“I better get back,” Lily said. “I needed to clear my head after the morning rush, and was just planning to walk up and down the Cul-de-Sac when the cop car pulled up and Veda started ranting.”
“I’ll walk with you, get some coffee.”
Brett’s pale blue eyes fell on me as I walked away, and he jabbed a finger in my direction, his bald head gleaming under the weak sunlight. “Why don’t you ask him? It’s his fucking father who’s a psychopath.”
I gave him my most charming smile.
He flinched as if I’d hit him. His wife put a hand on his arm. Statuesque and striking Veda with her long red curls was way out of Brett’s league if you were judging solely on looks, but while they were prats to everyone else, they seemed to have a great marriage.
My mother had never reached out to a young Veda as she had to Alice, and maybe it had been a simple case of differing personalities, but looking back, I think it was also about envy. One evening, when I was a teen, I’d caught her watching the couple from my bedroom. She’d had an odd … yearning look on her face, and when I’d gone up to her, she’d put her arm around my shoulders and said, “Look.”
Following her gaze, I’d seen Brett silhouetted against his large kitchen window. He’d been cooking, and as we watched, Veda had slipped her arms around him from behind, and pressed a kiss to his neck. He’d smiled and said something that made her laugh.
“Sometimes,” my mother had murmured, “I see beauty and I want to break it.” Then she’d smiled and kissed me on the cheek and asked me if I wanted her to make my favorite cookies, and we’d never again talked about Veda and Brett except as our annoying neighbors.
I’d automatically discarded doughy out-of-shape Brett as a possible suspect when it came to my mother’s “tall and dark-haired” lover, but now I wondered. Because Brett hadn’t always been bald. Had she done it? Had she damaged the unexpected beauty of the Fitzpatricks’ marriage just because it hurt her to see them have what she didn’t?
If she had … Well, Veda was a smart, strong woman who took no shit.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick.” Constable Neri’s clipped tone. “I’m going to have to remind you to stop making unfounded allegations that inflame the situation.”
Brett’s cheeks turned a mottled red.
Veda, meanwhile, looked around at all the neighbors watching the show, and suddenly ducked her head. I couldn’t hear what she said next, but Neri nodded and the four of them—the other officer included—filed onto their drive and up through the tree ferns at the entrance. Shadows filigreed their bodies before they disappeared from sight.
Lily didn’t look at me as she said, “That bother you?”
“No. My father is a shit.”
“You think he could’ve done that? Poisoned a dog?”
“Sure. But do I really think my father would skulk around at night to lure a dog?” I shook my head. “If he was going to do something like that, he’d probably wait until the Fitzpatricks were away for the day, then chuck a poisoned piece of meat over the fence.”
“It’s kind of scary how you can just say that like it’s no big deal.”
“It’s hypothetical. I do hypotheticals all the time—it’s my job. Writers are professional liars.”
A frozen moment as she stopped, stared at me, before her lips—soft with gloss—twitched. “You had me going there, Aarav.”
I grinned and left it at that … and tried not to think about my dirty feet. No way could I have done anything to the dog. First of all, I had a fucking broken foot. I could’ve hardly chased down the huge animal—or run away from the vicious thing. And where exactly would I have obtained poison in the middle of the night? It wasn’t like I’d bought it and stored it away in readiness for the murderous urge to strike.
I’d gone sleepwalking. Weird, but that was it.
“Aarav.”
No mistaking that voice. Unlike Leonid, Anastasia had a thick Russian accent. She was just coming out of the café as we reached it, and—after waving to Lily as Lily slipped inside—leaned forward to kiss me on both cheeks in that way she had. For a second, my mind hitched on the scent of her perfume, before a sudden breeze blew it away.
The wind played through Anastasia’s long and expertly cut blonde-brown tresses. That hair framed a pointed face with slanted green eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones. She could’ve been a catwalk model if not for her diminutive height of five-foot-one.
