Quiet in Her Bones

by Singh, Nalini

  Even Isaac had figured out something was going ­on—­probably cued in by the flashing ­lights—­and was wandering down the drive with his headphones around his neck.

  “Could you take me through the night’s events?” Regan requested.

  I started with hearing Princess’s bark, ended with rescuing Elei from the bathroom.

  “It’s lucky your stepmother had a key.”

  I wondered if he thought I had something to do with this. He wouldn’t after he saw the state of Alice. All she’d have had to do was kick my injured leg out from under me and I’d have been no threat to her. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that in front of my father. He’s very controlling and Shanti doesn’t have enough friends to risk losing one.”

  Seeing my father and Shanti emerge from the top of our drive just then, I said, “Look, if you have more questions, can we talk later? I need to sneak my little sister back into the house so she doesn’t get in trouble.”

  Regan glanced over his shoulder, saw my father standing there with his arms crossed, Shanti beside him in her favorite quilted robe of soft gray. My father was wearing pajama bottoms and a black sweater.

  Turning back to me, the detective said, “We’re going to need your clothes for evidence purposes, since you came into contact with the victims.”

  “Sure, whatever. Just let me tell Pari she should sneak in the back door while Shanti and our father are out front.”

  “I’ll have to come with you.”

  “No problem.” With that, I began to make my way around the side of the house. Thankfully, the trees and other foliage screened me from my father’s view as soon as I left the area in front of the property. Pari was still seated by the back steps with Princess, her eyes huge. “Aarav, did Alice or Cora get hurt?”

  “Yes, but the ambulance is here now and taking care of them. Now I want you to run inside the ­house—­you can leave Princess with this detective. Dad and your mum are out front, so no one will see.”

  She bit her lower lip and petted Princess. “But she doesn’t know the policeman.”

  “It’s only for a little while. Come on, Twinkles, let’s sneak you in before you get in trouble.”

  Releasing Princess into Regan’s care with reluctance, she fell into step beside me, her small hand reaching up to close over my wrist. I walked her to the gate, then watched until she’d ducked inside the back door and shut it behind her.

  Even then I didn’t move. Not until the light went on in her bedroom, and she pressed her face to the window, waving. Lifting a hand, I smiled. She was safe from my father’s fury ­now—­even Ishaan Rai couldn’t yell at her for being awake with all this racket going on next door.

  Shifting my attention back to Regan to find he’d passed Princess to another officer, I said, “Can I ask Shanti to pick up sweats for me from my room, or do you need me to come to the station, strip there?”

  Regan allowed me to change in the living room of my father’s house, with Regan for company. He kept his eyes averted, but had I been guilty, I would’ve had no chance to hide anything. Afterward, I retrieved my notebook from the sedan, then went upstairs and crossed a line through Alice’s name.

  Elei had told the truth; all the pieces fit.

  As for ­Cora … if she’d known it had been my mother who’d orchestrated her beating, she’d have restarted the violence long before tonight.

  I crossed off her name, too.

  With all the movement going on ­next-­door, sleep wouldn’t come, so I sat at my desk and wrote when I wasn’t watching the police. My stomach growled a couple of hours into it, but I couldn’t be bothered going downstairs so I dug into the sugar drawer.

  Dawn was a promise above the trees when I finally slept.

  I dreamed of Paige, ­long-­limbed and willowy, standing on the edge of our balcony laughing as the wind plastered her floaty white dress against her body. She’d been into the bohemian look that summer, lots of bare feet and ­sun-­golden limbs in loose clothing. Though she’d had the ear of major designers, she’d trawled op-­shops for “vintage” finds.

  “You know ‘vintage’ is just another word for ‘old,’ right?”

  Laughing at my dry comment, she’d twirled again, her dress fluttering around her.

  The dream shifted, Paige now leaning up against the glass barrier that was all that lay between her and oblivion, her gaze on the glittering shine of the city. The sun played on her hair, so delicate and golden.

