After that, I sent an email to Dr. Tawera, requesting an urgent appointment. Exhaustion weighed heavy on me, but no way was I going to be able to sleep with the pain pulsing like a second heartbeat. Unscrewing the bottle from which I’d already taken two pills, I took two more.
I wasn’t being stupid. Four was the maximum dosage, though there was a warning on the bottle not to make that a habit. Washing down the pills with a fresh bottle of water likely put on the bedside table by Shanti, I switched off the lights, and lay down to sleep.
In my dreams, my mother spoke in Paige’s voice. “Ari, my Ari. Promise me you won’t forget about me.”
Transcript
Session #7
“I want to apologize for the last session. I was out of line.”
“Thank you for the apology, but I want you to feel free to be yourself in this room.”
“Even if the real me is probably a manipulative psychopath?”
“That’s a very strong word. It gets thrown around a lot in the media but I’d caution you not to label yourself without cause. Even if you do it to yourself, it has a mental impact.”
“Wow, you sound like you really care.”
“I do. You’re an extraordinary individual.”
“Well … you’ve surprised me.”
“Despite all you’ve achieved, you have a very low opinion of yourself. You’ve told me some of what your father said to you in childhood. I think it’s time we discussed the issue more in-depth—perhaps you could start by telling me a bit more about your parents’ relationship.”
“What do you want to know?”
“For one, did your parents ever have strong disagreements?”
[Extended laughter]
29
Dr. Tawera managed to squeeze me in at around ten the next morning.
With my head pounding from a sleepless night and the furry taste of medication lingering in my throat, I wasn’t in the mood for bad news, but that’s what she gave me. “You keep this up and I’ll have to put you back in a cast.” She pursed her full lips, her dark brown eyes pinning me to the spot.
“It’s been an unusual couple of days.” It came out hard, cold.
“Be that as it may, Aarav,” she said with her usual crispness, “unless you want to ruin your healing, or end up less mobile than you are now, you’ll take it far easier than you have been to date.” When she turned, I saw the thick strands of silver in the black hair she’d pulled back into a bun. “Give it two days before you start any significant movement.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, but nodded. She was right. She had the degrees, and the experience, and she’d gotten me this far. I might have sociopathic tendencies, but I didn’t think I knew everything. “Thanks.” I took the prescription she held out.
“Be careful with these pain meds. Conforming to your request to stay away from anything addictive, they’re not opioids, but they’re still not great for your stomach lining.”
“Okay.”
“And ditch the cane, dashing as it looks. You need to go back to the crutches.”
Fuck.
I was still in the same bad mood when I got out of my sedan in the Cul-de-Sac—on my crutches, which I’d thrown in the back of the car because I’d suspected this might be the outcome. I’d filled the prescription and was about to reach inside the car to get the meds when I heard my name in a familiar female voice.
Diana was waving at me from out front of her property, where she was pulling weeds from the large planters she kept at the start of their gently sloping drive. Juvenile nīkau palms thrived in those planters, but native flora or not, Diana’s landscaping had always been a little too “clean” for this environment.
She didn’t have the masses of bush out front that covered every other property. Her tree ferns and subtropical plants were neat and controlled—and not at all allowed in the large area that was her dormant rose garden. Visible from the street, those roses were her pride and joy, and she was happy for people from the neighborhood to go up and have a look when the flowers were in bloom.
“Coffee?” she called out.
Leaving the meds in the car, I made my way across the road. Taking my pain to a sympathetic listener.
“Paul will be disappointed you’ve ditched his cane,” she said after kissing me on the cheek. “He was chuffed to see you using it. Was telling me all about it yesterday.”
“Apparently I was trying to run before I could walk,” I said, mimicking Dr. Tawera’s stern tone and unforgiving manner.
“Oh, ouch.” She gave me a gentle hug, her perfume soft and floral. “Come on in. I’ve got just the treat to lift your bad mood.”
I groaned. “I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it.”
Laughing, she touched me on the hand. “I have children, remember? And I’ve known you forever.” She led me up the drive and to the very back of the house, careful to keep things at a pace I could manage. Once we were inside her sprawling kitchen, she pointed to the comfortable couch that sat in one corner, in front of the wall-mounted television.
I’d spent many an hour slouched there as a kid, watching TV or playing on a handheld console while my mother chatted with Diana. Even when I’d moaned at being dragged over, I’d enjoyed it. Diana’s home was picture-perfect except for this one corner she’d created for Mia and Beau—here, things were a little shabby, a little imperfect.
I sank down into the sofa with a sigh, while Diana went around to start the coffee. First, however, she put a full tray of fudge in front of me. “I just made this.” A huge smile.
“You know the way to my heart.”
Laughing, she left me to my addiction.
“Thank you,” I said, after a piece of the rich concoction, “for the big bag you sent over.”
“Oh, Aarav, you never have to thank me.” A soft smile. “You’ll always be Nina’s boy to me, and I’m happy I can give you joy in this small way.” Spooning the ground coffee into the coffee press, she said, “Have you had lunch? It’s after twelve.”
“No, but I had a late breakfast.”