“I hear the news,” she said, her lips downturned. “About your mother. I am sorry to hear this. You are doing all right, yes?”
The genuine depth of her concern took me by surprise. “Part of me always knew she’d never leave me if she had a choice.”
She nodded firmly and beat a small-fisted hand against her chest. “Da. That is mother love.” A glance in the direction I’d seen Leonid walk off with the stranger and the twins. “I hear this terrible news, and I think—how my babies grow up if I am gone? Leonid is good papa, but he is not mama.”
I didn’t know if she expected an answer to that, so I just gave her a quiet smile.
Her eyes softened. “I know you are sad, Aarav, but it no good to walk around with so less clothes in the cold.”
“What?”
“Last night.” She waved in the direction of my father’s house … but it could as easily have been halfway to the Fitzpatricks. “I wake to look after babies. I see you standing there. No shirt. No shoes.” She clicked her tongue. “Your mama would not want this.”
Oddly, for a woman who’d never met my mother, she was right. I could still remember how my mum would wrap my jacket around me when I was younger, how she’d remind me to pack my sweatshirt if I had an after-school thing that might run late.
The memories unfurled at hyperspeed in a brain that seemed to have otherwise slowed down to molasses, it took so long for Anastasia’s meaning to penetrate. When it did, the possible consequences jolted into me. “Veda finds out I was out at night,” I said in a wry tone that was a mask over my skittering pulse, “she’ll probably say I poisoned her dog.”
Anastasia snorted. “Leonid, he message me about this stupid woman.” She held up her phone. “Don’t worry.” A wave of her hand. “I don’t say anything about you walking late. Everyone don’t like those two—they even try to find out things about Leonid from our nanny!” Steam all but came out of her ears. “But Khristina? She Leonid’s cousin—we give her job to help with her nursing school bills. She act dumb with Veda, then tell us.”
A scowl marred her sharp face. “Always, they don’t look after dog. Let it dig all over, eat strange things. Now they blame everyone else.” Leaning in, she kissed me on the cheek again, and for a moment, I was entangled in a waft of perfume so familiar it hurt. “Don’t worry. I say nothing to anyone. But next time you want to night walk, put on more clothes.”
24
After grabbing my coffee from Lily’s, I walked back to the house but couldn’t make myself go inside. I had to do some research, but I could as easily do that while seated on the black sands of Piha. Maybe the salt air would wash away the scent of a perfume I hadn’t smelled in ten years.
I got into the sedan.
It was surreal, how quickly the gloss and glass of the Cul-de-Sac disappeared under the primeval green of the regional park. The trees and ferns on either side of the road hung there in sullen silence, their branches forever attempting to arch across. Should humanity stop tomorrow, the dark green would begin its takeover the very next day.
We were inconsequential to the bush, as locals so casually called it. Thick and tangled, it would eat you alive and not even notice. As it had my mother. Ten years, it had kept her in its arms. Ten years while her blood turned to dust and her flesh melted off her bones, and her murderer thought they’d gotten away with it.
The wind was solid today, but the bush stood firm. It had survived far worse than a big wind. I could easily imagine dinosaurs striding through the
trees, looking completely at home. Once, as a young teen, I’d gone into the park with nothing but a small daypack, my aim to walk off my anger after a fight with my father.
The weather had turned in five deadly minutes, black clouds covering the sky and chips of ice pelting down like rain. Disorientation had hit so hard that I’d had to physically fight the urge to run, do something. It was instinct to think motion was better than stillness.
But in the bush, unintentional motion could get you dead.
As it turned out, the weather cleared as fast as it had turned, and I soon spotted the trail marker I’d lost in my panic. But I could as easily have ended up another set of bones in the green.
“Ari, beta, don’t go into those trees.” My mother’s fingers brushing my arm as I, still small, sat beside her on the back lawn, my gaze on the forest that loomed in front of us. We hadn’t had a fence against the trees then, the seduction of the forest only steps away.
