“It’s not true then?”
She’d taken a sip of the vodka martini I’d prepared for her, just the way she liked. “Would you blame me if it was?” Sliding off the sunglasses, she’d looked at me with eyes dark and liquid. “For finding happiness somewhere else?”
“Why don’t you guys just get divorced? Half my friends’ parents are divorced. No biggie.”
“It’s complicated, mera bachcha.” A kiss pressed to my cheek as she called me her child with so much love in her voice, a waft of perfume that stole my breath.
At fifteen, I hadn’t had the words to explain my tormented confusion. My mother had hated my father and vice versa, and yet they’d refused to part. Instead, they’d just found new ways to hurt each other.
“Was there anything else you didn’t put in the report?” I asked the PI, wondering why I’d asked him to omit the hotel finding.
“No, that was it. Guess it was the only thing you didn’t want your father to see.”
I sat there long after I’d hung up, while the darkness pressed against the glass of the balcony doors. Had I sent the file to my father? I couldn’t remember, and when I hunted through my archived emails, I found no indication of a send. I’d probably changed my mind, not wanting to tip my hand when I had so little.
I pressed at the throbbing in my temple.
Not a migraine, just the usual stress headache. I self-medicated with candy from the desk drawer I kept full of various forms of sugar. A piece of fudge, half a bar of dark chocolate, and I felt better. But my head was too full to think straight. So of course I decided to mess with my manuscript.
Several hours later, I was lying awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and thinking of a beautiful woman who’d been reduced to bones, when something smashed downstairs. Getting out of bed dressed only in boxer shorts, I used the cane to hobble downstairs.
“Fucking whore bitch! I knew it!” Another smash.
My eyes caught Shanti’s. She was hovering outside the main lounge, twisting her hands and swallowing hard. I shook my head and nudged upward.
No hesitation today before she took off back upstairs. I knew she’d go to Pari first, make sure her daughter wasn’t scared. I, meanwhile, entered the doorway. Alcohol fumes wafted off my father, the whites of his eyes red and his shirt buttons half-undone, the tails flapping out of his pants. Whiskey sloshed out of his glass as he poured himself another tumbler.
“Ah, Aarav, son.” Walking over on wavering feet, he laughed. “Her son. Same judgmental eyes.”
I said nothing, just watched.
Slugging back the whiskey, he threw the tumbler at the fireplace. Shards glittered in the overhead light, joining the other shattered pieces of crystal on the rug that had replaced the one from Rajasthan. Fractures of light in my mind, the memory of more broken glass.
“Did you throw a glass at her that night?”
My father slumped into an armchair. “Having an affair,” he said, features twisting. “She rubbed my face in it.”
“You were fucking your secretary at the time.”
No sharp anger, just a curl of his lip. His senses were too dulled to wallow in the fullness of emotion. “What if I was? That was my right! I owned your mother. I bought her!” said the virtuous citizen whose wrist was encircled by a yellow prayer thread.
“Who was she having an affair with?” I asked softly, deciding to slide under his lowered defenses.
“One of the fuckers in the Cul-de-Sac. That’s what she told me. Said I had beers with him every goddamn barbeque. Probably lying. Always lying. Always.”
Leaning against one side of the doorjamb, I continued to speak in a gentle, nonaggressive tone. Wearing masks was my specialty after all. “No other hints?”
A one-shouldered shrug. “Who the fuck cared? I didn’t.” He lifted his nodding head without warning, his eyes full of broken blood vessels and hate. “Wasn’t the first time, either. Did you know that? Your sainted mother was a whore.”
“Did you ever ask yourself why?” I said with a smile. “I mean, you’re rich, good-looking, and yet you couldn’t hold on to your wife. Probably because you’re an asshole.”
