area. Auckland City spread out below me in a scramble of metal and traffic with bright splashes of winter green. The waters of the Hauraki Gulf sparkled and glittered in the distance, while a chopper flew in from one of the outlying islands. The cold winter winds whipped at my skin, reminding me of another night when I’d stood here in the wind.
Paige had stood beside me then, her hand wrapped around my upper arm, and her head on my shoulder. “What does it feel like? To know that tonight, tens of thousands of people around the world will walk into a movie theater and see the inside of your psyche?”
I’d chuckled. “I write fiction, darling.”
“Yes, but it has to come from somewhere.” Fiery green eyes ablaze against the cloudy light. “You don’t write about puppies and rainbows. You write about murdered mothers and lost children.”
Transcript
Session #9
“Thank you for seeing me again after my outburst the other week. I would’ve never touched you.”
“I must admit that I did question whether or not I should take this appointment. The rage I witnessed in you . . . You realize it’s not normal? You have deep-seated issues and coming here will only work if you’re willing to be honest about them.”
“Yes, I am. Willing to be honest, I mean . . . I missed being able to talk to someone after you cut me off. I didn’t realize how much it was helping me work through things until I couldn’t anymore.”
“Good. But another outburst like that one and we’re done.”
“Understood.”
“Your rage seemed to stem from my attempt to further our dialogue in relation to your mother. Are you ready to talk about her today?”
“Yes.”
[pause]
“My mother . . . she was beautiful and sensual. No, that’s wrong. I should be honest. She wasn’t sensual—she was an intensely sexual creature. At times, I think I was as hypnotized by her as my father.”
37
Murdered mothers and lost children.
A huge generalization based on a single book.
But looking back, I accepted that Paige had been right. The same theme ran through my three unpublished and shelved manuscripts, though I couldn’t see it in my current project. Maybe now that my mother had been found, I could lay those ghosts to rest.
Leaving the balcony, I considered what I knew so far, then decided to see what I could dig up about Alice’s wife. Cora wasn’t much for social media and had no real online footprint other than what Alice had shared, and that one mention in the local news. No other references to the “mugging” where Cora’s hand had been crushed.
Should I have given that information to the police? Possibly.
But then I’d have had to tell them how I’d obtained the information, implicating Riki. Or . . .
Frowning, I considered my options. I could just give the police bread crumbs to follow.
What if those bread crumbs led to Riki?
Guilt gnawed at me again, far more strongly than I might’ve expected. An assault conviction would ruin Riki’s military career—after all, he had nothing to prove that he’d been blackmailed into doing violence.
How could Cora have known it was him anyway?
According to Riki, he’d been wearing a balaclava—and since the police had never come after him, it was reasonable to assume Cora hadn’t known the identity of her attacker. It made even less sense that she’d have figured out my mother had been behind it.
Then I remembered something Diana had said, about Alice confronting my mother.
I saw her and Nina from the upstairs window out front and could swear they were arguing . . .
If Alice knew, she could’ve told Cora . . . but at that point, Cora had still had one hand in a cast. The Jaguar had been a manual, not an automatic—she couldn’t have driven it, not with how she’d been immobilized. That limitation didn’t apply to Alice.
Was that what Elei had seen that night? Her daughter doing something?
There was no way I was going to break Elei’s silence. Not when it came to her child. So it’d have to be Alice or Cora.
Alice, I decided.
Confident demeanor aside, there was something vulnerable about Alice. Something malleable.
My phone pinged.
A reminder: Session with Dr. Jitrnicka: 12 p.m.
Good thing I’d input all these dates and times at some point, because I’d had no fucking idea this was coming up. On the verge of canceling, I thought of Paige’s reddened eyes and retreating form and decided to keep the appointment.
Rising, I threw my empty Coke bottle in the recycling bin,