  It kept on caressing her as she dragged an outdoor chair to the wall of glass and clambered on top of it. She laughed as she managed to grip the edge of the barrier and haul herself up to sit on the tempered glass.

  Then she turned, blew me a ­kiss … and jumped.

  46

  I jerked awake to a thundering heart and the piercing knowledge that the dream wasn’t right. “I wasn’t home that day.” The day Paige had jumped.

  My tongue too thick in a dry mouth, my head pounding. No, that was my pulse.

  Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I got myself up into a seated position, then reached for the bottle of water I kept on my bedside table. It was gone. Shit, I’d emptied it yesterday. Forcing myself out of bed, I was tempted to just hop over to the bathroom, but I had no intention of screwing up my leg all over again.

  I grabbed the crutches, then made my way to the cool black tile.

  Cupping my hands under the basin tap, I drank before throwing the water onto my face. It was like ice, a shock to the system. I stared at myself in the mirror as droplets fell onto my chest. Stared at the head that held a malfunctioning brain.

  I’d had a fucking conversation with Paige. I’d hallucinated her with perfect clarity.

  On the other hand, what if what I’d now “remembered” was the delusion?

  Skin cold, I wiped off my face, and made my way to the computer. The clock in the bottom right of the screen showed that it was only ­eight-­thirty. I’d had about ­two-­and-­a-­half hours of sleep. Blinking gritty eyes, I forced myself to bring up the browser and type in her name: Paige Jani Moses.

  Her stunning face filled the right side of the screen, all sharp bones and perfect lighting. One of those bio sections about famous people the search engine automatically generated. But the other top hits were news headlines.

  CATWALK MODEL PAIGE JANI CRITICALLY INJURED IN FALL

  DID PAIGE JANI JUMP?

  EXCLUSIVE: PAIGE JANI MAY HAVE BEEN DRINKING!

  “Bullshit,” I muttered under my breath. The police had told me that she hadn’t been intoxicated or under the influence of drugs when she’d decided to climb up over our lower balcony wall and jump. If she’d jumped from the top balcony, the one outside the master bedroom, she’d have fallen to the lower balcony. No easy fall, but survivable.

  But that wasn’t what she’d done.

  My eye went to the top headline:

  PAIGE JANI FAREWELLED FROM HER CHILDHOOD CHURCH

  Paige had crashed onto a parked car far, far, far below our apartment. That she’d survived at all was a ­miracle—­but her survival had been a cruel mirage. Three hours later and she was gone.

  There was vodka downstairs, endless bottles of it.

  Whiskey, too.

  Rum.

  Any poison I wanted.

  Mouth dry and hand shaking, I picked up my phone and called Dr. Jitrnicka’s office. “Can he fit me in?”

  Turned out he could even though he was only working a ­half-­day. “Just had a patient call to reschedule because their babysitter canceled on them,” the receptionist told me. “I’ll put your name in their ten o’clock slot.”

  I made my way methodically through an entire ­family-­size slab of chocolate in the interim. I had to make sure I thanked Shanti for ensuring the drawer stayed stocked. Had to be her. No one else knew my specific sugar addictions.

  It was just after ­nine-­thirty when I walked out to the car. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I knew I had to talk to someone
. Maybe the therapist could help fill the ­Swiss-­cheese holes in my brain, in my memories.

  Paige was dead. Paige was DEAD!

  I hit the steering wheel once before I reversed out of the drive and turned to head out, but didn’t press the accelerator.

  Police vehicles sat outside Alice and Cora’s home. Trixi and Lexi, dressed in venomous ­lime-­green and ­burn-­your-­eyes pink, stood craning their necks on the other side of the cordon. They weren’t the only ones. The Dixons, Margaret in head-­to-­toe black leather and Paul with his bowler hat, were walking over to join them now.

  Their faces were ­tight … and oddly voracious.

  It struck me then that I’d never once considered them as being involved with my mother’s murder simply because of their age. But they were physically fit now, had been even fitter ­then—­and they obviously had no problem attracting younger women. My mother had also liked them.

