A Madness of Sunshine

by Singh, Nalini

  “That’s a good thing,” Will said, “but, if anything happens to any of you, it’ll make a bad situation even worse.” He wasn’t surprised to see a number of faces familiar to him from the other ­night—­in a place this small, “hanging out” was a popular nighttime activity for the underage crowd. “The town can’t afford to squander its resources right now. I need you to follow the rules so I don’t have to worry about that and can focus on finding Miriama.”

  One of the girls bit down on her lower lip. “Sorry,” she said softly. “It’s just that we’re so worried about Miriama and Kyle said maybe we could meet up and come up with some ideas.”

  Kyle shot the girl a ­narrow-­eyed look that she didn’t notice but Will did. He made sure his own eyes caught Kyle’s on the return journey, the message in them clear: anything happened to that girl and Will would come for Kyle.

  Shrugging her off as unimportant, Kyle took another drag of his cigarette. “You’re absolutely right.” He slid back into his golden boy persona without missing a beat. “We’ll all go home. But we want to join in the search tomorrow.”

  “The search has been suspended.” When he’d spoken ­to—­then ­sober—­Nikau on the drive back to Golden Cove, he’d agreed with the other man’s call that there was nothing and nowhere left to search.

  “Do you think she’s dead?” Kyle asked, eyes devoid of empathy mocking Will.

  “For Matilda’s sake, and the sake of everyone else who loves Miriama, I hope not.”

  His words made several of the teenage girls tear up, the boys nearest them taking the opportunity to put their arms around the girls’ shoulders. “Claire, Mika,” he said, “hop in. I’ll give you a lift home.” The sisters lived the farthest away. “Kyle, I know I can trust you to see the others home safely.”

  The ­nineteen-­year-­old stilled, realizing too late that he’d been led into a trap. “Of course,” he said at last and Will knew he’d keep his word. Kyle Baker might be a psychopath, but he was a psychopath who liked being the top dog in teenage circles in town.

  Nodding ­good-­bye to the other kids, Will turned his SUV in the direction of Claire and Mika’s home. They were quiet on the ride but thanked him when he dropped them off. Will, however, wasn’t done. He spent the next ten minutes getting in touch with the adults in charge of the other teenagers and alerting them their kids should be home within the next quarter hour.

  Not all the adults who answered the phones were sober.

  After hanging up, he swung by the two homes where a missing child might not immediately be noticed or reported. Catching sight of a teenager’s lanky form through the open window of one, and spotting the other sitting safely on the back stoop of her home sneaking a cigarette, Will continued on his way. He felt no surprise when a ­low-­slung car with its headlights off fell in behind him as he turned into his own street.

  Kyle Baker didn’t like being told no.

  Halting the police vehicle in the middle of the otherwise empty road without warning, Will got out and pointed a flashlight directly at the driver’s seat of the car sitting on his bumper. Kyle jerked up a hand to block the glare before backing up and screeching into a U-­turn to head back the way he’d come.

  The rest of Will’s drive home was unremarkable.

  Once inside, he made himself a cup of coffee, then opened Miriama’s journal. This time, he read sequentially, his focus no longer on discovering the identity of her lover.

  Many entries were simple descriptions of her day, or of something she’d seen that had caused her to pull out her camera, but she’d also filled the pages with dreams. Of travel, of passionate love, of creating a better life for her children than she’d had herself.

  I love Auntie, but I’ve always missed having a mother. A proper one. One who’d take me shopping for my school shoes, and teach me how to cook and put on makeup.

  Auntie did a lot of that, and I’d never disrespect her by saying how much I wanted my ­mother—­except without the drugs and the ­men—­but it’s a hole inside me, that need. I can’t ever have a real mother, but I can be one. I’m going to have babies and I’m going to do all those things with them. Not just yet, not before I’m ready and strong enough to take care of a child, but one day.

  It was months later that she mentioned the topic ­again—­after her breakup with Vincent, and soon after she’d begun to see Dominic.

