Such a Perfect Family, page 25
“You did?” No sedative today, her eyes going wide as she sat up in bed sipping at the hot coffee I’d grabbed for her from a drive-through. “Why?”
“You said Ani’s name when I found you.” I put one hand on her leg, above the blanket. “I was just looking for an answer, any answer, I guess.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her.” Looking away, she bit down on her lower lip. “I don’t feel good when I think about Ani.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” I squeezed her leg. “I didn’t go to the beach, though—I thought we could go together, and you could show me around like you promised.”
She turned back to face me, the hollows in her cheeks too prominent, as were the shadows under her eyes. “Ani died.” A wet shine to her eyes. “We were playing and she fell and she died.”
It made sense to me that her family had reshaped things that way for the five-year-old she’d been, turning a murder into an accidental tragedy. So she wouldn’t ever give away what they believed she’d done, tell others of the stain of blood they’d put on her. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, because I thought she needed to hear it. “You know that, right?”
A jagged nod. “But after Ani, they became so suffocating. Always watching, always calling if I was even a minute late home from school. I couldn’t just hang out with friends, could barely even make them.” Tears rolled down her face. “Bobby used to follow me on dates sometimes!”
I frowned. “He followed you?”
“He said he wanted to be close by in case anything happened and I got scared and needed an out, but it just made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I used to get so mad at them for it.” She began to cry in earnest. “And now they’re all gone, Tavi. My brother, Mum and Dad, they’re gone.”
Gathering her into my arms after managing to put her coffee on the table before she spilled it, I just held her while she sobbed for her lost family…sobbed so long and hard that the nurses got worried and called Chen, who’d been about to head home after a night shift.
He gave her something to calm her, and I sat with her until she closed her eyes once more in sleep, her wounded body needing rest to heal.
“Tavish.” Chen appeared at the end of the bed. “Can we talk?”
“I thought you’d gone home after seeing Diya, Dr. Chen,” I said when I joined him in the hallway.
His bony face tired, he said, “I wanted to talk to you about this first—I’ve had a look at your wife’s records. She’s been treated for mental health issues since she was a teenager, including severe depression.”
Scowling, I set my feet apart as I folded my arms across my chest. “Sure, but you can’t blame her for her current state. This is not a normal situation.”
“No, that’s not what I meant—I want us to be proactive here, treat her mind as we’re treating her body. I’m going to arrange for a mental health practitioner to come speak to her.”
Unable to forget how she’d cried and cried, powerless to stop, I knew the doctor was right—she needed to talk to a professional. “Look, I have a feeling her parents pressured her into getting medicated, so whoever you find, make sure it’s not someone who’s going to push drugs on her. She won’t be receptive. Not now.”
“I’ll talk to them myself to drive home the fact that it’s to be a therapeutic conversation only.”
“Thanks.” Unfolding my arms, I pushed my hand through my hair. “My sister-in-law, Shumi? She’s still not conscious?”
He shook his head. “It’s worrying since she appeared to be waking, but with the near drowning…it’s difficult to judge her true status. We have to wait and see.”
* * *
—
The day passed as slow as molasses. Diya slept for large portions of it, while I kept her company and went for occasional walks around the hospital. My wife was to be moved out of the ICU the following day, her status stable enough that she no longer needed the same level of care, but Shumi would remain for the time being.
Ackerson came in at around two to interview Diya and had to deal with me there because Diya wouldn’t let go of my hand. As it was, she didn’t remember anything more than that there’d been a fire, and that she’d been afraid.
The detective attempted to nudge her memory using various methods, to no avail. She finally gave up when Diya said she was tired and needed to sleep.
I wasn’t surprised when Ackerson asked me to step into the outside hallway with her.
“Ngata,” I said the second we were alone. “Seriously, if you want to talk to me, wait till I can get my lawyer here.” I just wanted to be with my wife, not answering questions I’d already answered ten times over.
“It’s not about you.” Ackerson’s mouth was tight. “Were you aware that your father-in-law wouldn’t permit your wife to move out, even after she reached adulthood? That it wasn’t strictly her choice to remain at the Lake Tarawera property?”
Another truth Diya hadn’t yet shared with me, our relationship too new, the two of us yet learning each other. “No, but honestly, that’s not unheard-of with some Indian fathers,” I said with a shrug. “And how could he stop her anyway? Yeah, he could turn on the parental guilt, but she runs her own business, has her own income.”
She tapped her pen against the notebook she’d pulled out when talking to Diya. “That business is barely breaking even. Most weeks, she can’t cover even her most basic expenses. Her parents funded her entire life—and used that money like a leash. They threatened to cut her off if she tried to move out.”
A storm of nothingness in my head, a buzz. “Don’t you dare try to pin this on her. Even if they were controlling her before, she has me now. We were actively looking for a rental place of our own, and regardless of what you might think of my prospects, Detective, I can support both of us.”
Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot. “So you don’t know anything about the threat of financial disownment?”
“No—and even if they said that during a fight, they’d never have gone through with it. She was too precious to them.” Never would Rajesh and Sarita have allowed their daughter to stumble through life without a safety net. “Who told you that nonsense?”
“A reliable source.”
“Fuck that. My wife’s best friend is currently in the next unit over, and her family is dead. And Diya’s not the kind to blab family business to just anyone. Whoever told you is shit-stirring.”
I could see her struggling to decide something. Finally, she said, “Do you know Kalindra Renata?”
“Diya’s old school friend?” I snorted. “She wasn’t even at our engagement party. If she’s passing on that so-called threat, it must’ve been from back when Diya was a teenager.”
A deep furrow between her eyebrows. “Ms. Renata says she and Diya talk every week on the phone for at least an hour, and have since Diya returned from the States and reinitiated contact. She wasn’t at the party because Sarita and Rajesh Prasad didn’t like her. She got caught smoking in high school, was suspended.”
“I’m calling bullshit on long heart-to-heart calls,” I said, because protecting Diya was a primal compulsion—but the truth was that I had no way to know for sure. We hadn’t been attached at the hip. She’d gone out for hours at a time to talk to suppliers, check venues, all the things an event planner needed to do.
“Even if there was some threat,” I added, my face hot, “I hope you’re not implying Diya murdered her family because of it. She was stabbed, and those weren’t self-inflicted wounds.”
“I’m just trying to get my finger on the intricacies of the family.” Ackerson showed no signs of backing down. “It’s difficult. The parents don’t seem to have been close to anyone—friendly, yes, well-liked and respected professionals, but so far, I haven’t managed to unearth a single deep friendship.
“My Indo-Fijian colleagues tell me that’s unusual in their community, where even unrelated people can become family over time—especially so when we’re talking new immigrants. The Prasads seem to have made no attempt to forge connections within that tight-knit group.”
I knew she was right. It was why Los Angeles had a Koreatown and Little Armenia among other neighborhoods. Because people sought the comfort of the familiar, others who could make a new land feel like home. It had been years before I’d realized that the man my paternal grandfather called his brother was no blood relation whatsoever; the two had just met on their first day in America and become fast friends.
“Maybe they were just snobs,” I suggested, though I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was about hiding a single terrible family secret.
Ani.
A secret so damaging that the family had become a closed bunker.
“They invited plenty of doctors and other professionals to the engagement party.”
“But they didn’t talk to any of those professionals,” Ackerson insisted. “Even Dr. Rajesh Prasad’s closest colleague—one of the two other partners at the firm—could tell me nothing about his so-called friend that wasn’t public knowledge. Said he always felt as if he was being held at arm’s length. The Kumars, too, are in the dark about the family’s internal dynamics.”
“You have to know I’m not the person to ask. I barely knew them.” Sarita talking about her love of beautiful high-performance cars, Rajesh telling me about his lawn, all I had were fleeting snapshots…and the horror of what I’d learned in a tropical nation of aquamarine seas and palm trees. “Could be their real friends are back in Fiji, and they stay in touch via email and during the times they visit.”
No one would’ve done what Kamal had done and covered up the murder of a child just because the Prasads were a respected family. There’d been more there, a bond of friendship of some kind.
“If you think of anything else, call me,” Ackerson said.
“Sure.” Despite my agreement, I had no intention of dropping my defenses and becoming friendly with the detective; in all likelihood, she was probably playing me. Baxter had tried that, too, right back at the start.
Look, just talk to me, Tavish. I’m not here to stitch you up—I just want to know what happened to Virna.
However, once I was back beside my wife, the rhythm of her breathing deep and even in sleep, I thought about what she’d told me of her family’s controlling tactics—and what I’d learned on my own.
Kalindra cut off because she was a bad influence. Risha acceptable only because she’d lived under their control while in this country and was otherwise on the other side of the world. Shumi permitted because she had, as her own mother had so callously put it, followed the entire family around “like a little pet.”
Not a woman who would’ve gone against Rajesh and Sarita.
The other friends, the ones I’d met, had all been shallow acquaintances.
I wasn’t a shallow acquaintance, wasn’t a person they could control. And Diya…Diya trusted me, had slowly been giving me more and more pieces of herself.
I’d focused on Bobby to the exclusion of everyone else, but the elder Prasads were the ones whose entire existence was built around the fact that they were pillars of the community, admired and loved by their patients and respected by the public. Mum and Dad to two successful children.
A good family. The perfect family.
Frowning, I thought of what Ackerson had said about Diya’s event-organizing business being a losing proposition. My wife, in contrast, had very recently mentioned something in relation to growing her business. If I was remembering right, it had been about a week before the fire.
“I have some good news,” she’d said with a huge smile after she’d checked her emails.
“Oh? Tell me.”