  “Mags and Paulie are wild, Ari. The kind of wild I want to be when I’m a wicked ­white-­haired budiya.”

  Wild people often hungered for new highs, for constant new doses of adrenaline. It had been ­drug-­fueled orgies in their youth. Had it become murder in their senior years?

  I tracked their movements, my brain in high ­gear … until it came to a screeching halt on the memory of those manic emails to Dr. Binchy, my mind skittering from person to person to person, leveling blame. And never looking at ­myself … never facing the memory of a motorcycle ride on a rainy night.

  I pushed my foot to the pedal.

  Trixi and Lexi raised their hands in hello as I passed, but I didn’t pause; I had no need to relive what had happened the previous night.

  For the first time, I barely flinched when I drove past the site of my mother’s murder, my hands painfully tight on the steering wheel. Arriving two minutes late to my session with Dr. Jitrnicka, I walked straight in.

  “Why don’t we ever talk about Paige?” I demanded the instant we were seated.

  The doctor took off his round eyeglasses and buffed them clean on his navy sweater. “Because you made it clear she was ­off-­limits when you first came here.” He watched me with those gentle empathic eyes. “I’m very glad you’re ready ­now—­as I said when we began, she’s critical to who you are today. Your downward spiral began with her suicide.”

  “She wasn’t trying to commit suicide. She was ­just …”

  No judgment in that face that was just a little too long for perfect symmetry. “From what I’ve learned in the media, Paige Jani had mental health struggles.”

  “She was seeing a therapist. She told me to go see one.”

  “We’re not magic, Aarav. It’s a truth I had to accept early on in my career.”

  Getting up, I paced the room in jerky steps, my crutches sinking into the thick carpet. “I only ever asked her one thing. Just one.”

  “Are you willing to share what that was?”

  The words burned bright against my brain. “Do what you want, but if you’re ever going to leave me, tell me first. Don’t just go.”

  “Ah.”

  Yes, it didn’t take a shrink to figure out why I’d made that demand. The funny thing was, I didn’t think I’d ever asked for the same promise from any other woman. At least not that I remembered. But right now, my memories were worth ­fuck-­all.

  The scream I’d heard that night reverberated in my skull.

  Had I truly heard it? Or had it been born out of my hatred of my father?

  “That explains why you didn’t attend Paige’s funeral.”

  I hadn’t? No, I hadn’t.

  My gut grew heavy under a nauseating weight of sensory memory: of vodka, of vomit, of my own body odor.

  “Fuck, mate, you can’t do this shit.” Kahu, dragging me off the couch and throwing me into the shower. He’d put together an omelet out of the few ingredients he could find in my fridge, made me eat it.

  Then he’d sat there, looked me in the eye, and said, “I don’t have any other real friends, you a-­hole. You’re whānau to me at this point. I can’t lose you. So we sit here until you stop shaking and wanting more of that poison, and then we get you into rehab, therapy, whatever the fuck it takes.”

  Kahu had saved me. Then I’d gone and stolen his girl. No wonder he’d been pissed.

  “She left you without warning,” Dr. Jitrnicka verbalized, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Though according to media reports, she did pen a suicide note.”

  I couldn’t remember the note, but if the police had given it back to me, I’d have kept it. It’d be in my safe. “Is that why I had a random woman in my car the night I crashed?”

  “You know she was only the latest in a long line since Paige’s death.” He tapped his pen lightly against his notes. “That’s why I’m so concerned about the discovery of your mother’s remains and its emotional impact. It’s a case of trauma upon trauma.”

  No wonder my mind was a fractured mess.

  I finally sat down, my left leg incredibly heavy. “Paige ­was … kind. She tried to look after me, tried to help me. Obviously, I screwed up and didn’t do the same for her.”

  “You know nothing is ever that simple. I never knew Paige, but it appears she had her own demons to battle.”

  That ghostly bottle of kombucha left untouched, as she’d so often left her food untouched. The sounds I’d regularly heard coming from the bathroom. The way she’d refused to look at images of herself when it was her business to be in those images.

