Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Don’t be too long, Ajay beta,” his mother said. “Tavish is right. You have to rest.”
Ajay nodded and pulled out his phone. But instead of opening any social media apps, he shot a glance over his shoulder at the open door of the suite, then nudged his head for me to start walking back to the car.
“It’s not Annie,” he said after we were away from the door. “It’s Ani.”
I heard the difference in pronunciation at once, realized that was what Diya had actually said. The A part of the name was more like an uh sound. Take the m out of “money,” and you’d have the right pronunciation. Of course my fucked-up brain would make that comparison when I could’ve as easily used a word like “honey.”
“Ani,” I said after telling my grief-manic brain to shut up. “You know who that is?”
Brown eyes stared at me from behind the smudged lenses of his spectacles—paler eyes than Shumi’s, set in a more angular face. “How come you don’t already know?”
Ajay shook his head almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “I forgot. You two met and fell in love in the space of, like, a month, right? My mum heard from Sarita auntie,” he said in explanation of how he knew. “They aren’t”—a quick pause—“weren’t super close, but I guess she wanted Mum to know in case people started to gossip and make up things.”
Sarita auntie.
It felt odd to hear composed and sharp-witted Dr. Sarita Prasad being referred to as an auntie. Dr. Rajesh Prasad had no doubt been Uncle Rajesh. To simply use the first name of an elder was just not done in large quarters of the Indian community.
Even my publicly ruthless hard-ass of a father was Uncle Anand to some. My mother, by contrast, hated being auntied—and it had nothing to do with different cultural expectations. “Just call me Audrey,” she’d said to my paternal cousin when he’d been only seven. “ ‘Auntie’ makes me feel so old.”
That was the one thing Audrey Advani couldn’t bear: the march of time, the relentless wrinkles of age. My mother would probably have a standing appointment for Botox injections if she didn’t understand that a great actress needed a face capable of a subtle and intense range of motion. So instead, she got fillers and wore makeup with religious fervor.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her naked face.
“I guess you and Diya haven’t had time to talk about everything,” Ajay was saying.
Memories unraveled inside me, an endless photo-booth strip, preserved in cerebral celluloid forever. We’d spent hours night after night murmuring chapter after chapter of our stories to each other until one of us finally couldn’t fight sleep any longer. We’d been in a hurry to catch up on all the years that had gone before we walked into each other’s lives.
But…eleven weeks wasn’t enough to share an entire lifetime’s worth of memories. And some secrets we’d both kept. The knot in my abdomen was proof of that. As were the brown plastic bottles that had melted in the fire. I’d never asked and she’d never told, but I’d looked up the drugs, gone down the list of possible reasons why they might’ve been prescribed.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Intrusive thoughts.
Hallucinations.
Schizophrenia.
Bipolar disorder.
Psychosis.
Did Ackerson know about those medicines? Would she attempt to pin the blame for the murders and the fire on my beautiful, luminous star of a wife?
My tendons twisted, tight enough to snap.
“Tavish?”
“No,” I said to Ajay’s quiet query, forcing my voice into calm. “We were still learning each other, and now…”
The other man’s eyes grew glassy. “Yeah.” Coughing, he looked away and took a deep breath. “Anyway, Ani was Diya and Bobby’s adopted sister.”
My stomach dropped. This wasn’t a random memory Diya had forgotten to mention; it was a core facet of her identity.
Chapter 18
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 19
Time: 11:08
Second interview with Tavish Advani was more frustrating. He came with his lawyer, who happens to be his father—Anand fucking Advani. Same Anand Advani who got Celia Byers off for the murder of her married lover. Woman was covered in blood and had the gun in her hand. Jesus.
Tavish didn’t say much during the interview, with Anand blocking most of our questions. We couldn’t hold him. Have nothing on him. Can’t actually blame the man for shutting up—Jason Musgrave’s poisoned the well there with how he’s been shooting his mouth off in the media.
At least the journalists have the good sense not to leak Tavish’s name—no proof, but I’d say they probably got their hands slapped by their bosses after Advani senior threatened them with a lawsuit if they crossed that line. Not that it matters; the implications are all there in the headlines—especially now that they’ve dug up his connection to Jocelyn Wai.
Gina Garcia’s still on leave, so I’ll have to wait a bit longer to get further background on that case.