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)
Saving Diya was my reason for being.
“Go around to the right!” I yelled at the neighbor. “I’ll go left! See if you can find a way in!”
The other man didn’t argue, just took off in a wide arc around the burning house while I did the same on the other side. I stayed closer, though, close enough that soot and ash landed on my T-shirt and the heat blazed against one side of my face.
Sweat pooled under my armpits, beaded along my brow.
Please, baby, please.
It was a mantra inside my head as I searched frantically for any possible entrance into the house. I knew where Diya would’ve most likely been—in the large central living room filled with comfortable sofas and the biggest wall-mounted television I’d ever seen. That living room flowed off the kitchen so that it was all one huge area separated only by furniture, plants, and clever placement of artwork.
I could get to that space from the glass door on this side—it was segmented into panels, a line of black demarking each panel, and could be folded back to open up this entire side of the house. The same could be done at the back, to create an indoor-outdoor flow from the lounge to the back patio with its sweeping views of the lake.
But when I turned the corner, it was to see shards of glass scattered across the lush green grass that was Dr. Rajesh Prasad’s pride and joy. “This lawn eats better than I do!” Diya’s father had joked last week while fertilizing it with the special organic lawn fertilizer he had shipped from a supplier all the way in Dunedin.
Flames poured out of the empty maws of the door panels, hot orange tongues that threatened to lick at my clothing.
My chest spasmed, the coughs I’d barely been managing to control turning into a hacking akin to that of an old man with a four-pack-a-day habit. “Diya!” I screamed when I could catch enough breath to make sound.
The fire’s roar, the crash of timber inside, was the only reply.
A small flame carried on a tiny piece of paper landed on my T-shirt, burning a hole in it. Brushing it off, I continued on around to the back of the house even though I knew that it was too late—even if I somehow managed to get in, there was no way anyone inside that house had survived.
Tears streamed down my face, but they were from the grit and smoke. Not grief. Because I wasn’t done yet. The lawn led directly down to the lake, the distance a matter of seconds to cover at a run. If Diya had managed to stumble out in that direction, she could’ve taken refuge in the chilly water.
Even if she’d run out panicked, disoriented, and with burns, it would’ve been instinct to head that way.
That last shred of hope held tight in my desperate hands, I started to turn the corner—
My knees and hands slammed onto the grass, the knuckles of my right hand grazing the hard edge of the patio stones.
Even the grass felt hot. As did my back, the house and its devouring flames too close.
I didn’t care. About the heat, or about the throbbing in my knees.
The reason I’d fallen was because I’d tripped over someone. “Diya!” I cradled her in my arms even as I blinked desperately in an effort to see more clearly through the smoke.
She rasped a breath, the honey-brown skin of her face paler than I’d ever seen it, and her floral dress and green cardigan all wet against my skin. She must’ve doused herself with water in an effort to survive. “Diya, baby, I’ve got you! Hold on!”
Her fingers clutched at my tee, her eyes pleading as her mouth moved.
Desperation was a scream in her expression.
I’d been about to rise to my feet with her in my arms but now leaned instinctively closer to reassure her that she’d be all right.
But Diya spoke first. Her voice was a ragged whisper, her breath hotter than the fire. “Annie…they said…about Annie…not…”
Her body went limp.
“Diya!” But her eyes were closed, her face slack.
“—no way inside!” A coughing male voice. “Oh my God! You found someone!” The neighbor came down on Diya’s other side. “Wait, is that…”
I stared at my hand at the same time. Even the bleary vision created by the smoke and my watering eyes couldn’t obscure the red wetness bright against the pale skin of my palm. “Blood.” It came out a rough whisper.
My wife of exactly forty-three days was bleeding.
Bleeding so much that the red on her dress wasn’t flowers, but scarlet blooms that grew as I watched. She hadn’t doused herself in water; it was blood that smeared my skin where I held her, blood that pasted her clothes to her skin.
“Has she been shot?” the neighbor yelled.