  I asked Dominic if he wants children. It’s a scary question so early into a relationship, but it’s important to me. I can’t be with a man who doesn’t want to build a family.

  He said yes. His face glowed because I was talking about our future. I asked him if he’d be okay with it if we had four ­kids—­he looked a little petrified by the number, but he said that if that was what I wanted, then he’d figure out how to look after four little ankle biters.

  I can see it, see how much I’ll love him one day. Not the way I love the man I shouldn’t, but in the way of a dear friend. Dominic will never hurt me, never treat my dreams as anything other than important.

  We’ll create a family, and we’ll be happy.

  Dominic turned up again several ­pages—­and a couple of ­weeks—­later.

  Dominic made me a picnic today. I asked him how he had the ­time—­I know he’s busy at the clinic. He admitted that he’d asked Auntie to help him, and it was so cute, the way he blushed.

  The other day, I wrote that I’d never love Dominic the way I do someone who’ll never be mine, but when he does things like this, when he treats me so ­wonderfully… I think my feelings for him will grow and grow. I’m so glad to know that. I never want to hurt Dominic. I’m going to be the best wife. I’m going to make him so happy.

  And I’m going to leave this town. Leave the man for whom I broke God’s commandments. Leave the memories of his smile and his kisses and his promises. I’m going to fly free and I’m not going to look back.

  42

  Anahera spent hours thinking while Nikau snored in his drunken sleep.

  Sometime in the midst of it, she took out the card that Jemima had given her and sent the other woman a quick email asking if Jemima was free for coffee midmorning the next day.

  The answer was waiting for her when she woke:

  Ten o’clock will be perfect. Vincent has to fly to Auckland on company business and our nanny has the week off, so the children and I will be alone all day. Vincent won’t get back till after nine tonight.

  Anahera found it worrying that the other woman had so deliberately pointed out that her husband wouldn’t be around, but that might just be her suspicious mind at play.

  After kicking out a badly hungover ­Nikau—­though she did have mercy enough to give him coffee ­first—­she looked at the work emails she’d been ignoring for weeks. All about her music, music that she’d played for hours and hours and hours the day she saw Edward’s body, so pale and motionless. Like a wax mannequin of the man she’d loved.

  She hadn’t played since.

  Anahera glanced down at her hands, flexed them. And decided to take Pastor Mark up on his offer.

  The church door was open as always, the pews empty and the interior cold. Exposed timbers arched above her head, while the floor beneath her feet was worn down by the passage of thousands of feet over tens of years. No fancy stained glass for this church on the edge of nowhere, but the quiet within was as profound as in the greatest cathedrals in Europe.

  Sitting down at the old piano, she lifted the ­lid… and put her fingers to the keys.

  It was the sound of tears that brought her back to earth. Letting the notes fade, she looked at the pews to see that she had an audience of three. The pastor, Evelyn Triskell, and a man with a ­sea-­battered face she thought might be the uncle of Tania Meikle’s husband. “Thank you for getting the piano tuned.” She knew it must’ve been done for her.

  “Ana, dear, what a gift you’ve given us in return.” Pastor Mark patted Evelyn’s shoulder.

  Sniffing, the older woman loo
ked at Anahera with ­red-­rimmed blue eyes. “You play with such sadness. It breaks my heart.”

  What could Anahera say? In this house of God where anger seemed a sin and forgiveness was cherished. “I played my ­first-­ever nocturne on these same keys.” She ran her fingers across them, the touch featherlight.

  The man who might’ve been related to the Meikles said, “Will you play more?”

  So she did.

  Her hands ached by the time she left for the Baker estate, and the sun had banished any lingering clouds, the sky a crisp blue. Jemima had messaged her to say she’d leave the gate open. As a result, Anahera didn’t have to stop at the foot of the drive. The landscape looked far different in bright sunlight than it did in the moody gray that so often swathed the area.

  Sunshine glimmered and glinted on the dewdrops that had survived the morning sun, and speared through the green of the leaves to turn them translucent, and she could hear the distinctive song of the tuis with their white ruffle at the throat and iridescent black feathers.

