chunk of the money. Invested it into a retirement account.” She took a bite of the Danish, chewed with deliberation, swallowed. “I figured his money was the least of what he owed me. Paltry compensation for murdering my mother—she died of a broken heart and no one will ever convince me otherwise.”
I stared out at darkness so thick I could no longer even see the lookout, much less what lay beyond. I considered bringing up her other business . . . but there’d be no point to that beyond cruelty. She wouldn’t have needed a lot of money to start that up—and for all I knew, the house itself was a rental. Easy enough to verify that with a few internet searches.
“Did my mother know your circumstances?”
Laughter from the passenger seat that actually sounded real. When I looked at her, her face was aglow, her eyes sparkling. She was beautiful. “Aarav, your mother thought I was little more than dirt on her shoe. She didn’t give a shit about my life.”
There was nothing I could say to that—I’d witnessed my mother’s treatment of Lily firsthand. “I never understood why.” It felt disloyal to say even that. “Was it just because you were young and beautiful? She never treated any of the other staff badly.”
Lily’s shoulders moved under the black of her long-sleeved tee. “Maybe I reminded her of who she’d once been and she couldn’t bear it.”
I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could do life right.
Bitter laughter. Alcohol-laced words.
I looked away from the sharp arrow of truth. “Any pastries left?”
“Blueberry muffin.”
I took it, ate, and somehow, we ended up just sitting there in the darkness while the stars dug themselves out of the clouds. When Lily said, “Do you want to come home with me?” I thought about the oblivion to be found in the arms of a welcoming woman.
“No,” I said at last. “We’re both screwed up enough already.”
Another laugh, this one softer. “There you go, being human again. I almost can’t tell you’re one of the Rai family.”
Transcript
Session #11
“Sorry I missed the last session. You got my cancellation?”
“Yes, and of course I understand. How did it go?”
“As well as can be expected. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”
“Where would you like to begin?”
“Her. Always her.”
41
As it was, I ended up inside Lily’s flat anyway—she didn’t live in the Titirangi property where I’d seen her and Ginger and the other woman. Her home was a two-bedroom suburban flat that backed onto the regional park, and it had a little garden that had gone dormant for the winter.
When I dropped her back by her car in the Cul-de-Sac and she invited me to follow her home for coffee, I went because I was more comfortable with Lily than I was with anyone else. She saw the fractures that made me less than normal and she didn’t care. Maybe because Lily had the same papered-over cracks.
We drank coffee, watched trashy reality television, and she told me about how maids witnessed all kinds of things because they were “all but invisible to most rich people.” “Do you want to know stuff even if it goes against your image of your mother?”
“I’m not wearing rose-colored glasses. She had faults, plenty of them.”
“She had an affair with Hemi. A serious affair. Two of them were like puppies, as if discovering love for the first time.”
“You sure?”
“I saw letters he’d written her—full of mushy romantic stuff. ‘Love of my life.’ ‘Reason I wake up.’ That kind of thing.”
“Did she reciprocate?”
“I don’t know—but if she didn’t, or if she decided to break it off, well, a man who feels that strongly about a woman might resort to violence.”
“Hemi was at the Mahi Awards the night she disappeared. I found photographic proof online this afternoon.”
Lily scrunched up her face. “At SkyCity, right? I was part of the waitstaff there.”
“Big coincidence.”
“No coincidence.” She took a sip of the green tea she’d switched to after the coffee. “Tia knew I worked with an agency, and one day while I was outside your parents’ house a month or so before Nina fired me, Tia asked me if the agency did bigger events.”
A sudden pause. “She was so frail then, and I was pretty sure she was wearing a wig. But she had such a presence.”
“Cancer.” It came out rough.
“Thought so. Anyway, I gave her the company card and told her to make sure to say that I’d referred her—we used to get