last. “I know you’ve always hoped she’d return home and you’d get to speak again. If you want to do a phone session, this time is yours.”
“No, not now.” I wasn’t ready to dig into my emotions when it came to my mother’s bones. “I’ll book another appointment.”
“Let’s do that now.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “Aarav, this could be a major trigger for your drinking. Have you built the support structure we discussed? Are those people around you, ready to offer their help?”
I wanted to bark out a laugh and say sure, I have my father, that pillar of a man. “It won’t be a problem,” I said instead. “Accident turned out to be a blessing in disguise—I can’t drink while on these meds. Since I have no intention of ending up back in hospital, I’ll follow the rules. I want to drive my Porsche again.”
“The repairs are complete then? My impression was that the damage was fairly major.”
Sitting up in bed, I stared at the wall ahead of me, the painting that hung there a remnant of my teenage years. Something made me say, “I’m thinking positive.”
“That’s a good thing. Take care of yourself—and call me night or day. I don’t mind the interruption and will call back as soon as I can if I’m in session at the time. We’ve done some good work and we can’t allow this turn of events to jeopardize that.”
“Sure, Doc.”
After hanging up, I continued to look at the wall opposite. It was a pale gray color that Shanti had apparently chosen after her marriage to my father. Bull. Shit. Shanti didn’t so much as say boo without my father’s permission. If she’d had any input, it was because he hadn’t been interested.
But all I could see right then was the sleek beauty of my customized Porsche. A Porsche that was currently sitting safe in the secure garage of my city apartment. Dr. Jitrnicka had to be mistaken. I wouldn’t have forgotten that my pride and joy was in for major repairs. It’d be like forgetting my own head. Even highly intelligent doctors had off-days, and I couldn’t be the only one of his patients who’d had an accident.
He’d confused us, that was all.
10
Rubbing my face, I used the cane to get to my feet, then hobbled over to the bathroom. It was after four by the time I emerged, having managed a quick wake-up shower. My eyes went to the slim black laptop I kept on top of a desk in front of the balcony sliders.
A pile of printed pages sat next to the laptop.
That was one of my things—printing out pages as I went. I’d mentioned it in an interview after my first book hit it big, saying it gave “weight to the evanescent nature of my ideas” and now half the literary world thought I was a wanker and a poser.
I might be, but I also just liked to print out my work as I went. I’d done it since I was a teenager. It gave me a feeling of achievement, of steadily climbing the mountain even if a particular day’s work added up to a great big heap of nothing.
Today was one of those days.
Walking over to the pile, I picked up the last page I’d printed. As always, the final line on the page hung unfinished:
There really wasn’t much he could do about the blood, without
I’d woken at 3 a.m. and spent the next three hours trying to finish that sentence and failing. That’s why I’d been downstairs when the police came. Attempting to find inspiration in a bottle of Coke.
Now, I picked up a pen and scrawled:
Two cans of bleach and a flamethrower.
I smiled. There, the critics would love that line. They’d call it one of my title character’s signature turns of phrase. My lovable psychopath who mowed his widowed mother’s grass, walked her grumpy old cat, and only poisoned those who deserved it. The antihero with whom the public had fallen in love despite themselves: Kip Shay, multiethnic and deliberately ambiguous. He could be your brother or your killer.
Like me.
Just your friendly neighborhood writer who often faked a charming smile and whose dead mother had just been found, giving him good reason to commit a murder of his own. I had a single relentless goal now: to figure out the truth about that scream the night of her disappearance.
I’d been trying to chase down the answer for ten years, but I’d been