Quiet in Her Bones

by Singh, Nalini

  According to my computer files, I’d written the first sixty pages of book two the week before the crash. Had I decided the meds were screwing with my creativity? Sounded like my kind of ­self-­destructive choice.

  I put the pills back into their bottles.

  Bad choice or not, I couldn’t afford to lose the fever driving me to uncover the truth.

  Since there was nothing I could do about Alice at that moment, I spent time working on my book. Fueled by the sweets that filled my veins with sugar, the words flowed out of me like the rain that turned the world outside into a foggy gray haze.

  “I’ll pick up Pari,” I told Shanti when I came up for air; I had a vague memory of her asking if I wanted lunch, but despite missing the meal, I wasn’t hungry. Chocolate and fudge, the diet of champions. “I need the break anyway.”

  The persistent rain turned my windscreen into a waterfall as I pulled away from the Cul-­de-­Sac. I wondered what Gigi would say if I told her I’d just written five thousand words in a manic ­rush … except that none of them had anything to do with the book I was contracted to deliver. I’d started writing what I thought was a short story about a young woman who goes out walking one day and doesn’t return.

  Somehow, the character had ended up in the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park, shoving her way through sharp branches as panic clawed at her, her skin beginning to bleed and her breath to hurt. As she fought for her life, her improbably teenaged son got on a neighbor’s motorbike and raced off after her.

  There was no logic to the entire jumbled mess.

  Even worse, I hadn’t even known what I was doing until afterward, when I’d stared at what I’d written:

  The road was slick under the front wheel of the bike, water splashing up as he powered through the tiny lakes birthed by the rain. He had to be careful or he’d end up sprawled on the road, broken and battered and of no use to his mother.

  A turtle with no shell, a piece of meat without bones.

  She needed him. He could hear her calling to him.

  What the hell was that? Just my subconscious working through the seeds the police had planted in my brain? That’s how I’d always dealt with hard emotional topics. By writing things down. Though usually, I was conscious of what I was doing.

  Still, this wasn’t exactly a normal time. I couldn’t blame my brain for hijacking my plans. One thing I knew, ­however—­I hadn’t gone after my mother that night. If I had, my bones wouldn’t burn with the echo of the vicious sense of helplessness I’d felt as her car disappeared into the storm.

  The area around the school was crawling with cars, everyone trying to get close. But since the rain was beginning to let up a little, I parked half a block up, then began to make my way to the gate.

  I saw Mia before I saw Pari.

  Diana’s ­fifteen-­year-­old daughter was standing with Pari, the two of them in conversation. My sister’s face was ­bright-­eyed and worshipful ­under her ­pink-­with-­white-­polka-­dots umbrella, while Mia had more of a teenage insouciance to her, her silky black hair coated with droplets of rain and the look in her uptilted eyes suggesting an awareness of her own beauty. And yet she never ignored ­Pari—­that said something about ­Diana’s daughter.

  Mia straightened when she spotted me, the delighted smile that broke out over her face momentarily easing the impression of the incipient adult, hovering on the edges of childhood. “Hi, Aarav.”

  Shit.

  I knew that look, but Mia was way too young for it.

  38

  “Hey,” I said as Pari closed her umbrella and came to sort of ­side-­hug me by sliding in an arm under the crutches. “You waiting for Diana?”

  “Uh-­huh.” Mia tucked one wing of ­shoulder-­length hair behind her ear, her lips lush in a face with a striking bone structure that Diana said she’d inherited from Calvin’s mother.

  I wondered what it was like for Calvin to look into his daughter’s face and see his dead mother looking back at him. And for the first time, I wondered what would happen should I ever decide to pass on my genes.

  Would my own dead mother stare back at me from a child’s face?

  “My friends are going to freak.” Mia’s skin flushed. “We all love your book, and Mum even took us to the movie. I had to totally beg, since it was like RP 16, but it was so uh-­mazing.”