  The small bundle, complete with syringe, that I’d discovered after her death.

  Outward manifestations of an inner agony that had made her whimper in her sleep.

  I’d disposed of the bundle and syringe without sharing the find with the police, not wanting the tabloids to use the information to smear her memory. Even angry with her, I hadn’t hurt ­her … because I’d loved her.

  “I wish she’d made a different choice that day,” I said, and for a moment, I didn’t know to which day I was referring.

  The day I lost my mother or the day I lost Paige.

  47

  The first thing I did after the appointment was go to my apartment and open the safe inside my study. I’d hidden the note at the very bottom of the pile of things I had in there; it was still inside a police evidence bag.

  Unsealing it, I pulled out a piece of floral notepaper.

  I’d bought her that paper after figuring out that my sophisticated model girlfriend loved all things girly and sweet and soft. She’d sprayed each sheet with her perfume before she wrote on it.

  It lingered, a musty, decaying taste on my tongue.

  Hey Aarav,

  Sorry about this. I just can’t do it anymore. Everything hurts.

  Don’t add this to the guilt you carry about your mother’s disappearance. You could do nothing then and you can’t do anything now. This is my choice and I’m deliberately making it while you’re away at your book festival, so you’ll know this wasn’t a cry for help. I don’t want to be saved. I’m ready to go.

  But I hope for better for you. I hope you find peace.

  Love always,

  Paige

  Her words echoed again and again inside my head as I sat on Piha Beach an hour and a half later. Paige had loved Piha’s black sands, the crashing ocean a siren song she could never ignore.

  “Let’s buy a place above Piha.” Her green eyes clear and bright and her short hair sticking up every which way as she turned to look at me in bed. “With a big balcony so I can sit there and listen to the ocean.”

  She’d jumped three days later.

  And in the waves now danced two ghosts.

  I didn’t know how long I watched them laugh and spin and call out to me, but the sun had long dropped from its highest point by the time I went back to my car and restarted the engine.

  I’d parked on a grassy verge, cars spread out sporadically along the long stretch of ocean. Three surfers, sleek as seals in their wetsuits, were loading their surfboard
s onto the vehicle closest to me, their hair still wet and their laughs holding that delighted edge that only comes with a rush of ­endorphins—­or adrenaline.

  I hadn’t laughed that way since I was a child.

  Putting the car into reverse gear, I pulled out, then headed toward my father’s home, my head a mess. Paige was dead. I’d hallucinated her.

  The thought was a reminder to write down anything of which I was certain before the knowledge got confused and broken. After pulling over near a closed track into the regional park, I took out my notebook and read over all my notes prior to today.

  My pulse began to calm the further I got into the book. I remembered all of this, though a few of the memories were admittedly fuzzy at the edges.

  Then I hit something about two pages from the end. The writing was jagged, as if done in a great rush. It said:

  Dad’s secretary. In the Cul-­de-­Sac that night. Wanted to be next Mrs. Rai.

  My breath came in jerky bursts. I had no memory of making that entry on the bottom half of the page.

  Could someone else have gained access to my notebook?

  Yes, but it wasn’t a reasonable possibility. The most logical explanation was that I’d scrawled the note while my brain was acting up. The question was, were the words true? All these years and I’d never once thought about the woman my father had been screwing at the time.

  No, wait. I had thought about her. It’d been during my conversation with Neri and Regan. That’s when I must’ve scrawled this. Since I’d also hallucinated Paige the same day, the fact that I’d totally forgotten doing it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  The problem was, I couldn’t remember the full details of that conversation with the police. I wet my lips, thought hard, but the memory was hazy. My breath came in small puffs, perspiration breaking out over my skin. Whatever was happening to my brain, it was getting worse. I had to figure this out before I couldn’t.

  “Think, Aarav,” I muttered. “The secretary.”

  I’d never paid much attention to her because I’d known how my father viewed ­her—­as a momentary indulgence, nothing serious. But clearly, something about her had sent up a red flag after a decade. I had to unravel that thread again by following the bread crumbs my past self had left for me.