Like the silence my father had utilized as a weapon against my mother. She, in turn, hadn’t been much for silence. My mother preferred smashing things, preferred screaming.
But not like that final scream.
“Could it be someone else?” I asked, because my father was just staring at them—and because I didn’t want their words to be true. “Someone could’ve stolen her wallet and you could be wrong about the clothes. It’s been a long time.”
Regan’s expression didn’t soften as he said, “The body was discovered in a vehicle registered to Nina Parvati Rai.”
My hand tightened on the edge of the door. I had no more straws left to clutch.
Deep, aching stabs of pain shot through my left leg at the same time, transmitted from the bones in my foot and ankle knitting themselves back together cell by cell.
“If you have something of Mrs. Rai’s that might hold her DNA,” Detective Regan said, “that’ll speed up the process. But we realize that may be impossible after all this time—a familial DNA match will be our next option.”
My mouth opened. “I might have something.” I had no intention of elaborating further in front of my father—what normal son went into his mother’s room and carefully picked up and bagged her favorite hairbrush? What normal son kept it all these years?
A son who’d heard a scream.
“In the interim, do either of you recognize this?” Regan removed a transparent plastic bag from his pocket, sealed with police tape.
Diamonds glinted within, big and showy.
“I bought her that ring,” my father said, his voice gritty. “For our tenth wedding anniversary. Aarav was only seven then.”
The same age as the little girl who was getting ready for school in another part of the house. Born three years after the last time I saw my mother alive.
“Happier times,” my father added, his head dropping for a moment. “Happier times.”
Taking the plastic bag, I touched the ring through it. “She lost a diamond two days before she disappeared.” I pointed out the empty spot, so tiny among all the glitter, all those carats. “She was angry because the ring was from an exclusive designer boutique that had guaranteed her the setting wouldn’t fail.”
She’d yelled at the jewelers on the phone, threatening to destroy them among her set if they didn’t fix this “right now.” She’d been pacing in our manicured backyard, phone to her ear, while I sat on the house’s back balcony trying to eat a sandwich. In the end, I’d rolled my eyes and taken my meal to my room.
I still remembered how she’d looked, the marigold yellow of her dress silhouetted against the native bush that rose dark green and ancient beyond the flimsy barrier of our fence. As if the forest was watching. Waiting.
Retrieving the ring, the cop said, “We can offer you a liaison officer. There’s likely to be intense media interest in this, given your standing in the city.”
Regan’s eyes were on my father, but Constable Neri’s gaze flicked my way. She knew who and what the media would latch on to, what would give them the best headlines, the most clickbait links.
Words came out of my mouth before I was aware of thinking them. “Was it an accident?”
“Of course it was, boy,” my father snapped, as if I were still sixteen and not twenty-six. “You know your mother liked to drink.” He looked at Regan again. “That’s what you’re saying, aren’t you? That Nina drove off the road into the forest?”
Into the chasm of green where a car could remain lost for decades. It had rained that night. So much rain, a torrential storm. Enough to hide the tracks of a car going off the road?
“We can’t say either way right now,” Regan responded with no change in his expression as he tucked the evidence bag back inside his jacket. “We’ll know more after we complete the forensic investigation.”
“I’d like a liaison,” I said before my father could wave away the offer. “I want to know when you find things, before it ends up in the papers.” That was why they were here after all, before the official DNA identification. Someone high up had made the call that Ishaan Rai, CEO of an empire that employed thousands, and best friend to the mayor, should be warned about the sudden reappearance of his first wife.
A wife he’d divorced in her absence.
Regan nodded. “Of course. Constable Neri will be happy to be the liaison.”