“That’s not a friendly forest like in your books,” she’d said, her dark eyes hypnotized by the whisper of the trees. “It’s a forest that’ll steal you and keep you. And you know I’d die with missing you.”
Kilometer after kilometer of green and wood, huge ferns with their dark trunks, and the twisting branches of trees I couldn’t name. Sudden flutters in the canopies, birds taking flight. Then the first sighting of a gull.
I didn’t feel like I’d taken a full breath until I pulled up to park behind a black sand dune held together by tough coastal grass that waved in the wind. At my back rose a mountain covered in bushland, the lone house up there appearing a toy structure in among all the green.
Taking off my single sneaker and sock, I left them in the car, then picked up my cane.
The sand on the path to the beach was firm, but it still wasn’t made for a cane and my foot didn’t thank me for my uneven balance. I didn’t go far—just beyond the nearest dune, so I could see the ocean. After a long, deep inhale, I sat down with my back to the dune’s gentle slope. The soft ebony of the sand glittered with minerals even in the weak sunlight, but I had to take a moment before I could appreciate it.
Even the short exertion had me huffing, my foot hot with a dull agony.
But it didn’t matter. Not after another breath. Not in this place of wild magic.
Tiny spiral shells bleached white lay beside me, on sand that had been brushed into perfect ripples by the wind. Picking up one, I looked at its curves, entranced by the delicacy of its form.
“Look, Ari. This shell here.” Wild hair whipping around her head, my mother’s body clad in that yellow swimsuit as she crouched on the beach, her smile huge, and her eyes squinting against the sun.
Putting the shell down on the sand with care, I dug out my phone. The data connection glitched and I wondered if I’d have to leave the beach despite my need to be near its primal pulse. The waves crashed to shore, foaming white breakers against the glittering iron, rolling unwary surfers who’d come out to battle the waves.
“Come, Ari! Let’s play in the waves! Hold my hand!”
Putting away my phone, I folded up the leg of my jeans on my good leg, and began to struggle to the breakers. I left the cane where it was—it’d be pretty useless on the soft sand closer to the water. The surfers were distant black dots on the horizon, sleek as seals, and the few people out walking on this blustery, cloudy day were far enough away that they didn’t bother me, and thank God no one offered to help me. I didn’t want help.
I wanted to hold on to her hand. On to her memory.
Sliding my mental hand in hers, I stumbled on despite the pain in my foot that now vibrated right up my leg. The water hit my toes first, my feet sinking into the wet as foam covered my exposed skin. With the shock of cold came reason.
“Ah, fuck!” The moon boot was wet.
Not soaked, but it would be soon if I didn’t back off.
Turned out it was harder to go backward on sand than to just turn and walk up the beach. Despite that, I had to force myself to turn my back to the smashing waves. Two surfers in the distance crested a massive wave as I finally succeeded, their wet-suited forms streaks in my peripheral vision. The warm sand felt gritty and unwelcoming on the walk back, and my leg pulsed with pain.
Cold or not, sweat slicked my sweater to my back by the time I collapsed beside my cane. I sat there for long minutes, just relearning to breathe. The ghost of my mother danced in the waves, motioning me toward her. Beside me lay the fragile ruins of the spiral shell.
A wet breath by my ear, a rough tongue licking my face.
“Rocco! Stop!” A petite brunette grabbed the ruff of the cheerful golden retriever that had licked me. “I’m so sorry! He loves people.”
I petted the excited dog’s head. I liked animals. I didn’t go around poisoning them. “No harm done. He’s a beauty.”
Her cheeks rounded, her hazel eyes warm. “Isn’t he? My best friend.”
Though Rocco pulled on the leash, ready to move on, his owner lingered. “You’re here alone?” A glance at my leg.
“Yeah, had to get away from my keepers.” I made it a joke and she laughed, her hair sparkling in the sunshine. “Is Rocco your boyfriend?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m single.”