A courier came to the front door just after the water finished boiling, and she went to grab the package. Her expression was drawn when she walked back in, her features tight. “Diana?”
Normally soft lips pressed together, she put the package on the counter. “It’s from Sarah. For Mia’s birthday next week.” She didn’t say anything else until she’d brought over the coffee tray and a plate of cake. “Sarah still emails regularly with the kids, and sends them gifts, but she won’t reply to a single message I send.”
“It’s been a long time.” I didn’t know the origin of the estrangement between the sisters, but I knew it had happened while I was a young teenager. Sarah had been living with Diana and Calvin for a number of years by then.
“I thought she’d forgive me after a while, but …” Picking up the press, she poured me a black coffee, and I leaned forward to add the sugar myself. “From when she was a child, she could hold a grudge like no one else. I still wish her happy birthday and merry Christmas every year, and every year, she ignores me.”
“I’m sorry.” According to my memories of her, Sarah had been much younger than Diana, more child than sister.
“Thank you, honey. One thing I’m happy about is that she seems settled into a really nice life. Mia keeps me updated and she says Sarah has a senior job in insurance. She’s thinking of getting married to her long-term boyfriend, and lives in a nice town in the South Island. She’s living the kind of life I always wanted for her.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “I used to worry about the kids trying to bring us together and being knocked back—Mia and Beau can be terribly sweet when they’re not being teenagers—but thankfully, she’s become like a distant relative to them after all this time. They love her, but they don’t really know her.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Enough of that. Have a slice of this lemon-coconut
cake—I’m trying a new recipe for a contract with a local boutique restaurant.”
“You’re expanding the business?” She’d always been adamant about being a one-woman show.
“With the kids becoming more independent, I have a bit of time on my hands.” She pushed across a slice of cake. “Anastasia thinks I should relax and go to salons and do some shopping, but can you imagine me living that life?” A good-natured laugh, her beautifully dark blue eyes sparkling. “Have a bite. Tell me what you think.”
“It’s amazing,” I said after all but inhaling half the slice.
“You need feeding up, Aarav. What’ve you been doing to yourself?” With that, she put another slice on my plate.
“Hard living and whiskey. Oh, and a packet of your fudge a week.”
She scowled at me, but her lips were twitching. “You always were charming. That’s what Nina used to call you when you were a toddler. ‘My little charmer.’ ” Her expression softened, grew sad. “I can’t believe she was there all this time. So close to us and so alone.”
Cake suddenly lead in my stomach, I gulped several mouthfuls of the coffee. “Did you see anything that night? The night she disappeared?”
Cupping both hands around her mug, Diana looked inward. “I’ve been thinking about that since you told us the police had found Nina—Calvin and I talked about it afterward. It was stormy, we both remember that.
“Calvin was still at the hospital and I was worrying one of the trees would come down on our house while I was sick and in my housedress, and then a handsome fireman would have to rescue me while I looked like his half-dead maiden aunt.”
The idea of respectable, maternal Diana having fantasies about firemen might’ve struck me as funny at another time. “You had the flu, didn’t you?” When I’d knocked on her door halfway through the next day, wanting to know if she’d heard from my mother, she’d been dressed in a ratty robe and clutching a bowl in readiness for throwing up, her face gray and eyes red.
“Stomach flu.” Diana shuddered. “Let’s not talk about that. It was bad enough to live through it once. But I spent the night in my bedroom and it doesn’t overlook the street. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think if I saw anything that might help, but the best I can come up with is something from earlier that day.”
When she hesitated, I sat forward. “Diana, my mother is gone. She’s only got us to look out for her now.”
30
Diana sighed. “It was Alice. I saw her and Nina from the upstairs window out front and could swear they were arguing—not shouting, but just … Their faces were different from usual, the way they looked at each other, all tight and tense. I wanted to go out there and see what was wrong, but my stomach was already giving me trouble and I didn’t want to throw up on the street. I thought I’d call Nina later and ask.”
Her fingers clenched on the mug, her eyes wet. “I didn’t even know I’d half convinced myself she was out there living the good life until you told me that they’d found her. All this time, I was hoping for that phone call, for a postcard, for something to tell me she was all right.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
“Oh, Aarav.” She reached forward to squeeze my hand. “We loved her, didn’t we? She was so bright and radiant and she never let go of her people.”
“Yes.” It was all I could get out.
Breaking contact, I deliberately took another bite of cake before looking at the wall of photos that surrounded the television. It’d been there as long as I could remember, but the photos had changed. No longer awash with images of a dark-eyed, dark-haired toddler and her preschool-age brother with unexpected hazel eyes, it was now a wall filled with images of Mia and Beau as teenagers. Photos pinned atop photos.
Dramatically gorgeous Sarah with her dancing brown eyes and thick, wavy long hair had once been front and center along with the kids, but her slender form had long been hidden by more recent photos of the family. It made me sad.
The only photo that hadn’t changed was the one on the top left—a faded snapshot of a young Calvin with his parents and older sisters, all of whom he’d lost when he was only fourteen. “I understand, Aarav,” he’d told me a couple of months after my mother’s disappearance. “I know the hole it creates in a person when the people they love leave without warning.”
