by L. Steele
It had been real for me. Everything that I had shown him, had shared with him. As real as the ring he'd given me. Too bad Jace doesn't feel the same way.
A few hours later, as the flight begins its descent toward Bombay, I can't stop my fingers from worrying the ring. My heart pounds in my chest, the pulse beating in my ears so hard I think I'm going to faint. I force myself to breathe in and out, trying to calm myself down.
What am I even doing on this flight? One call, and I'd left Jace. broken my promise to him. All I'd needed was an excuse to leave, and I had grabbed this chance to go back in time.
Seems it's easier to face an unknown past than a future I can't see, one I can't even begin to fathom without Jace.
But now when I'm so close to finally being back—back to where it had all started—I know I've made a mistake.
By now the wedding is over and he'll be left explaining why I'm not there. And I'm going to face the one thing I have spent all my life running away from.
36
Sienna
* * *
When I step off the flight at Bombay, the heat crushes me. The moisture in the air hangs heavy, condensing inside the airport. Sweat trickles down my back. I'm jetlagged from not having slept on the flight, and the world blurs around the edges.
As I leave the airport, the noise slams into me with a physical force that almost blows me back. And the smell. That mix of mud and dirt and unwashed human bodies all overlaid with a sense of intense desperation. Of too many souls being crammed into too little a space. It echoes faint memories, flavors I've stored in that secret place inside that now come pouring out.
I don't want to be here.
But what are my options? Go back and face my debtors in the Valley? Face a furious Jace, who no doubt is even now plotting his revenge for breaking our arrangement?
No, I must keep going.
Swept along by the taxi queue, I find myself in a cab and sink back against the faux-leather seats.
The voice on the other end of the line had been frank. I had to come, immediately, to the address he had shared. Time is of the essence.
All these years, and now it's as if time has run out. Abruptly.
I'm here. And for the first time since the call, I let myself think about what lies on the other side of this journey.
My biological mother tracked me down. Found me in the one place in this world I hadn't told anyone I would be. And she's dying.
She'd spent years looking for me, trying to reach me. Ironically, it was the trip to the London that had put me on their radar.
London is geographically the closest I've been to the country of my birth. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I hadn't been comfortable since I'd arrived there―a sense of my life about to change forever.
The PI, who'd been working on my case for years, had traced me to the orphanage that had helped place me, only to find all their records were lost in a fire. Still, they'd remembered I'd been placed in the US, but all other details were lost.
My mother had not given up, though. Using digitally enhanced images that aged me as I grew, the PI tried to trace me over the years, routinely tracking international flights.
The first international flight I'd taken out of the US, and he had found me.
I am not sure what to feel. My thoughts race around in my head, buzzing about, trying to make connections.
If I hadn't met Jace, hadn't accepted his offer, I wouldn't have come to London. My blood family wouldn’t have found me. And I wouldn't be here, bumping along through the mid-morning traffic, eyes scrunched up behind oversized sunglasses.
I didn't want to be found.
All these years, I was hiding from them, from myself, pretending my adopted family was the only reality I knew. I'd spent years putting up those barriers. I didn't want to go back.
Didn't want to face my past.
But my gut had known. My subconscious had always been pulled here. In my weaker moments, those memories in the deepest, darkest corners of my soul had pushed through, made themselves known. Enough to let me know the life I left behind is still here.
I'd tried to turn my back on my past, but no more.
I'm here and now I have to face it.
I look out the window, my eyes glazing over with tiredness. Emotions long suppressed now pour through me, coursing through my veins, blurring my vision. Around me, the traffic ebbs and flows, as if with a life of its own.
We crawl forward. The car stops, starts, stops. Then we hit a highway and pick up speed, turning a corner from where I can see the bay of the Arabian Sea stretch out. It's fringed on this side by shanty towns and small, bobbing boats with fishermen bringing in the catch from the sea.
We hit a toll and then turn onto a sweeping bridge.
The taxi drives smoothly through the eight-lane highway. Muddy, dark-green water rolls below before giving away to a skyline of towers and soaring new buildings.
What a contrast. Like crossing from one world to the next.
I shake my head, trying to clear the thoughts buzzing around it. But I can't stop thinking of my blood mother.
All these years and now? Why now? Why call me to tell me she's dying?
Why not have let me be with Jace?
In a way, the timing of the call couldn't have been better. And if I had been waiting for a sign to get out of there, this was it.
We turn off the bridge onto a road skirting the sea and then turn in, onto a side road.
We're close now. My heart slams into my ribs, my pulse pounding in my ears as if I've been running for miles. The sweat oozes down my forehead, and my breath comes in short gasps. I think I'm going to be sick. I almost reach out to tell the cab driver to stop, but by then he's drawing up in front of a small house. It's surrounded by soaring apartment-blocks.
But this structure, time forgot.
The driver unloads my bag and opens the door. I force my legs to move. Then I'm out of the car and looking at the bungalow.
It's two stories tall, gracious, built in a colonial style. The name engraved on its side says, "Napeansea Grange - built 1918."