  I knew the root of the ­adoration—­it was the author photo on my books. No leather jacket, just a simple white shirt rolled up to the elbows paired with my favorite jeans, the camera catching my face as I lifted it in a half smile.

  “Oh, anyone who likes men will lick this up,” Gigi had said when I’d sent her the shots. “And you need all the help you can get. With a ­five-­thousand-­dollar-per-book advance, no one’s going to be pushing your work. Might as well go for a few impulse buys.”

  As it turned out, someone had pushed my book. An actor well known for being a big reader had randomly picked it up at an airport, then ended up stuck in his hotel room because of a riot in the streets below. He’d done a chapter-­by-­chapter dissection of Blood Sacrifice online as he read, and his millions of fans had followed along.

  Gigi had sent me a text at the time:

  Gird your loins for a public massacre and for the love of all that is holy, stay offline and keep your lips zipped.

  The reason for the warning? The actor had clearly started out intending to slaughter the book, having chosen “the most lurid cover in the poxy airport shop”—­he’d even done a small video at the start making horrified faces and saying, “What the bollocks am I to do then? Stuck in this bloody ­arse-­end of a room with only this minging trash for company.”

  That was bullshit, since he had a phone and the ability to download a new read at any time, but the whole thing had been a show put on to entertain himself and his legions of followers.

  The actor’s initial disdain was why the thread had ended up going viral. Because by the end of the book, he was just doing the barest updates.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  Oh hell no.

  Run, motherfucker!

  You numpty!

  They’re all gonna die.

  NO.

  His final update on the thread had said: Buy this book, lads and ladies. We’ll have a blooming book ­club—­I gotta talk about this bonkers twist. Anyone who spoils it is an absolute git. Our lad Aarav can write.

  He’d then followed my account. He had ­twenty-­five million followers at that point and followed only two hundred others.

  I’d gone from having a respectable five hundred followers, to fifty thousand in the space of mere hours. The number was closer to a million now and maybe a few of them came because of the author photo and those motorcycle images shot by the magazine, but I hadn’t needed any of the photos to make my career.

  My words had done it for me.

  Mia looked around, waving ostentatiously at her friends to make sure they saw she was talking to me. Since I was never in the mood to do selfies with teenage girls, I was just about to make my exit with Pari when Mia’s phone rang.

  “It’s Mum,” she said with a frown, and answered. “Ugh. How long?” A pause, before she looked at me. “Aarav’s here to pick up Pari. Can I ride home with him?”

  I gestured for her to hand over the ­glitter-­encrusted phone. “Diana,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Just a flat tire.” She sighed. “I’m pulled over at a petrol station, waiting for the AA to respond. Do you mind taking Mia back with you? Beau has hockey practice today, so if Shanti could keep an eye on her till I get back home, I’d be grateful.”

  “Sure, no problem.” I didn’t think the ­fifteen-­year-­old would appreciate a babysitter, but there were ways to spin that. Not that I didn’t understand Diana’s ­overprotectiveness—­I’d just seen two adult men, fathers picking up their children, give Mia an interested glance.

  Jesus. She was just a kid.

  After handing Mia her phone, I said, “You�
�re hanging with us till your mum gets home.”

  She started to bristle. “I have a key.”

  “Don’t you want to spend time with us?” I grinned.

  Giggling, she blushed. “Um, no. I mean yeah, I want to hang with you.”

  An excited Pari voluntarily gave up the front passenger seat and scrambled into the back. She chatted to Mia about her hair as I got going. I was barely paying attention, but I heard her mention Mia’s new watch. I’d spotted it while we were talking, one of the big new colorful styles I’d seen advertised on several major billboards.

  “Aunt Sarah sent it to me for my birthday.” Mia showed it off. “I asked Mum if I could open it early and she said it was up to me.”

  “Are you going to have a party?” Pari’s voice was hopeful.

  “A slumber party,” Mia answered before I could head things off. “Just for friends my age.”

