was Keir.” Her black hair pushed back by the sea winds, she’d stared out at the water, this girl who even then had struck Anahera as a blank slate just floating through life. “Keir and Keira. My parents think I have his soul, that I came back from the dead.”

  Her words had made Anahera’s skin pebble with goose bumps.

  Will’s voice fractured the unsettling memory of the other woman’s confession. “Kyle’s gotten better at hiding his need to be the best, to be fawned over and adored and treated as better than anyone else, but it’s still there under the surface. Be extremely careful around ­him—­and if you ever end up alone with him, change that as fast as possible.”

  Slate gray eyes locking with her own. “Anyone who lies as well as Kyle and with such a total lack of remorse could be smiling at you one second and shoving a butcher knife into your spine the next. And he’d never lose the smile.”

  29

  A chill creeping over her despite the fire in the hearth, Anahera pushed aside her ­half-­eaten bowl of pasta. “Do you think he hurt Miriama?”

  Will tapped the fingers of one hand on the wood of the table. “According to Kyle, he has no reason to hurt Miriama. He thinks she’ll end up messing up her own life and humiliating herself by crawling back to Golden Cove.”

  It was odd. Though Anahera had only met Will recently and had, technically, known Kyle far longer, she believed Will. There was something about the cop that said he didn’t play games, tell lies.

  Of course, her instincts weren’t exactly the best.

  She’d trusted Edward all those years, especially after they’d suffered a devastating loss and he’d been nothing but loving. She’d believed him when he’d said they’d make it through, that it didn’t matter as long as they had each other.

  Such a good liar, her dead husband.

  Anahera had never suspected he was having an affair, had always accepted his words as the truth when he said he had to stay late at the office or go out of town for work.

  No, she couldn’t trust her instincts; she needed a second opinion on Will. On Kyle.

  She’d talk to Josie, get her friend’s take on things. Though, if Kyle did wear a mask, perhaps it had taken an outsider to see beneath it. Anahera would watch him more closely, see if she could spot any cracks in his personality or actions.

  “You don’t have to believe me about Kyle,” Will said, proving he was a damn good cop. “Just be careful. And try not to cross him if you ­can—­he’s the kind of man who’ll hold on to that insult, or perceived insult, and get his revenge when no one is looking.”

  A cold feather of sensation along Anahera’s spine. “Noted.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  When she just looked at him, he said, “Why did you come back? Your fans are begging for a new album and your record company has said publicly that they’ll back you whenever you’re ready.”

  “You did your homework.”

  He didn’t back off at her terse response. “You were offered residencies at prestigious schools of music, asked to consider another tour, and yet you came back. Why, when you’d made it out? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Anahera laughed, the sound as bitter as the tears she hadn’t shed for Edward. “I think we’re both old enough to know that sometimes, what we think we want isn’t what we want at all.” She’d run from Golden Cove full of dreams and fueled by anger. She’d come back to it a disillusioned woman who knew that some ghosts couldn’t be outrun and some nightmares followed you forever.

  “I did my homework, too,” she said, turning the tables on this man who had a way of making her face things she didn’t want to face. “You’re pretty famous for a cop.”

  “I never wanted to be famous.” Curt words, a flat tone.

  Anahera knew she shouldn’t push it, that some darkness a man was permitted to have, permitted to keep secret, but he’d started this and she was in no mood to cut him any slack. “Most cops don’t have a big shiny medal pinned to their chest by the leader of the country. Most cops don’t face off against a violent drug addict holding five children as hostages and manage to take down the addict without loss of life. You’re a goddamn national hero. So what’re you doing in Golden Cove?”

  A storm in his eyes. “Don’t believe everything you hear in the media.”

  Silence.

  “There’s another thing,” she said into the heavy weight of it. “Miriama’s currently the center of attention of the entire town. How would that fit in with Kyle’s pathology, if he is a psychopath?”

  Will leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table in an echo of her position. He nodded slowly. “That’s a good point. Kyle really doesn’t like being anything but the center of attention. If he did this, he miscalculated how many people care about ­her—­maybe in his mind, she’d just be forgotten, shrugged off.”

  Shadows grim across his face. “The only way Kyle can take back the spotlight is if he’s the one to find Miriama. If he did something to her, even if it started out as a cruel prank, it’s gone too far. He can’t find her alive now and still get away with it.”