The walls are painted white and sparkle in the afternoon sunshine. A porch runs around the front of the house. On it, a wooden swing creaks in the light wind.
Small shrubs spread out in one corner in front of a luxurious lawn that stretches along both sides of the driveway. A clear indication that, despite the boiling heat, they are well cared for.
The overall feeling is one of quiet wealth. Dignity, and a pace of life that is gentle, unhurried, very different from the world I know. An entire continent away from Silicon Valley. It's as if I have stepped off the flight and gone back in time.
Dragging my suitcase, I walk under a tall tree shading the driveway.
Small red and yellow flowers, unlike any I have seen before, dot the ground. I focus on them, drawing strength from the colors. One step, and then another.
Then I'm at the door and ringing the bell.
When it opens, I don't look up immediately. I can't. My eyes fall on the feet of the person standing there. Big feet, male feet, clad in open-toed shoes. Pale toenails set against light-ebony skin. Skin lighter than mine, of a color that hints at mixed heritage.
Unable to stop myself, my eyes run up the faded jeans, flat waist, the dark skin visible through the threadbare cotton shirt open at the neck, curved lips turning down into a frown, and dark blue eyes.
"Sienna?" asks the handsome man in his late forties. At my nod, he holds out his hand, "I'm Neil D'Souza, your mother's friend and lawyer."
He ushers me as a servant takes my bag from me.
"Your mother's inside," he says, leading me into a spacious living room with ceiling fans that whirl up the hot air.
I seat myself on the comfortable sofa. An older man materializes bringing me a cool drink.
I sip it, and sigh in delight. It's delicious, refreshing, and a taste I can't quite get a handle on. A medley of sweet and tangy, a fusion of flavors.
"A local drink, a blend of gooseberry and herbs over crushed ice," Neil explains.
"Gooseberry?" I frown.
"It's common in these parts." He smiles.
I set down the glass on the side table and fold my hands together, then say, "Was it you on the phone?"
He nods, "I'm your mother's, Anja Deol's, lawyer," he says.
Anja Deol.
I roll it around in my head, try it out over my tongue, whisper it to myself, letting the syllables ripple over my skin. It sounds alien.
Nothing familiar about it.
I shut my eyes, try to recall those images that come to me often in the early hours of the day, when I'm suspended between sleep and being awake, but find nothing.
Nothing except loneliness, and hurt. And anger at being made to face up to a past I'm not ready for.
"Don't you want to know what name she gave you when you were born?" Neil asks.
"No," I lie, "It’s irrelevant. I'm Sienna Murphy."
He looks taken aback.
"It must all be so overwhelming," he says, his voice soft, persuasive. "But first meet your mother, hear her out. She has something very important to tell you." He hesitates. "Your mother's unwell, Sienna, she's been ailing for the last year. I've been helping care for her. She doesn't have much time."
I hear him, but I'm numb, not sure what to feel. Then he's on his feet, and guiding me toward the closed door at the far end of the corridor. He knocks on it, and pushes it open without waiting for an answer.
I am not ready for this.
37
Sienna
* * *
I follow Neil into my mother's room.
The first thing that hits me is that sharp smell of antiseptic and, below that, the strong, sweet smell of something I can't quite identify.
It's cool in here, the air conditioning turned up high enough to beat even the extreme heat outside.
The room is large with high ceilings. A bookcase covers one wall. In the middle of the room is a four-poster bed, the old-fashioned kind, and in the center of it, a figure ... At least, I think the slight bump in the middle is my mother.
"She's awake, but still groggy from yesterday's chemo session," Neil explains, but I barely hear him.
He walks toward the bed, before leaning over the figure. Turning, he beckons me over.
My sneakers make soft shuffling noises as I walk across the floor. I stop by the bed, to look down at the woman covered by blankets. She's so thin she barely makes a dent.
Her eyes are open, and she's looking at me, the look in her eyes echoing what I feel. Stunned surprise. Shock. She can't believe I am here. I can’t either.
Just like that, tears fill my eyes.
Seeing her so helpless―body wasted, head wrapped in a scarf, grooves running up her cheeks on a face ravaged by pain―sends a piercing ache through me.
I don't know her, don't remember her face. She's nothing like the ghosts that sometimes whisper at the fringes of my consciousness. And yet, something in her desperation pulls at me.
When she holds out her hand, I grip it and sink down on the bed next to her.
The door shuts behind Neil, but all my attention is taken up by this woman who is my blood mother.
A woman's laughter.
My mother's laughter.
Tinkling of anklets.
My mother loved to dance. Now her once beautiful form is ravaged by disease.
My mother opens her mouth but no words emerge. Her eyes dart to the glass on the nightstand. I pick it up and, helping her sit up, hold it to her lips. She leans against the headboard and gulps down the water.
When she finishes, I place the glass back and turn to her. Her eyes shimmer with tears. This time, it's me who reaches out to grip her hand, clasping it in both of mine.