  Pari said, “Oh,” and I wanted to wince, but I couldn’t blame Mia for not wanting a much younger child at her sixteenth.

  “But I’ll save you a piece of cake and make sure to come over before the slumber party so we can take a picture together. Wear your party dress.” Mia’s generous offer was enough to have my sister smiling again.

  Yeah, Diana had good kids, kids raised in love who understood kindness.

  “Mum’s taking me on a shopping spree,” Mia continued excitedly, “and Dad said I can pick out my own car after I pass my restricted license test. He gave me a budget, so it won’t be new or anything, and he’s really strict about making sure they have all the safety systems, but I already found some super cute used ones online. Beau said he’d pay for these fun seat covers I want. It’s going to be the best birthday!”

  “You didn’t want a big party?” I asked.

  “Ugh, no.” She made a face. “People can be super fake, you know? I’d rather have an awesome night with my actual ride-­or-­die friends.”

  “So wise so young.”

  Bright laughter.

  “That’s a pretty nice gift.” I nodded in the direction of her watch. “Aunt Sarah obviously got it right.”

  “Yes, she’s good at giving presents.” Mia admired her watch again. “Plus she gets them from all over the world! Last year, she went on a cruise to Venice with a bunch of her girlfriends, and she brought back the most amazing glass sculpture for ­me—­and she sent Beau old sheet music that he freaked out over. Nerd.” It was said with laughing affection.

  “I mean, if she and Mum talked, I’d think Mum must’ve told her what to get, but they don’t. Aunt Sarah just listens, you know?”

  “You two talk a lot?” I slowed down to allow an elderly man to cross the road.

  “I mean, we email once a month. She’s so nice, she never judges me.”

  “No phone calls?”

  Mia shook her head. “Maybe from next year? That’s when I get my own phone.”

  “But you already have one,” Pari piped up from the backseat.

  “Yeah, but it’s linked to my mum’s so she can see all my messages.” A roll of the eyes I could hear in her tone. “But Beau got his own phone from seventeen, and Mum says I can, too. She’s freaked out that I’ll be groomed or something by child ­mo—­” She threw a glance at the very interested backseat passenger. “You know, bad people.”

  Pari was unfazed. “We learned about online safety in school.”

  “You think Sarah doesn’t call so your mum can’t get her details?”

  “It’s so weird,” Mia responded. “I mean, Beau can be a butthead, but I’d still never totally not talk to him. I guess whatever happened, it was a super big deal. Neither one of them will ever say what it was.”

  “Does she call Beau?”

  “No, but he hates talking on the phone. He just doesn’t pick up.”

  I wondered again what had caused the irreparable schism between the sisters. Diana appeared ready to bury the hatchet, but Sarah clearly wasn’t in agreement. So unless Sarah was an asshole, Diana was the one who’d done the unforgivable.

  It wasn’t any of my business, but I kept thinking: what if one of the two died? What if they never got a chance to fix the relationship? It would haunt them. As my final moments with my mother haunted me.

  We hadn’t fought. Nothing like that.

  “Ari, beta, we’re off.” A quick kiss on the cheek as I sat in front of the computer.

  I’d barely looked away from the game on the screen as I said, “Party hard.”

  My last glimpse of my mother might’ve been a fleeting snapshot of her in my bedroom doorway, her lips parting as she ­laughed—­but something had made me get up and go to the landing, watch her walk down the stairs. She’d looked up once, and then she was ­gone … for the last time.

  All three of us went quiet as I drove deep into the shadowed and rainy green of Scenic Drive, past the sheer drop where my mother’s car had gone off the road. It was Mia who broke the silence at last. “That must make you sad.”

  “Yes.” She was too young to understand that I was full of as much rage as sadness, as if one couldn’t exist without the other. “But I’m glad we’ve found her after all this time.”

  “Will you have the funeral soon? Mum was crying and saying she hates it that she has to bury her best friend, but she also wants to stand up for her. She said she’ll wear a dress your mum gave her even though it’s bright red.”

