“Scatter my ashes in the mountains of home,” she’d said to me once, while we’d been sitting outside a holiday cottage with a view of the soaring snow-kissed Southern Alps. As the sky blazed with the rage of sunset, she’d laid her head on my shoulder and her hand on my thigh, her voice slurring from the alcohol as she said, “When I’m dead, take me back to India. If I was ever happy, it was in my glorious Hindustan.”
Maybe I would. Or maybe I’d leave her in a small box hidden in the attic. Forgotten. All she’d done erased from existence.
I turned away from the bones just as the crane groaned.
It had settled into position, the hanging hook now so deep inside the trees that it had disappeared from sight. Neither of us spoke as we waited for it to reemerge. It took time. The sling being attached securely, then tested. The various straps being double-checked. Even though I knew my mother’s remains were no longer in the Jaguar, my brain visualized a macabre scene in which the sling broke, bones scattering all over the forest floor.
“You didn’t find the vehicle today, did you?” The forensic process would never be this quick for a body discovered buried in the bush.
“No,” Neri admitted. “We were alerted to it yesterday. Getting to the site took a while as it’s untouched native bush, not part of any trail. Then we had to trace the vehicle. There was no point in doing the notification until we were fairly certain the remains had to be your mother’s.”
All that must’ve been done quietly, by walking into the bush via another route. No cars and hearses and cranes to tip off the public.
“Did you find a smaller ring? It would’ve been on her left pinky finger. Plain silver stamped with the image of a butterfly.”
A slight pursing of her lips, but she seemed to rethink the automatic refusal, and went over to talk to one of the forensic techs. He pulled out what looked like a tablet, and they bent their heads over it.
When she returned, she shook her head. “The car windows weren’t fully closed.”
Animal activity.
It was something I’d researched for my moribund second novel.
A small ring could’ve been easily lost … especially if a scavenger had decided to feed on my mother’s long, slender fingers.
My stomach roiled.
“The SOCOs, did, however, recover a third ring.”
Taking out my phone, I scrolled through the pictures I kept in a special folder. I’d transferred them from phone to phone over the years. Photos of her. For memory. For identification. Because I heard a scream that night. Because my father is a bastard who was banging his secretary back then.
“One of these?” I zoomed in on an image of her hand holding a flute of champagne.
Diamonds glittered under the light of that long-ago charity gala, my mother’s skintight dress a shock of red sequins that covered her with perfect wifely sweetness. She’d saved the plunging vee for the back, the styled tumble of her soft black curls sliding cross the smooth canvas of her skin as she twirled in my room prior to heading out.
“Your father’s going to lose his shit,” she’d said with a wicked grin before leaning down to kiss me where I sat sprawled in bed, my headphones around my neck. “Eat your dinner, Ari. I made it just for you—and I don’t want to see burger wrappers in the trash when I get back. Suna?”
Her scent had hung thick in the air of my room, ripe in my lungs, until I’d gotten up to push open the sliding doors to the balcony. Sometimes, I hadn’t been able to breathe around my mother, her love a snake that crushed me. But I’d eaten the dinner she’d made, and I’d grinned when she’d asked someone to take this photograph, then sent it to me.
See? she’d written.
The black of my father’s tuxedo was just visible in the background of the shot, and even though the photographer had been focused on my mother, they’d nonetheless caught the edge of his thunderous expression.
Neri looked carefully at the image before nodding, the movement wafting over a scent that wasn’t all forest and death. I’d smelled that scent in the hair of a girl I’d dated at university. Coconut oil infused with frangipani.
“The square sapphire,” Neri said.
“Birthday gift.” I had no idea how many rings she was wearing that rainy night ten years ago; my mother had been a woman who liked her fingers to sparkle. But the unfashionable pinky ring … She’d never taken that off. Not since the day I gave it to her when I was fourteen.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mum. I love you.
Her face had crumpled at the card and the sight of the ring. I’d mowed lawns all summer to buy it. She’d put on that ring—such a cheap thing in comparison to the other rocks on her fingers—and never taken it off. Not even when she’d mumbled drunkenly about how she wished she could live her life all over again, start anew.
Without a child—and definitely without a husband.
She’d never remembered those conversations in the morning, never recalled that she’d wished me out of existence. I remembered each and every poisonous word, each and every verbal blow. But I also remembered the handmade meals and the butterfly ring she’d worn proudly to galas and political dinners and champagne brunches.
A groan from the crane, a shout from the driver turned operator.
The canopy shivered.
6
First came the massive metal hook. Followed by a bunching of ropes. And then the first sight of the harness. Cradled within it, like a child in a carrier, sat a car that had cost three hundred thousand dollars when my father bought it for my mother.
“Appearances matter, son. We can’t have Mrs. Ishaan Rai in a cheap Japanese import.”
That same night, he’d slapped her so hard that she’d fallen to the ground, and she’d thrown a glass at him. It had shattered on the wall, a shard flying up to slice a thin line beside my eye.
I hadn’t made a sound. I wasn’t supposed to be there.
