she dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t cry. The children.”
“Just answer the question and I’m gone.”
She was breathing so fast I worried she’d hyperventilate herself into a faint, but she took a couple of deep gulps of air and got to it. “I was planning to knock on your front door and confront your mother, tell her that Ishaan and I were in love and that she wasn’t being fair to him by holding him to the marriage.”
Her laughter was jerky and brittle. “He played me, and he played me good. I really believed we were star-crossed lovers being kept apart by a vindictive wife who was using his son against him.”
“But you never came to the door.”
“I knew about the corporate dinner-party they were attending, and about how the gates closed at a certain time—I timed it so I’d arrive before they shut. That part went according to plan.” Her chest rose and fell in quick bumps. “Afterward, I sat in my car, psyching myself up. Then they came home.”
She squeezed the steering wheel. “Your mother got out in the drive and slammed the door to stalk into the house through the rain. God, she was stunning—and blazingly confident. I knew she’d laugh in my face . . . and I also realized right then that Ishaan would never settle for an ordinary woman like me when he had a wife with so much fire.”
“Nice story.”
“It’s the truth!” Sweat shining on her brow, eyes darting to the rearview mirror as a bus turned into the street. “Please don’t drag me into this. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Why are you so scared?”
“My husband and his family are ultraconservative,” she blurted out. “It was a big deal for him to marry someone outside of his culture. He thinks I was a virgin when we got together. Please, please, don’t ruin this for me.”
“I’m not interested in your marriage, only what happened that night.”
“I sat in my car, and cried, okay? That’s what I did. I realized how stupid I’d been, believing a man like Ishaan would want me for anything but a little fun.” Her fingers trembled as she flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. “God, my face. I have to calm down.”
“So you’re telling me you turned around and left? Sure.”
“I didn’t leave. I was frozen.” She powdered away the perspiration with a hand that shook. “Then the storm ramped up and I got scared about driving in that kind of weather.” A pause. “I saw something. I never told anyone.”
My pulse kicked. “What?”
“The rain was awful—you remember, don’t you?—and I’d parked a ways down the Cul-de-Sac so no one would notice me—I’d borrowed a dark compact from a friend for that night.”
Nice bit of premeditation there, but she was so obviously panicked that I didn’t think she was capable of lies.
“I couldn’t see clearly, you have to believe me.”
I nodded; the rain had been ferocious that night, coming down in silver sheets of glass. “Go on.”
“I saw your front door open—”
“It’s not visible from the street.”
“What?” Lines furrowed her forehead. “It was, I swear. There was a great big gap in the trees.”
My memories rolled backward, all the way to the diseased tree my father had hired an arborist to remove a month prior to my mother’s disappearance. “Yeah, you’re right. Go on.”
She looked so grateful it almost made me feel bad. “The door was open, backlighting your mother’s silhouette as she stumbled out. Her gait was off, and she wasn’t moving like she should.”
My gut clenched.
“Then the lights of a Jaguar parked on the street flashed, as if the alarm was being deactivated. I’d seen that car on the street, had been all but certain it was hers.” When red stained her cheeks, I knew she’d considered damaging the vehicle.
But she didn’t confess to that. “I thought she was drunk and got all hopeful again, thinking she wasn’t as great as she looked on the surface. I was planning to call the cops and dob her in for driving under the influence.”
Shallow, sucked-in breaths. “Then someone else was there beside her. I couldn’t see them properly. They were just a shadow in the rain and in the dark, but I’m sure they went to the driver’s seat and your mother went to the passenger seat.”
“Was it my father?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him leave the house, but I was watching her, and by the time I looked back, the front door