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)
“Beautiful, beautiful place,” she’d said, “but getting there is a nightmare, especially if it’s been raining.”
That map had gone up in flames, but I remembered enough to get myself pointed in the right direction out of the airport. Once I reached the general vicinity, I’d have to ask the locals and hope. The heavens opened up right then, blurring the sugarcane fields interspersed with tin-roofed houses, many with bougainvillea running riot in brilliant splashes of pink and purple.
The rain was gentle rather than torrential, but it did cool down the world to a bearable temperature. Coconut palms waved in the breeze, papaya trees with their unripe green fruit tucked close to the top stood sentinel beside homes, and I could see hibiscus blooms growing wild, all of it against a backdrop of mountains everywhere I looked, the landscape an undulating beauty of lush green broken up by bursts of wild color.
It was paradise.
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it.
An hour into it—along a smooth sealed road—and after the rain had passed as if it had never come, I pulled over in front of a decrepit-looking shop with a faded Fanta sign in the window, and a front path bordered by what might’ve been zinnias.
Against the sun-bleached shop, all its signage long faded, the zinnias were bursts of intense pigment that made me glad I was wearing sunglasses.
But I slid them off the second I entered the cool semidarkness of the shop. The proprietor had covered over the windows with signage that faced outward, blocking the sun. No AC, but a ceiling fan spun lazily overhead.
The combination worked surprisingly well, the inside of the shop cool enough to be comfortable even for me.
The owner was seated behind a screen of iron bars, the cigarettes and the cash register behind him. Despite the bars, which reminded me of certain parts of LA, he shot me a friendly smile. Around my age, he was Indo-Fijian, his skin dark and his short-sleeved shirt a pale blue. When he opened his mouth and spoke, I recognized the words but couldn’t respond to them.
“Sorry,” I said. “English?”
“Yes, I speak English.” His expression remained cheerful. “Grow up overseas?”
“Yes,” I said, because it was simpler to allow him to believe that than to explain that I had no connection to this nation or its people beyond my love for Diya.
The shopkeeper nodded. “What do you need?”
“Directions,” I said, and expected to be told to buy something in return, but the man was happy to help me out.
“The Prasad place?” he said at one point, after I indicated the general area of Diya’s family home.
I stared at him.
He laughed. “My cousin-brother’s uncle Ravi is the caretaker there. It’s easy to find. Just follow this way.”
Taking out a piece of paper, he sketched a map on it that had such landmarks as “the coconut tree that split in two in the big cyclone” and “Ali’s old house before he built his new one in town—it has grass growing through the windows” and “the river bridge with blue arches.”
“How long from here?” I asked. “I was told about three hours from the airport.”
He made a face while looking in the direction of the rectangle of light that was the open front door. “With the rain before…the tracks might be muddy. So, yes, I would say two more hours.”
Two more hours until I might have some semblance of an answer as to why Diya had gasped out her dead sibling’s name in what might well have been her last conscious moments on this earth.
Chapter 26
Susanne
Susanne turned in bed to watch her young lover on the carpeted floor beside it.
He was doing push-ups while clad in just his boxers, giving her a lovely view of his rather delicious musculature. He’d turned twenty a week earlier, and last night had been their private celebration—she wasn’t gauche enough to flaunt him to her social circle even if he was so pretty.
The signet ring she’d gifted him sat on the bedside table, beside the new phone she’d bought him only a couple of months after she’d first asked him to join her for coffee. It had been a year now, and she knew full well that she was what the younger generation called a sugar mama. She had no argument with the arrangement—he was, after all, definitely keeping up his end of the bargain.
“Come back to bed, darling.” Her body sighed with need. You’d think at her age, it’d be quieting down, but it turned out that she’d never gotten to full revs with her dear husband.
This was all an entirely new experience.
A sharp grin from the twenty-year-old who was currently holding a plank without effort. “I have to maintain my strength to keep up with you.”
Chuckling—and pleased by the charming comment—she let him finish his workout while she sat up in bed and considered whether to buy him that vehicle he had his eye on. Perhaps in six months’ time. She was having fun, and so was he. No need to overdose when they could stretch it out.