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)
She’d be seventy in two more years. God. Perhaps she might lose the itch by then, and he’d surely have moved on. Could be she’d give the vehicle to him as a parting gift, a shiny trophy for him to drive around in—she’d enjoy imagining him so handsome and young and suited to the fast car.
“How are your studies going?” That was another thing she liked about Tavish—he was very, very clever. Studying business and finance, and not just studying, but interested. And that made him interesting. He could talk investments with her over breakfast, and pump her to orgasm at night.
Truly, he’d be her perfect man if only he wasn’t almost five decades her junior.
“Aced the latest exams.” He bounced to his feet. “I’m a bit bored, to be honest, but I need to have these credits to get the kind of job I want.”
She also loved that he had all these plans, young Tavish Advani; he might enjoy having a woman spoil him, but he was planning to become a man who could spoil himself. Some younger woman would one day find herself with a very successful and driven husband. “With an eye to setting up your own investment firm down the road?”
Another one of those wide grins before he prowled over the bedspread toward her, strong and gorgeous and aroused. “Of course, Susanne with an s. You know I play to win.”
Smiling, she let him lower her to her back, and was proud that she’d kept herself toned and fit enough that he had no trouble with the physical aspect of things. If she’d been a more emotional type of woman, she might have made the mistake of falling in love with him. But she wasn’t a stupid girl.
Still…it was nice to pretend even as she faced her own mortality in the mirror every day. And especially this week, when her left leg was giving her enough pain to make life irritating.
His hand on there, massaging gently even as he put his mouth to her breast.
A little more, Susanne thought as her back arched, just a little more of him and of life, of youth.
Chapter 27
Any dust that had coated the road before the rain was gone, everything fresh and shiny. A small Fijian boy wearing blue shorts and a green T-shirt waved at me as I passed a village. I saw him race across the road in my rearview mirror, to retrieve a ball that he’d kicked to the other side.
No other cars even in the far distance, the road empty but for the two of us.
I turned the corner…and there was the tree split in the middle. As instructed, I took that exit off the main road. And kept on following the shopkeeper’s instructions as the landscape became ever more green and rural.
I hit the gravel road fifteen minutes into it, but the car hugged it with ease, no hint of a wobble. I was suddenly glad it wasn’t as shiny and new as advertised. It meant any fresh dents caused by stones flying up wouldn’t be noticeable even on close inspection.
Around me, I saw only crops I couldn’t identify, interspersed with patches of verdant forest.
No houses or people.
When I did eventually stop, it was because I was getting a spinal adjustment from the potholed and bumpy road and needed to stretch out my back. Unclipping my seat belt, I pushed open the door to get out. The air felt cooler than it had by the shop, all that green cutting down on the heat.
A small and scuffed-up blue truck loaded with what looked to be freshly cut taro—a root vegetable to which Diya had introduced me—rumbled over from the other direction while I was stretching, and stopped right beside me. The man who leaned out was Fijian, somewhere in his twenties, his hair tight curls buzzed close to his skull, his skin bronzed, and his T-shirt a faded gray.
“You break down, brother?” he asked. “Gonna be dark soon. I’ll give you a lift home.”
“No, car’s fine. My back just needed a rest from the road.”
His laugh was huge and warm. “You should drive this truck, man—thing is twenty years old. It’s all bump, bump, bump.” But from his grin, he didn’t much care. “You American?”
“Accent that obvious?”
Another grin. “Where you going?” he asked with a bluntness that would never fly in a city but was likely expected in a place this small and rural.
“The Prasad place,” I said, using the same verbiage as the man in the shop.
The truck driver frowned for a minute. “Ah, right, big place by the water. Nice, man, nice.” Lifting his hand, he said, “Got to get these ready for the morning market.”
Big place by the water.
It could’ve described the home that had gone up in flames. The Prasads re-creating the home they hadn’t been able to let go of even after so many years in another country? Because of Ani? Was she buried here?