  “Jesus.” Anahera shoved a hand through her hair and, instead of reaching for the wine, got up and poured herself a mug of coffee. Bringing over the teakettle, she topped up Will’s mug as well, then put the teakettle on the table between them and retook her seat. “Are we seriously considering the possibility that Miriama is dead?”

  “No
. Until I see a body, she’s alive. Hurt, perhaps badly, but not dead.” He leaned back in his seat. “And Kyle’s not the only person I have on my radar.”

  When he didn’t say anything further, Anahera raised both eyebrows. “You’re not going to go all ‘this is confidential police business’ on me now, are you?”

  “You’re a stranger I barely know,” he replied in the mild tone she’d warned him against using on her.

  This time, she thought it was deliberate, meant to irritate.

  Leaning back in her own chair, she took a sip of coffee before responding in a tone exactly as mild. “Shall I tell you what I heard this afternoon?” Then, as he listened, she went through her list of points. Of how most people had talked about continuing the search, but how she had the feeling everyone thought Miriama was gone. “Kyle said something about her maybe having been taken by the sea. He posed it as a question, kind of hesitant, unsure.”

  “That’s what he said to me, ­too—­only he wasn’t uncertain or hesitant.” Will placed his mug on the table. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

  The chill yet in her blood, Anahera blew out a quiet breath. “ ‘Interesting’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “Did anyone mention the three hikers who disappeared fifteen years ago?”

  Anahera frowned. “­Yes—­Tom brought it up, thought we should let you know.” She had to push past her continued dislike of sharing information about her friends to say that. “Nikau figured you must already have the details.” She held Will’s eyes. “Kyle would’ve been way too young back then.”

  “I’m not sure if Kyle has ever gotten his hands really dirty, though I think he’s fully capable of it,” was the quietly controlled response. “But we can’t allow him to twist the focus onto ­himself—­he probably said half the things he said to me today for exactly that reason. To manipulate the spotlight.”

  “I also met Vincent’s wife.” Anahera replayed those moments inside her mind. “Doesn’t reflect well on me, but I didn’t expect to see her there. I’d just filed her in the ‘rich ladies who do lunch and attend fancy charity events’ category.”

  “Why did you have that impression?” Will asked softly, the mildness in his voice replaced by humming interest. “Have you ever met her before?”

  Anahera shook her head. “I couldn’t make it to their ­wedding—­that was when the big volcano erupted and grounded flights.” Even though the wedding hadn’t been held in the Cove, she’d been ambivalent about coming back, not yet far enough from the past to return to it.

  “I remember. You didn’t see Jemima Baker at Josie’s wedding?”

  Of course he’d assume she’d have returned for her best friend’s wedding. “No, my wedding bad luck continued with Josie. I had an accident, ended up on bed rest for a while.” The lie was so easy to tell now. At first, Anahera hadn’t been able to bear talking about how she’d bled out her dreams on the unforgiving cold of an Italian marble floor, then later, she hadn’t been able to bear the pity. So she’d just kept on with the lie and Edward had never disputed her choice.

  He’d just gone and gotten what he wanted from another woman.

  Four years.

  That’s what the wailing woman had said.

  She and Edward had been together for four years.

  “So if you’d never met Jemima, why did you have that impression of her?” Will prompted again. “Think carefully.”

  Frowning, Anahera tried to track back through the years. “Before today, the only things I knew about Jemima came from others.”

  “Josie?”

  “She said once that Jemima didn’t seem interested in attending town events. Nothing malicious, just a passing observation during a phone call.” Anahera had used to curl up in a window seat during Josie’s calls, her view of the street below, but her heart in a misty, green land far from London.

  Josie’s voice had been a song of home. And a memory of pain.

  “She and Tom had just bought their own place and the renovations pretty much consumed her ­life—­we’d talk about paint, about wallpaper, about rugs, even about the best tapware for the kitchen.” Anahera’s lips curved. “A family of her own and Tom, that’s all Josie’s ever wanted.”

  “Is that what shaped your perception of Jemima?”

  “No. Like I said, Josie was cheerfully obsessed with Tom and their new ­home—­they’d only been married a couple of months then.” Less than a year later, Josie’s obsession had switched to her first pregnancy.

  It had been raining the day she woke Anahera up with the news, her joy incandescent. Anahera had been alone, Edward on one of his business ­trips—­even with all his success as a playwright, he’d continued to put in time at the family firm. The devoted son. Upright and steadfast. That day, Anahera had lain in her bed watching the rain create trails down the windows, and she’d listened to her friend bubble on about the new life growing in her womb.