Two minutes later, I had her number, and she was walking away with her impatient dog—and a fluttering wave over her shoulder. I might call her. She was pretty and sweet and I could do with a little sweetness.
Paige had been … complicated, and look how that had ended. So totally that she hadn’t even bothered to call after I wound up in the hospital. Sometimes, I wanted to ask her if I’d really been that bad. If I’d pushed her until she had no mercy for me anymore.
Today, however, I had other priorities—and a strong data signal.
I looked away from the ghost dancing in the waves.
The first thing I did was search the Companies Office Register. It confirmed that Lily Chairat was the sole director of—and shareholder in—the café.
Her home address was listed as the café, which wasn’t per regulations—but I knew a lot of company directors who “forgot” to update their details. I couldn’t blame them. A raging man had once turned up at my father’s house when I was a teenager—an unhappy ex-employee who’d decided to take his complaint right to the top.
I next went looking for signs of any possible bankruptcy proceedings against the Henare family.
Nothing. Not even any reported rumors of financial trouble.
Staring out at the beckoning waves one final time, I decided to head back. Time had passed quickly once I began my searches, and it was now 1 p.m. Just enough time for me to get a bite to eat before I made my next move. Lily usually closed around two, to reopen for three hours from six to nine for “quick bites,” and I’d noticed that she always drove somewhere after her day session.
The clouds parted to haze the world in a misty rain as I drove home.
I didn’t enter the Cul-de-Sac but waited in the tree-shadowed drive of a home set off by itself on Scenic Drive. One of the older properties in this area, it wasn’t anything as exclusive as the Cul-de-Sac. The forest had crept closer and closer to it, until the steep drive was barely navigable. From the tiny glimpse I caught of the house at the end, I noted a carpet of fallen leaves on the roof.
The overhanging bush created plenty of shadows in which to park my nondescript vehicle.
Lily’s silver compact drove past not long afterward. I gave myself plenty of time before pulling out behind her, the rain my accomplice. With this bland block of a car, I’d fade into the background unless she was paying attention. I half expected her to stop at the site of my mother’s grave, but though she slowed, she carried on … for only about five minutes, before she pulled into the drive of a home of cedar and glass set back against the green of the forest.
Sliding my car to a halt behind a fortuitously parked phone-company van, I watched
her get out. The front door opened to reveal a stunning blonde in a skintight red dress. She brought a cigarette to her lips, took a drag. But though she appeared brazen, she stepped back when Lily walked toward her.
The two women disappeared inside.
The door shut.
Not sure quite what I’d seen but with time on my hands, I decided to wait. More movement on the drive a bare ten minutes later. Another stunner, this one a brown-skinned brunette in an old Mini Cooper that all but rattled when it moved.
Twenty minutes later, two more cars arrived, both in considerably better condition.
A gleaming black Lexus, and a white Audi. The Lexus arrived first. Parking next to Lily’s compact, the black-clad man who got out glanced around the hushed green privacy of the area with a furtive look before walking up to the front door.
The blonde welcomed him with a kiss.
Audi was a pudgy executive-type who walked like he owned the world. Brunette for him.
But even though I waited and waited, no one came for Lily. Meanwhile, blonde and brunette had both welcomed three men each over the course of three hours.
Lily finally exited around five-thirty. I didn’t follow her, well aware of her destination. Instead, I waited for the brunette with the bad car.
At one point during my wait, I decided to take a risk and get out despite the pain in my leg.
Transcript
Session #6
“I felt as if we had a breakthrough last session. Yet today, you’re telling me nothing.”
“Didn’t you say that I could sit here for an hour and say nothing if I wanted? I’m paying for that hour after all.”
“If that’s what you wish.”
“Passive-aggressive doesn’t suit you.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“Is that how you see it? What the hell is this? Amateur hour?”
“You have a lot of anger inside you.”
“Oh, fantastic. Now my highly paid therapist is resorting to clichés. I must’ve really screwed up your head with everything I told you last time.”
Quiet in Her Bones Page 13