Later that night, while I was curled up tight under my superhero-branded blankets, I’d heard other noises. I’d been seven then, hadn’t quite understood. Only later had I realized the meaning behind those grunts and pants and tiny breathless screams.
“Hold it steady!”
The Jaguar emerged from the possessive embrace of the forest with a slight rocking motion.
The midnight green of the paint had been dulled and rusted by its years in the trees, the fenders no longer gleaming, the tires flat and eaten away, but the biggest damage was to the front. It had been crumpled in, the hood lifted partially off and twisted.
As if the car had gone headfirst down the steep bank and hit with force. Turning a sleek rifle into a snub-nosed revolver.
“Did the airbags deploy?” I asked.
“Signs are that all safety features worked as intended.”
So it was possible my mother had survived the impact only to die alone and cold while rain pounded down on the metal of the car and lightning cracked the pitch-black sky. If she’d been alive at all when the car slid down the bank. Because I’d heard the front door slam twice. And the house had gone silent in the aftermath.
“We’ll have more news once …” Neri hesitated. “There’ll be a comprehensive examination.”
Ten years was a long time for evidence to age and fade. For flesh to disappear. For everyone to forget that Nina Parvati Rai had been a living, breathing woman who’d loved music and cooking and had a mind like a computer.
In another life, she could’ve been a professor.
In this life, she’d been a rich man’s wife.
Now, she was just bones.
The car trembled as it was wrenched from the arms of the forest. Dirt clumped the undercarriage and the doors were sealed with police tape to ensure they wouldn’t accidentally open. The forensic people must’ve already processed those areas.
As I stared at the driver’s-side door, it struck me that there was one question I simply hadn’t thought to ask. “Was she in the driver’s se
at?”
Detective Regan had never actually said that.
Neri had a good poker face, but she hadn’t expected the question. The answer was there in the flicker of her eyelashes before she regained control. “You’ll be fully briefed once we conclude our inquiries.”
My mother hadn’t been in the driver’s seat.
Someone else had been in the car that night. And the police knew it. The whiskey bottle, the ring, the rest of what they’d shared, those were nothing but pieces of the truth meant to lull us into cooperation while they undertook a murder investigation … one that almost certainly had Nina’s husband and son in the crosshairs.
The car swung wildly right then, and for a moment, I thought the Jaguar would smash to the forest floor, just as my mother had done all those years ago.
Constable Neri gave me a ride home, but I asked to be dropped off about a twenty-minute walk from the house. Ten minutes for a man with two fully functional legs.
Neri glanced at my booted leg. “You sure that’s wise?”
“I need time to process and I can’t do that in a house with my father. You saw him.”
Sharp, dark eyes. “Not a happy marriage.”
“Interrogate me later, Constable.” It came out hard. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Today, let me grieve.”
No shame in her expression, nothing but an acute alertness that was a warning. I’d have to be careful around her and her boss both. She wasn’t, I judged, the type to fall for a bit of superficial charm wrapped up in the smell of money. Neither would I be able to blind her or her senior partner with my “just a writer” routine.
I’d have to think harder, be smarter, in order to stay on top of the investigation.
“You appreciate that this will be a complicated process,” she said. “We’ll need your cooperation.”
“Did you find the money?” A quarter of a million dollars gone from my father’s safe. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills he’d kept as insurance against some unforeseen event. He still did the same thing. I’d figured out the combination to the safe years ago, even though he’d replaced the entire system after my mother’s disappearance. My father wasn’t a terribly imaginative man—not in certain ways.
Constable Neri gave me a blank stare. “As I’ve made clear, we can’t disclose evidentiary findings.”
“You didn’t find it.” It was a guess, Neri’s poker face back in place, but what were the chances you’d murder a woman only to leave behind a huge stash of cash that no one could trace? Zero. “You know where I’ll be if you want to talk.”
Getting out of the vehicle, I braced myself on the top, then moved across to the back passenger-side door. Neri said nothing as I pulled out my crutches before shutting the door. She didn’t do a U-turn until I’d walked up the road and was clearly visible.
The engine noise soon faded, leaving me cocooned in a hushed silence.
All these trees, all the green, it was why properties here were so coveted. Titirangi homes didn’t reach the eye-watering prices of the mansions in Herne Bay, or the sprawling estates in the South Island, but the rich who built their homes here preferred privacy above all else.
Rarely did the streets that snaked through the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park ever come up in those articles about New Zealand’s wealthiest streets. That was because the wealth here was hidden behind a shield of green, and spread out over a considerable distance. No one knew of the stunning architectural homes built deep in the trees until those homes went up for sale. Most were lone sparks in the wild, the Cul-de-Sac with its cluster of quiet wealth concealed by a long drive, a rare breed.
My mother had been the flashiest member of the enclave.
I stared down Scenic Drive. Not so far in the distance lay the pounding surf of Piha, where the water had no mercy and the black sands burned under the summer sun. That sun had faded what felt like months ago, the sky sullen and resentful today. As my father’s expression had no doubt become on the drive home.
Nina, once again wrecking Ishaan’s perfect life.
The first time I’d woken that night, it’d been because of his voice. Tired from a day of running in preparation for the half-marathon I planned to complete in a month, I’d groaned and put my head under a pillow.