I’d never asked for the details of the terrible car accident that had taken them from him. I hadn’t needed to know to accept that he did actually get it. He was one of the few people who did. It was why I’d always been able to see beyond Calvin’s outwardly stoic face. He’d built a wall of cold pragmatism around himself in a successful effort to survive.
I should’ve followed his example. Instead, I’d fallen into the bottle.
“Children grow so fast,” Diana said, pulling me out of my alcohol-soaked past. When I looked at her, she had a soft smile on her face. “Nina would’ve been so proud of the man you’ve become.”
Even as I hesitated, my heart suddenly painful, her face grew bright. “Hold on a moment.” Putting down her coffee, she padded out of the room.
I was still staring down into my now-cold drink when she returned almost ten minutes later. “Sorry it took so long, but I knew I had it.” She passed across several photocopied sheets of paper that had been stapled together.
A laugh burst out of me when I saw the title: Energy Vacuum. “Where did you get this?”
“Nina gave it to me after you won that literary prize. She was so proud, she copied off the story for all her friends.”
I’d never known that, but I could still remember my mother’s beaming face at the prize-giving ceremony held in Old Government House. Situated in lush green grounds full of old trees near Auckland’s city center, the ornate building had looked imposing and stuffy to the fourteen-year-old I’d been, but my mother had brushed off my shoulders, straightened my tie, and said, “Don’t ever allow anyone or anything to make you feel less, Aarav. You deserve to be here. You’ll always deserve to be in any place you put yourself.”
I’d still felt like a nerd as I accepted the award, but I’d been a proud nerd.
Afterward, my mother had asked me where I wanted to eat out to celebrate, and I’d chosen fish and chips on Karekare Beach. Distant from the city, with the glittering black sands of the West Coast, and unforgiving waves that had no mercy for the humans who dared dance in its fury.
“She went to a shoe store and bought sandals so she could trek the path to the beach at Karekare, because I wanted to celebrate with a picnic.” Karekare was no easily accessible city beach; the ocean was a thundering secret only visible to those who made the effort to find it. We’d had to make our way through sand dunes on paths that could grow searingly hot under sunlight. The journey required twice as much effort as walking on land.
I could almost feel the strain in my calves, the heat coming off the glittering sand. “The fish and chips were still warm when we got to the beach.” I’d never forget sitting there in my fancy dress pants and bare feet, my tie and jacket discarded in the car, and my shirtsleeves rolled up, with my mother laughing beside me as her salon-set hair flew back in the sea winds. “She was wearing a red dress.” Her favorite color, her lips the same vibrant hue.
“I was with her when she found that dress.” Diana’s voice was soft, entering my memories at a distance. “She was worried about taking the attention off you and was about to choose a simple black sheath, but then she said, “No, I want to celebrate my boy. Red is alive. Red is proud. Red says his ma is in the damn room and over the moon.”
My chest knotted up. “I’m glad.” It came out rough.
My mother had never been a plain-black-dress kind of woman.
Diana and I sat there for another fifteen minutes in easy company. At one point, I indicated a particular photo. “That hasn’t changed. Your rose garden. Always the best on the block.”
“I have to admit to being a litt
le gleeful about constantly outshining Veda and Brett’s landscaping company. They don’t seem to understand that roses won’t thrive without constant care. I don’t know why they even bothered with the ones near their front door, when the rest of their property is low-maintenance native planting.”
A pause before she scrunched up her face. “I do feel bad for them right now though, with their dog and everything. But they can be so unpleasant that I don’t even dare go over with a cake and sympathy as I would for anyone else in the Cul-de-Sac.”
The dog was a subject on which I would never have anything to say, so I brought things back to a far nicer subject. “I remember my mum on her knees beside you in the garden one time. I was shocked.”
Startled laughter. “Yes, Nina, she was terrible at that kind of thing. But I suppose she knew I needed a friend that day and so she got sucked in. Oh, do you remember the day she danced in the rain and Paul and Margaret came out to join her? They loved her spirit, those two.”
It was only as I was about to leave that my eye fell on the package from Sarah, and I found myself remembering why Diana had needed help with the rose garden. Sarah had destroyed a lot of the roses when she left, ripping them out as if she were ripping out the roots of her relationship with Diana.
At least with Sarah, Diana still had a chance to rebuild the bond. I’d never again have that chance. But maybe I could help Diana.
Taking out my notebook after I was on the street, I made a note:
Try to contact Sarah.
It was possible she’d talk to me where she wouldn’t to her sister. As I’d discovered with my therapist, sometimes emotional crap was easier to confront with someone who was all but a stranger. I’d lay on the famous Aarav Rai charm and try to get a dialogue going, do a good deed for once.
“Hiya.” The smiling comment came from one of the landscaping people Diana had just cheerfully maligned.
This one was wearing brown shorts and a brown zip-up fleece emblazoned with the logo of the landscaping company. A straw hat protected her from the winter sun, and she had gardening gloves in hand, her feet clad in sturdy boots and socks. With sun-streaked brown hair and tanned skin, she was straight out of central casting for “sporty nature girl.”
Quiet in Her Bones Page 16