Making a roaring sound, he lurched at me, but only succeeded in stumbling into a wall. I thought about just leaving him to it but he’d probably fall on his face on the broken glass, and right now, I didn’t need distractions. I needed answers only Ishaan Rai could provide. Sighing, I went over, the muscles of my right arm flexing and tightening as I put my weight on the cane; even with only one usable hand, I managed to lead him back to his armchair.
It helped that he’d gone from anger to sobs. “Bitch,” he said, and it was almost a croon. “So beautiful. Like a bullet to the gut,” he mumbled. “Nina. Nina.”
Disgusted with him, I nonetheless walked out to the kitchen and came back with the little dustpan and brush Shanti kept under the sink. The weekly cleaning service rarely had much to do—Shanti ensured the place was spotless.
I thought he’d fallen asleep by the time I got back, but he jerked up his head when I swore as I got myself to the ground. I basically had to sit on my ass and sweep. No other way to do it without losing my center of gravity.
As I did so, my eye fell on the family photos arranged on Pari’s gleaming piano. One with all four of us, the rest mostly featuring Shanti and Pari together, but there was a selfie of me and Pari with ice cream. And a faded image of my father on his motorcycle from back when he’d been young.
Poor Pari. She kept looking for her knight in a father who was the villain of the story.
“This floor is fucking hard,” I muttered. “Needs a proper rug.”
My father slurred as he spoke. “Threw it away. Too stained after you …” A snore erupted from him while I was still staring in his direction, my mouth dry and my brain clawing for the next word.
Too stained after you …
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Sitting there amidst the edges of glass, I ran back the tape in my head from that night.
My mother’s scream.
A desperate race to the balcony.
The red lights of her car driving off into the night.
I’d never left my room. I couldn’t have hurt her.
But my father was blind drunk, his inhibitions gone. He wasn’t functional enough to have consciously thought up a way to screw with my head. I’d somehow damaged the carpet. How? Why couldn’t I remember anything of the incident?
“Likely because it never happened,” I muttered, and got to sweeping up the rest of the glass. “You’re taking the word of a man so drunk he’s drooling while he snorts like a pig.”
Yet he’d sounded very rational when he’d spoken about my mother’s lover. On the other hand … maybe he’d had no idea who he’d been addressing with those final words. Could be he thought he was talking to my mother. After all, I have her eyes, her smile. If that was true, he’d just accused my mother of staining his precious rug.
That made a hell of a lot more sense than any other explanation.
If only my mother wasn’t bones. Then perhaps we’d know if blood had been involved.
A scream.
Red lights in the darkness.
But if my mother had been bleeding heavily enough to have necessitated the removal of the rug, how could she have driven off so smoothly? No, wait. I kept forgetting she’d been found in the passenger seat. Someone had driven her. But if it had been my father, how had he gotten a bleeding and badly wounded woman in the car so quickly? Even weak, she’d have fought, made noise. He definitely couldn’t have carried her—my father had never been buff enough to pull that off, especially in such a short time frame.
Or was I remembering it wrong? Had there been a longer gap of time between the scream and when I actually got out of bed?
I knew how I could find out.
Putting the dustpan to the side—there was no way I could get up holding it without spilling the glass to the fl
oor again—I maneuvered myself onto the knee of my good leg, then used the cane to haul myself upright. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
Leaving my father drooling in the armchair, I made my way first to the kitchen.
I was hungry.
“Ari, I knew it’d be you rustling about in the kitchen.” My mother’s ghost trailed in after me, her silk dressing gown open over a spaghetti strap nightgown in black with red blooms. “My hungry beta.” Ruffling my hair. “Sit, I’ll make you a sandwich.”
My mother hadn’t been the most domestic person, but she’d loved to cook for me. My eyes stung as I slapped butter onto a couple of slices of bread, then found the ham and cheese and tomato. She’d have turned up her nose at my shoddy construction.
“Use the best cheese, Ari. And thodi si relish. Throw in a pickle but only with the correct flavor combinations.”