  Sometimes, Anahera could imagine no more beautiful place in the world.

  Other times, she wondered why she’d come back to a place she’d always wanted to escape. Maybe it had never been about the place at all.

  She’d seen him in town as she drove through, the man who called himself her father. He’d seen her, too, had paused on the sidewalk, as if expecting her to stop.

  Anahera hadn’t stopped, would never stop for that man.

  It was only as she was about to reach the top of the Baker drive that she realized while Vincent was gone, Kyle might well be home. If that turned out to be true, hopefully Jemima would either usher him out or he’d stick to a distant end of the house.

  A second later, she saw Kyle pull out of the top of the drive in what looked like a Ferrari, the color a lustrous obsidian. Sending her a brilliant smile, he raised his hand in a wave as he headed down while she headed up. Anahera raised hers back, keeping things friendly. If he was a psychopath as Will ­suspected—­and the cop had good ­instincts—­it’d do well not to let Kyle see that she wasn’t taken in by his act.

  Parking, she got out and had just begun to walk up the two shallow front steps when the door opened from the inside. Jemima stood smiling on the doorstep. “Oh, you’re here.” A delighted brightness to her, a hint of surprise.

  Because Anahera had kept her word?

  “Thanks for having me,” Anahera said with a smile of her own, “but I’m starting to feel a little underdressed.” Jemima was wearing a white dress with little red flowers on the fabric, the bodice nipped in at the waist and the ­calf-­length skirt flaring out below. Her hair was ­blow-­dried to perfection, shone under the sunlight.

  Vincent’s wife laughed. “Oh, don’t mind me,” said the woman no one seemed to truly know. “I used to dress up even as a little girl. I don’t get much of a chance to do it when in the Cove. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “As long as you don’t mind that I’m wearing jeans and a shirt.” She hadn’t bothered to put on her anorak after leaving the church; the sun took some of the bite out of the air.

  “You look beautiful.” Jemima’s face glowed. “Come in.”

  When Anahera walked into the living room, it was to see two cherubic children playing on the rug in front of the crackling fireplace. “I always get cold,” Jemima said. “The whole house is heated, of course, but nothing beats a fire, don’t you agree?”

  “Mama!” The boy held out his arms.

  Not hesitating, Jemima went over and picked him up for a cuddle. Not to be outdone, his younger sister asked for the same.

  “They’re so competitive at this age,” Jemima said afterward, “but they do play well together. We should be able to talk without too many interruptions.” She showed Anahera to a comfortable seating area in front of wide windows that looked out over the dramatic untamed landscape beyond.

  Anahera didn’t immediately sit. “Damn, that’s magnificent.” It came out as a long exhale.

  There were no pathways in this part of the bush, no trails for hikers to follow. If you went into the dense growth so thick it turned the world quiet and dark, you did so on your own steam, knowing the wild could swallow you whole.

  Jemima came to stand beside her, her perfume a delicate floral note in the air. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly.

  Anahera turned to look at the other woman’s unsmiling profile. “It must get lonely, though,” she said. “I used to feel that way in London, a country girl lost in the big city.”

  “It’s not so much the ­country—­I grew up in a large game reserve. It’s ­that…” She wrapped her arms around herself, her hands cupping her elbows. “Everyone knows each other already and they don’t seem to want to know me.” A glance at Anahera out of the corner of her eye.

  “Small towns,” Anahera said. “They have their good points and bad points.”

  Releasing her arms to her sides, Jemima nodded. “We’ve witnessed the good over the past few days, don’t you think? People coming together to search for Miriama.”

  “The bad, unfortunately, is the insular nature and the gossip.”

  They both moved naturally back to the seating area, with Jemima taking the armchair that would allow her to keep an eye on her children while they spoke. On the small table in between them was a fine china tea set and a plate of small, beautifully iced cakes. “It’s not actually tea,” Jemima whispered with a grin that seemed far more real than any other expression Anahera had seen on her face. “It’s coffee. I hope you don’t mind.”

