me with tales of her day exploring the iconic cone-shaped peak of Rangitoto, the dormant volcano that sat, a majestic and quiet threat, in the Hauraki Gulf. And for a while, I forgot about bones, about a missing rug, and about why Dr. Binchy wouldn’t discharge me without reassurance that I wouldn’t be alone.
13
We ate the warm doughnuts sitting in a small park—it was edging to winter-dark even though it wasn’t yet six, but hadn’t quite crossed the line. Mothers with young children smiled at us as they gathered their offspring from the playground equipment in preparation for heading home. Having Pari with me didn’t make me immune from suspicious stares—but having Pari plus a bum leg worked wonders. A couple of the younger mothers even recognized us from previous visits and waved.
I waved back with a cheek-creasing smile.
“Honey is never wasted, Ari.” My mother, pouting in the mirror as she put on her scarlet lipstick, the color a perfect match to the fluttery red dress that she was wearing for brunch out with Diana . . . and Alice. “Your father snarls at everyone, and while people are polite to his face, they’ll stab him in the back at the first opportunity. Respect is one thing. Being liked and respected, that’s true power. People will do anything for you if they like you.”
Alice had been twelve years my mother’s junior. Diana, in comparison, had been thirty-seven to my mother’s forty-one when my mother disappeared. Far closer to her in age and experience. The only major difference was that my mother’d had me when she was twenty-five, while Diana had waited till thirty to start her family, but even the divide in the ages of their children hadn’t stood in the way of their friendship.
The two of them had been bonded by indestructible glue by the time Alice came along.
No wonder I’d all but forgotten that Alice had occasionally been invited to their girly dates. All of them in pretty dresses, off to champagne brunches, or to get their nails done. All three of them in my mother’s Jaguar.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked down at my sister. The big brown eyes she’d inherited from her mother almost overwhelmed her narrow face, her skin a warm shade of deep brown, and her hair a rich black Shanti had woven into two neat braids on either side of her head. She’d tied them off with ribbons that matched Pari’s school uniform.
My sister was young enough that the whole discovery of a body might fly over her head, but then again, she had more empathy in her small body than I’d ever develop, so who knew. I’d leave it up to Shanti to decide what to tell her. “My leg,” I said. “It hurts sometimes, but the doc says I have to start trying to use it.”
A smile dusted with sugar. “Your head got better. Your leg will, too.” Then she jumped off the wooden seat and asked if she could play on the swings for a while before we went home.
I nodded, but I was thinking about the migraine from earlier today. Whiplash could be a bastard. Which reminded me.
Taking out my phone, I called Dr. Binchy’s office and left a voice mail requesting more of the migraine medication. I needed to think clearly with my mother’s bones finally out in the open. I couldn’t afford to go down with a splitting head. Shoving my hair back from my forehead afterward, I found my fingers brushing over a ridge of scar tissue.
I pressed, probed.
It was from when I’d fallen off my motorcycle during my aborted attempt at a university degree, but it felt thicker and weirdly sensitive. I took away my hand before I irritated it any more. Had to be all the medication they’d pumped into me directly after the accident—and the shit I was taking now. I couldn’t remember anything about the first few days following the crash but I knew they’d put me into a medically induced coma.
Probably because a branch—that was it, a branch—had punched through my chest.
Funnily enough, that grisly wound had mended far faster than my foot. No damage to the heart, though the lungs weren’t quite at full capacity. Right now, however, my most important organ was my brain.
Ten years was a long time, but it wasn’t long enough for the truth to disappear forever.
* * *
—
Once home, I left Pari talking a mile a minute to her mum and walked upstairs to my suite. With every