  “I have to wait until the police say it’s okay.” In truth, I hadn’t thought about burying the bones since the day they’d been found.

  My mother was dead; there was nothing of her left in those bones. But maybe a funeral would help turn over some rocks, bring more dark secrets to light. Checking everyone’s alibis for that night was an impossibility at this ­point—­ten years on, spotty memories weren’t exactly suspicious.

  A motorcycle wheel on wet tarmac, rain hitting the face shield of my helmet.

  Transcript

  Session #10

  “She had a profound impact on your life.”

  “Yes. Some days it’s all I can do to stop thinking about ­

  her—­as if she’s taunting me.”

  “Yet from all you’ve said, the two of you didn’t have a combative relationship.”

  “We ­had … a different kind of relationship. It was about power, and about who held it, and it wasn’t … healthy in the way that kind of relationship should be.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that lends a person extreme power. I saw her twist men around her finger simply by smiling and giving them a particular look. Women didn’t always respond to her, but they did when she tried. And she did try at ­times—­she had female friends, even a best friend.”

  “So how did her beauty get between you?”

  “It—­let me think.”

  [Pause]

  “People like her, they don’t always consider the consequences of their actions. She did things ­that … hurt those who loved her.”

  39

  Constable Neri called in response to my message an hour later. “Thank you for your patience,” she said. “I’ve spoken to my superiors, and the remains will be released in five days’ time.”

  The remains.

  Such a graphic statement if you thought about it. A box of bones was all that remained of a human being who’d once laughed and danced in the rain and kissed her son good night. “Thank you.”

  “Have you considered what you’ll be doing?”

  “A simple cremation.”

  “We’d like to attend.”

  “Just like on TV?” I stared out the balcony doors, watching Hemi’s Mercedes SUV turn into his drive at the same time that Isaac’s car appeared in the distance. “In case the perpetrator turns up?”

  “You never know. Sometimes, guilt is easy to live with until you come face-­to-­face with the evidence of your crimes.”

  As Hemi nosed his car into his garage, I considered my father’s bitter words. Fights a
side, was it possible Hemi had still been my mother’s lover at the time of her death? Or was I right about Brett? About Isaac?

  There were too many possibilities and it was making my head hurt, my mind spin.

  Perhaps the words my mother had thrown at my father had been designed to wound, and her lover was an invisible third ­party … maybe a stranger who’d come to a funeral. “I’ll send through the details as soon as I have them.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  After hanging up, my first call was to Paul and Margaret. “Mags,” I said when she answered, all ­throaty-­voiced and languid, “Isaac’s stalking toward your house like he has something on his mind.”

  “Bloody hell. Thanks, sweetcakes.”

  A minute later, I watched through the binoculars as Mellie exited through the Dixons’ back door, and tiptoed around the corner of the house. At the same time, Isaac was banging on the Dixons’ front door. It opened, Margaret’s sequins-­of-­the-­day flashing in the light as she invited him in.

  Mellie hotfooted it back across the Cul-­de-­Sac to the home she shared with Isaac, her shoes held in one hand and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Halfway along, she stopped and waved in my direction. I laughed, the bit of domestic comedy a ­much-­needed respite.

  Poor Isaac. He really should stop marrying women twenty years his junior. Then again, Paul and Margaret were old enough to be Mellie’s grandparents, so it obviously wasn’t an age thing. Which reminded me.

  I was about to search online to see if any of the information from Isaac’s previous divorces was publicly accessible, when I had a brain wave and called his house.

  Mellie answered with a breathless “Hi?”

  “Mellie, it’s Aarav.”

  “Oh! Thanks bunches for the warning! Isaac would’ve lost it if he found me over with Paulie and Mags.” She giggled, the pitch a little too happy. “I’m fixing myself back up. Let me put you on speaker.”

  Yes, I was going to take advantage of the fact she was quite obviously high. “Mellie, I have a weird question.”

  “Yeah?”