Some of the best memories of my life are of being with her in the kitchen late at night. She’d been … gentler in those nighttime hours when it was just me and her, no masks or pretenses. Once, she’d thrown together a pizza from scratch—adding fresh green chilis and crushed garlic because “otherwise it will have no flavor”—and chucked it in the oven. While it cooked, filling the kitchen with scents that made my stomach rumble, we’d played a card game she’d learned as a child. I’d pretended to be bored, but I’d been … happy.
Plain old happy.
“I love you, Ari.” She’d always kissed me on the cheek before I headed off to bed. “Tu meri zindaggi hai. Always remember that.”
My throat was thick as I stuffed the sandwich into my mouth. No point trying to carry it upstairs. Instead, I ate it without tasting a bite, then drank an entire bottle of Coke.
“All that cheenee.” My mother shaking her head. “Think what you’re putting into your body.”
“Should I switch to vodka?”
I’d thought I was such a smart-ass, such a fucking wit, but I’d do anything to have my mother alive and nagging me about my soft drink and sweets habit.
Bottle empty, I threw it in the recycling bin, then went upstairs to find some answers.
15
My father had never cleared out my bedroom. I’d expected him to erase all signs of my existence the day I moved out, but he never had, not even after marrying Shanti. I’d never asked him why, but today, I was glad of it. Because I had a giant walk-in closet that I’d used as a junk room as a kid.
I hadn’t been the tidiest teenage boy, but I hadn’t liked stuff just sitting around, so I’d thrown it all into the closet and shut the door. But it turned out that a closet full of random possessions also made a good hiding place. Flicking on the closet light after I’d closed and locked my bedroom door, I walked over to a shelf right at the back—it took some doing.
I stubbed my good toe on what turned out to be an old game controller, and almost got my cane caught in fishing line. What the hell had I been doing with a fishing pole? Probably one of my aja’s gifts. My father’s father had been a nice enough guy, but more than a little vague. As far as I could remember, he’d never gone fishing in his life.
There.
A battered box that had once held a set of racing cars, complete with a racetrack. My father had given it to me on my tenth birthday, and I had a sudden mental image of him laughing with me while we set up the tracks on a table in my lounge. We’d had a good time that day, all three of us. My mother had brought us snacks and drinks, and my father had kissed her, and for a moment, we’d been a normal family.
That’s why I’d kept the box long after the track broke and the cars lost their wheels.
Bracing myself against the side of the shelf so I could use both hands, I took down the box, and removed the lid. That, I placed back on the shelf. Inside the box was a bunch of teenage boy crap—photos from parties, a key I’d found on the street outside that I’d secretly tried out on every front and back door in the Cul-de-Sac, a hair-clip that had belonged to my first real crush.
Used concert tickets, rugby trading cards, coins from random countries.
But under the detritus of a life long gone was a notebook. I’d always been a writer, from the time I was young. I hadn’t suddenly written a novel. I’d written tens of thousands of words before I wrote the first chapter of Blood Sacrifice.
Some of those words, I’d written in this old notebook.
Mostly, I’d used it to roughly sketch out random short stories, or other things that popped into my head, but that night … I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. I’d stayed up till dawn waiting for my mother to come home again—it didn’t help that my left leg had hurt like a bitch from some injury I couldn’t now remember. So I’d started doodling, and doodles had led to words.
After removing the notebook I put the open box on its lid.
Wincing, I walked out of the closet. My breath came out in a long exhale as I sat down on my bed. My leg ached and so did the arm I’d been relying on for the cane. I gave myself a few minutes to get beyond the physical pain. I wasn’t about to put any more drugs into my system. The only thing I permitted myself was a hit of sugar from my candy drawer before I picked up the notebook and flicked to my notes from that night.
It’s been hours. I tried to find her. The road was so wet and slippery. He’s still downstairs, cleaning up the “mess” I made. Not my fault. I’m not the one who screamed at her until she left.