  Afterward, she’d gone to the bathroom and thrown up until her throat was raw.

  “Josie and Tom got married less than a year after Vincent and Jemima.” One a large society wedding, the other a cozy local affair, yet Vincent and Josie had shared many guests. Josie had been ecstatic when Vincent chartered a plane to fly his Golden Cove friends up to Auckland for his fancy do.

  “I think if Josie hadn’t been so involved in planning her own wedding when Jemima first came to Golden Cove, she’d probably have made an effort to draw her out, take the initiative in starting a friendship.” That was how Anahera and Josie had first become friends. Josie had literally run over to Anahera while Anahera was in the supermarket with her mother, and taken her hand.

  They’d been three years old at the time.

  “When Josie mentioned Jemima being standoffish,” Anahera continued, “I figured maybe Jemima didn’t feel comfortable coming into town because everyone was friends with Vincent and they all knew one another. I felt that way in London for a while.”

  Marrying Edward had meant integrating into a ­tight-­knit ­public-­school community. Most had been nice ­people—­though their definition of comfort was Anahera’s definition of total ­luxury—­but she’d never forgotten they were Edward’s friends first, hers a distant second.

  Will continued to watch her. “When did that sympathy change? When did you start to think of her as a, what, ‘lady of the manor’ type?”

  Taking another sip of her coffee, Anahera let the deep, rich flavor seep into her tongue as she wound back time. “I think,” she said slowly, “it was the pictures Vincent posted. There never seemed to be ­any… normal ones. You know, just hanging out in jeans and tees, throwing a ball around with the kids, or having a sunburned nose at the beach. I’ve only ever seen photos of her in formal gowns or evening dresses.”

  “Always?” Will pushed. “Not even in hiking gear? She’s a keen tramper.”

  Chewing on the inside of her lip, Anahera tried to think of a single nonglamorous image of Jemima, and couldn’t.

  Surely that couldn’t be right.

  She put down her coffee and went into the bedroom, to return with her old laptop. Opening it up, she used her phone to create a hot spot, then logged into her social media account and clicked her way to Vincent’s.

  30

  There it was, the evidence showcased in glittering dresses and sparkling diamonds. All of them with Jemima perfectly posed and made up. The ideal woman to hang on a man’s arm and act as his hostess, or to stand supportively behind her politician husband, but one with no real personal drive outside of her defined role in life.

  An intelligent doll.

  “I can’t believe I never consciously noticed this before.” In her defense, she’d had no real reason to ever think about Jemima. If the other woman did cross her mind, it had been as an adjunct of Vincent.

  Having come to stand at her side, one hand on the back of her chair, Will reached out to tap an image. “Vincent puts up normal photos of himself. Could be he’s just one of those men who like
s to show off a beautiful wife.”

  The heat of Will’s body brushed against her. For a furious instant, she wanted to tell him to get back, wanted to push him away. She had no need for men in her life. Her aloneness had been brutally earned, was craved.

  Gritting her teeth, she wrenched the betraying impulse under control and forced her attention to the photos: Vincent playing with his kids, coming home from a bike ride through the countryside, and that infamous one of him caked in mud after a charity soccer match that had taken place on a ­rain-­soaked field.

  He looked real, human.

  “You didn’t connect with Jemima online?” Will asked.

  “I really only joined to keep up with close friends.” Pausing, she thought about it. “Though, I am friends with Keira, but she sent me the request and I just accepted it.” The girl who’d once told her about her dead brother had been Nikau’s wife at the time. “I don’t know if Jemima even has a profile. Vincent hasn’t tagged her in any of these photos.”

  She did a search to make sure. “No profile. At least nothing that comes up.”

  Will released the back of her chair, rose to his full height. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange? She’s a woman with a certain public image to maintain. I’d think she’d want control over that.”

  “Let’s try something else.” Opening up a tab on her browser, Anahera put Jemima Baker’s name into the search engine.

  The results came up quickly.

  At the very top was a site that showcased the charities Jemima supported. Each charity had a separate page with details about its work and instructions on how to donate. The images of Jemima were airbrushed and touched up, her makeup flawless. No photos of her laughing or interacting with the staff at the charities, not even a stereotypical shot of her doling out soup to the homeless.

  “Odd she’s not milking her charity work more for political gain,” Anahera murmured, “but she might just be a private person who prefers the world have a particular impression of her.” Anahera herself was the queen of masks and illusions.