  That was the second time the other woman had used those words: I hope you don’t mind. A nervous habit? Or had someone trained her to be uncertain by being constantly irritated or annoyed at her actions?

  It was equally possible Anahera was letting her own past color her reading of Jemima Baker.

  “Are you kidding?” she said, determined to get to the truth. “I live on coffee.”

  Jemima laughed and poured the rich, dark liquid into both cups. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “I’ll do it.” Anahera reached for the sugar bowl as she spoke. “We’re ­friends—­or at least I hope we’ll become friends. Friends don’t stand on ceremony.”

  Sea green eyes filled with light. “I’m so glad you’re back, Anahera.” Her hand flew to her mouth almost before the last word was out. “I’m so sorry. That was incredibly thoughtless of me.”

  Anahera shook her head. “It’s all right. I’ve had time to accept my husband’s death.” Accept his perfidy and his generosity and his betrayal and the love he’d once had for her. Maybe one of these days, she’d even stop being so angry at ­him—­not for the affair, but for dying and leaving her with no target for her grief, her rage.

  “Vincent and I saw one of the shows he wrote when it did a run on Broadway,” Jemima said softly. “The one about Jane Austen’s life, with those amazing costumes and that strange, fascinating timeline.”

  “That was always Edward’s favorite.” He’d been so happy when it won award after award, such a kid about showing off the statuettes to anyone who came around.

  Old affection stirred in her chest, waking from a long sleep. “We flew over to see its Broadway debut, and the whole time, he sat there grinning while holding my hand.” It seemed a memory of two distant strangers. “We traveled constantly in the first year of our marriage. You and Vincent do a lot of travel, too, don’t you?”

  “We used to do a lot more.” Jemima held her teacup of coffee on her knee. “But since the children, I prefer to stay in one place for longer periods and Vincent doesn’t seem to mind traveling alone when needed.”

  The Anahera who’d sat next to her grinning husband in that darkened theater wouldn’t have caught the bitterness hidden beneath the unexceptional words. But to the Anahera who’d helped her husband’s distraught mistress from his graveside, the acrid taste was as familiar as the knot of anger and resentment and grief in her own chest.

  Jemim
a knew.

  43

  The question was if she knew only that Vincent had been unfaithful, or if she had the name of the woman who’d become a silent third party in their marriage.

  Anahera liked Jemima, but Miriama also had a call on her loyalty.

  And the time for lies and rumors was over.

  “You can tell me to shove off and mind my own business if I’m crossing a line,” she said, “but I get the feeling you aren’t happy in your marriage.”

  Jemima’s face closed over. “That’s a very personal thing to say.”

  “Comes from experience.”

  Jemima froze in the act of stirring more cream into her coffee. Looking up after several long seconds, she searched Anahera’s face. “Do you usually tell strangers?”

  Anahera felt her lips twist. “I haven’t told anyone. I only found out after my husband died and she turned up at my front door.”

  China rattled against china as Jemima nearly dropped both cup and saucer. Putting them down, she stared at Anahera with horrified eyes. “I am so sorry.” Her next words trembled, white lines bracketing her mouth. “My God, why couldn’t she have waited?”

  “She loved him, too.” Anahera had never blamed the ­woman—­it was Edward who’d been married, Edward who’d broken vows, Edward who’d made his lover promises of forever. “She couldn’t stop crying.”

  Smoothing back her flawless hair with an unsteady hand, Jemima looked over at her two small children. “Let’s go onto the balcony. It’s so lovely out.”

  Only once they were outside, the sliding door mostly shut behind them, did the other woman say, “I haven’t told anyone, either.” A rough whisper. “No one suspects. We have such a perfect life.”

  Anahera leaned her forearms against the wooden railing, drinking in the landscape as she inhaled the crisp air. “Is it a woman connected to his business?” She had to know if Vincent’s wife had identified a stunning ­nineteen-­and-­a-­half-­year-­old girl as his lover.