That was it. That’s all I’d written.
Stomach churning, I turned page after page in the hunt for more. But there was nothing relevant. Nausea twisted my gut, bile rising. Shoving the top of my forearm against my mouth, I squeezed my eyes shut. What had I done? What mess had I made?
And why couldn’t I remember?
I woke up in an awkward position on top of the blankets. I’d fallen asleep on the notebook and it had imprinted itself into the skin of my chest. The same way the words had imprinted themselves on my brain.
The first thing I did after waking was rip out the damning page. With it crushed in my hand, I hobbled over to the bathroom and, after tearing it to confetti, flushed it down the toilet. My cheeks burned as the water swirled, but I watched to make sure the pipes sucked down every last piece. It took multiple flushes for the water to run clear.
I hadn’t hurt my mother.
Whatever had happened that night, I hadn’t hurt the only person who loved me. The notebook was nothing but a distraction, the dramatic angst of a sixteen-year-old who hadn’t yet learned the art of subtlety.
Ping.
The alert from my phone had me walking back into the room to glance at the screen. It said: Appointment with Dr. Binchy, 10 a.m.
The last thing I needed right now was to lose time in a surgeon’s office, but it would be even worse to miss the appointment and screw up my leg any further. Leaving the reminder on the home screen, I walked into the bathroom. I managed a shower by sitting on the stool Shanti had put in there and using the handheld shower attachment. Then I got dressed.
Remembering something else I’d glimpsed in the notebook, I picked it up and flicked through it until I found the entry. My eyes narrowed. I’d almost forgotten that incident, but now the voice—hard and male and hot with anger—was vivid in my mind.
And that voice wasn’t my father’s.
Gears turning, I decided to hide the notebook back in the closet, then headed downstairs. My sister was at the kitchen counter quietly eating her cereal.
Slipping in beside her, I took the coffee Shanti held out with a smile. Not my favorite source of caffeine, but it’d do in the morning.
“Good morning.” I tugged on one of Pari’s pigtails.
Her head stayed down.
When I looked at Shanti, she gave me a tight smile, then prepared another cup of coffee. Black, two sugars. My father’s preference. When she left to deliver it, I took the chance to send a couple of texts to my friend Thien. We’d met at university, where I was kicking around doing a �
�half-hearted attempt at an arts degree, and he wasn’t doing much of anything—though he’d honed the skill of getting people what they wanted.
Today, I asked him for a favor, offering him three hundred bucks for his trouble.
Four, he messaged back. It’s goddamn raining.
Thien was a friend, but he was also mercenary as fuck. We got along great.
I didn’t try to speak to Pari until after we were in the car on the way to school. “You heard Dad last night, huh?”
A nod I caught out of the corner of my eye.
“He was drunk and you know he gets extra mean when he’s drunk.” Never would I leave my sister unprotected—even if that protection was by knowledge. “Stay out of his way when he gets like that.” He’d never laid a hand on me, but I was male. I didn’t know if he’d offer his daughter the same courtesy.
“After I move back out, you call me if he ever starts hurting either you or your mum.” Shanti had never given any indication that my father was physically violent, but Shanti also believed that a husband should be treated as a god.
Yeah, my father had definitely gotten what he wanted the second time around.
“How come he’s so mean and you’re so nice?”
The plaintive question had a laugh building in the back of my throat. Maybe my mother hadn’t been the only person who’d ever loved me. Stopping in front of the school, I thought about what to say that wouldn’t shatter her illusions. She had the right nickname, my kid sister. Pari, pronounced close to how the French pronounced “Paris,” had a fantastical meaning: fairy, sprite.
It suited her far better than her full name, Parineeti. And even my twisted soul couldn’t bear to dull the sweet magic that glowed inside her. For Pari, I’d wear another self, the self that was a good, caring brother. “Because I made a decision to never be like him.” True enough; she didn’t have to know I hadn’t wholly succeeded.
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