“You’re a whore!” My father’s voice, thunder smashing into my brain.
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you! Have you forgotten I found your secretary tits-up on your desk? You can only get it up for simpering girls young enough to be your daughter, huh?” Even after nineteen years in New Zealand, my mother’s voice had retained echoes of her village-girl accent, and the ugly words sounded incongruous coming out of her mouth.
At times, I’d thought she clung to her accent deliberately. Maybe to embarrass my father—though I could never understand how. He’d gone bride-shopping in rural India for a reason. He hadn’t wanted or expected a sophisticate.
No, Ishaan Rai had wanted a meek and obedient and beautiful doll.
Other times, I’d been certain my mother was ashamed of her lingering accent. She’d become polished and urbane in every other way—designer dresses, flawless makeup that aimed for sexual attractiveness rather than “appropriate” wifely elegance, rapid-fire words full of razored wit.
“Your mum’s hot,” one of my teenage friends had said once, his eyes devouring her as she lay sunbathing on the edge of our pool in a red bikini made up of small triangular pieces of fabric, a bit of string, and not much else.
I’d punched him.
Her lush and scalding heat had alternately confused and angered me. Why, I’d thought, couldn’t she be like other mothers? Soft and warm and comfortable. Yet at the same time, I’d been proud of having a mother others craved.
Fucked up wasn’t the half of it.
“You watch your mouth, Nina! I’m still your husband!”
“So articulate, piya-ji.” My mother’s smoky tones as she used the affectionate term for husband with venomous intent. “To think I was so impressed with you when you came to my village. So smart, so handsome, so filthy rich.” Another laugh, the sound pure acid. “At least I got one out of three right.”
“Screw you, you bitch. You’ve gone too far this time. I’m going to divorce you and see you on the street.”
“I’ll take you to the cleaners.” A taunt. “I’ve already talked to a lawyer and guess what? That old prenup is invalid now. Too one-sided. Too mean. Especially since I gave you a son. Courts will throw out that rubbish piece of paper and give me half of everything. Hell, they’ll give me more because I’m going to take our son, too.”
“I’ll kill you first!” my father had screamed that night, to the accompaniment of shattering glass.
Glints of the shattered crystal tumbler had lingered on the edge of the fireplace the next time I saw it. Only tiny shards. The rest had vanished. Also gone had been the expensive silk rug from Rajasthan that had sat in front of the fireplace for years.
My mother’s voice had been slurred when she replied. “Bastard! You think I won’t drag you through the courts and air all your dirty laundry? Watch me.”
I’d fallen back asleep with their vicious words ringing in my head. They weren’t anything I hadn’t heard before. 11:51 p.m. was the last time I recalled seeing on my digital alarm clock before I blanked out the world and slipped under.
The clock had been blinking 12:01 a.m. when I woke the second time—to the echo of a reverberating scream, my heart racing.
Transcript
Session #2
“Is it because you left things unfinished between you? Is that why she haunts you?”
“We fought that night. I’ve never told anyone else that.”
“Remember, this is a safe place.”
“Yes.” [Loud exhale] “I never meant to say what I said, do what I did. I’ll never be able to go back and fix that.”
“You were close?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know she wouldn’t have held it against you—we all say stupid things in the heat of the moment. She would’ve known.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Use the past tense about her.”
“Oh, I apologize. I just assumed … I shouldn’t have. I apologize.”
7
That night, I’d just lain there at first, not quite sure what I’d heard—or if I’d heard anything at all. Then the front door had shut, and I’d heard another glass smash before the door shut a second time.
Just my parents fighting. Mum had walked out and Dad had followed. She’d probably take off for a drive to cool down as she’d done plenty of times previously.
Too late, I’d remembered that she’d been drinking and I had pushed off my blankets to run out to the balcony that overlooked the drive. She’d always looked up before she drove away.
Sometimes, I could stop her by waving for her to wait while I ran downstairs.
But she’d parked her car on the main Cul-de-Sac drive that day because my father was being an asshole and had blocked access to our double internal garage by parking his Mercedes smack-bang in the middle of our drive. So spiteful that he’d rather have his car out in the elements than make things easy for my mother.
The rain had been punishing shards of ice, but I’d stood there for a long time after her taillights vanished into the black. Waiting. Now and then, she came back after just a few minutes, determined not to let my father win by default.
But not that night.
Jaw clenched against the memories, I began walking. A light misty rain had coated my hair and clothes with tiny water bubbles by the time I turned into the Cul-de-Sac. It was a real—if short—street until you hit the private property line, at which point, it turned into a long private drive that split off into individual properties.
Multiple kauri trees guarded the entrance gates, which shut automatically at nine at night and opened at six in the morning. Residents all had remotes in their cars and intercom panels inside their homes that could open the gates at will, but the symbolism had always gotten to me. I’d never been sure if the gates were to shut out the world—or shut the chosen few inside. The kauri were far older than the gates; they’d been here before the Cul-de-Sac was built, and the developer had been smart enough to know they were a feature, protecting them through the process of creating the drive.
Quiet in Her Bones Page 3