In her eyes—amber eyes so like mine—I see regret, love, and below it all a spark of anger.
A ripple of emotion races through me. Hurt, anger, affection and something else. A pull of trust. Of deep, unshakeable faith. A certainty that this woman is my mother.
I just know it.
I shake my head, still unable to speak but wanting to tell her it is okay, that I am here now. That we'll figure it out. That it didn't matter what had happened in the past, to get us to this stage.
That it didn't matter how I had come to be wandering around on my own, with no memory at the age of five.
It was enough that she had found me now.
We sit there not saying anything, yet saying so much to each other.
Then Anja begins to speak. She doesn’t stop. It's as if all the words, conversations she'd stored up to have with me—her long-lost daughter―all of it comes pouring out.
She tells me everything.
Anja passes away a week later. I stay with her till the end.
38
Sienna
* * *
Anja was cremated this morning, and I spread her ashes across the waves of the Arabian Sea.
Since she passed away, I've been numb. I'm not sure what I am supposed to feel. Regret at all the time I didn't have with her? Or perhaps I should be grateful that I had a week with her. Right now, I feel empty, as if all my emotions have drained away with her.
Neil and I are back at the bungalow.
So I sit in the study that had once been my father's, hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea, and wait for Neil to speak.
Books line an entire wall and on a mantelpiece sits pictures of a family. My family. One I am getting to know. Of my mother and father and me in happier times.
There are also pictures of me as a baby, as a little girl, till I'd been kidnapped at five.
Those gaps in my memory now have places and colors attached to them, but it still feels alien. As if I'm trying on a skin and finding it doesn't quite fit.
"She missed you a lot and so did your father," Neil says in that soft voice of his, drawing my attention away from the pictures.
I know my face wears the emotions I'm feeling inside. I can't put it off, not any more.
The last week has been about Anja, about spending as much time as I could with her, knowing I was going to lose her and yet trying to peer through her to see if I could glimpse the image of the mother she must have been in her younger years.
In the few days I had with my mother, she'd told me a little bit about having lost me when I was young. Now I ask Neil the inevitable questions about my past.
"You were taken," he says. "Kidnapped from school. Part of a wave of extortions taking place at that time. Your father was a powerful man. He worked for the police and was instrumental in breaking a ring of terrorists. He foiled what could have been a second 26/11 in the city."
He's referring to 2008 when terrorists had carried out a series of bombing attacks across the city. It had left many dead, and injured hundreds.
"So I was kidnapped as a way of getting back at him?"
Neil nods. "Your father refused to pay them off and your mother never forgave him for that. He was clear that he had to set an example by not bowing to their pressure. And he was confident that he would be able to track down the kidnappers, which he did—"
"But it was too late," I say, my voice soft. "I remember parts of it. Voices, images that have grown stronger in the last week. The men who took me, they kept me locked in a room for a few weeks. They..." I swallow. "They kept me drugged. So, the memories of those days are hazy. But I get flavors of what happened then, do you understand?"
"Do you remember how you escaped?"
Coming to Bombay and seeing my mother helped in at least one way. Over the last few nights some more of the memories have revealed themselves. "One of the kidnappers let me go. He told me I reminded him of his daughter. The next thing I remember is almost meeting with an accident."
Screech of vehicles―
Screams―
"My adoptive father pulling me out of the path of an oncoming car."
"I'm glad we found you in time. At least yo
u got to spend a few days with her," Neil says.
Yeah.
Thinking about Anja is still difficult. It feels unfair that I got to meet her only to have her taken away from me so soon. My breathing goes shallow. It's difficult to draw air into my lungs, let alone speak.
"Your mother had this uncanny confidence, even after all these years, that she was going to find you." Neil's voice cuts through the emotions swirling in my head.
"Fate," he says, "can be cruel and yet sometimes we are all at its mercy. Pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put together, and the pattern that emerges always surprises."
"We ran checks on you," Neil says, his voice apologetic. "There's more," he says, his voice gentle, but with a thread of steel running through it, one I hadn't heard earlier. "Your mother left a will. She left everything to you. Your father was careful with his investments. Enough to leave your mother well taken care of. All of it, and this house, which is on some of the most expensive real estate in the world, it all goes to you."
I hear him, but my brain is still not able to process what he means by it.
"You are a very rich woman, Sienna."
I start.
My blood family is gone, but they've left me money. A lot of it, by the sounds of it.
"I don't deserve the money," I say, looking around the room again. The space is heavy with memories.
The ghosts of my parents still live here. The ghosts I have carried in my head for so long that they seem more real than the pictures on the mantelpiece.
Neil walks around the desk and sits down in the chair next to me. He grips my hand and I feel the affection, the sympathy, bleed into me from his touch.
"She'd want you to have it." he says. "They'd both have wanted you to have it."
I stay quiet, then finally ask, "My name. What is it?"
"Tara," he says. "You are Tara Deol."
I smile at that, a weight lifts off my chest. I don't recognize the name. But I like it. It sounds… "Pretty," I say.