“So, I was meant to have a business partner as of May this year. Idea was to merge my operation with her bigger one, with me the junior partner—it would’ve pushed me into a whole other sphere as far as the size of the projects was concerned. Alone, I’m stuck in an overfilled niche and there’s no growth potential.
“But she got assaulted back in April, hurt bad, ended up basically closing her business; she used to have a little office in the town center and everything. I felt so awful for her—she was so good, Tavi. I was looking forward to learning from her, delighted that she wanted to take me on board.”
“How’s she doing now?” I knew my wife’s heart, had figured she’d be watching over her friend.
“I didn’t know until now—she just fell off the radar. I managed to get in touch with her family, and they said she needed space and time and I didn’t want to overstep. But I did send her little care packages and cards so she knew I was thinking about her.”
“I’m guessing she got back in touch?”
“Yes.” A beaming smile. “She’s nowhere near ready to go back to work, but she said she’s been looking at our past plans again, and she’s still excited about the idea. So fingers crossed.” She’d held up the crossed digits. “Honestly, I’m just happy to hear from her. I’ve missed her.”
Taking out my phone, I began to search for a serious mugging in Rotorua in April, throwing in the words “event planner” as part of the search.
There.
Emblazoned across the local newspaper were the words
No Suspects in Brutal Kuirau Park Assault
The resulting article named the victim as Violet Long, a thirty-year-old event planner who was starting to become well-known for her wedding work and who’d even been in the running for the well-publicized upcoming wedding of a national television celebrity. A photo provided by her family showed her to be a Eurasian woman with blunt-cut bags and a sleek bob, her face the kind of plump that just made her prettier.
…Ms. Long was attacked after agreeing to meet a new client near the thermal footbaths in Kuirau Park at four p.m. on the seventeenth. Ms. Long tried to reschedule the meeting to another location given the heavy rain that week, but the client was insistent on the park, as they intended to get their wedding photos taken there and had no other free slots in their schedule.
“They’d never spoken on the phone,” Ms. Long’s mother, Jenn Long, stated. “It was an online query, then they communicated by text. It sounds silly now, but that’s how all the young people do things these days—Violet told me almost none of her clients like to talk on the phone until well into the process. And, well, it was daylight, wasn’t it? Who even worries about getting assaulted in broad daylight in a busy public park?”
Ms. Long was hit over the back of the head with a blunt object when she reached the footbaths—which were otherwise empty, due to the weather. Police say there are indications that someone tried to push her head into the thermal water, possibly in an attempt to drown her, but were interrupted by a group of teens who’d decided to visit the baths despite the rain.
The teens didn’t see anyone but are sure they heard the sound of running feet.
Police are asking anyone with information on the case to contact them at once. “This attack displays a dangerous level of premeditation,” Detective Tawhai stated. “The perpetrator lured Ms. Long to the site with the promise of a lucrative work contract, then lay in wait. They clearly used the weather to their advantage.”
Police have been unable to trace the perpetrator’s phone number and say it was likely an unregistered prepaid mobile. Ms. Long remains in hospital.
I read several more articles on the assault, but the information was all much the same: A rainy day. Everyone in wet-weather jackets with the hood up, or with umbrellas blocking their vision. Take a chance that no one else would be around even at four in the afternoon—no harm, no foul if someone was; just call off the meeting for some made-up reason and reschedule for another attempt. Otherwise, attack Violet, then lose yourself in the park.
Just another person in a hooded jacket.
That cop who’d been interviewed was right. The entire thing showed a psychopathic level of planning and confidence.
Whoever this was, it hadn’t been their first crime.
Ani. Rhiannon. Violet.
The connection between Bobby and the first two women was crystal clear, but Diya hadn’t said anything about Violet ever being involved with Bobby.
His sister was an adorable thing, though. Rhiannon loved her, used to make a special batch of cookies for her right before we went down each summer. “For my little Dee,” she’d say. “My adopted baby sister.”
I never thought it was Diya beti—or that it was about a doll. She used to play for hours with Ani, shared all her toys. Diya loved Ani.
I feel so free with you, as if I’m truly seeing life for the first time. No filters, no restraints. I’m myself and I remember all of me.
A sick feeling in my gut, a dawning awareness that I’d got it all wrong, that this had nothing to do with finances and pride…and everything to do with making sure Diya never ever forged a bond outside the closed family unit. Because then she might feel safe enough to remember…and tell about the killing that had begun all of it, destroying the foundation of the perfect, beautiful life the Prasads had built in the aftermath.
Which meant…she had remembered at some point, had tried to talk about it. Only for her family to shut her down, tell her she was wrong, that it hadn’t been like that. It had driven her mind to fight itself, and then had come the medication.
Diya had said something the morning of the fire. Something important. Squeezing my eyes shut, I struggled to think back to what felt like another lifetime. She’d been making me the omelet and…
I had the oddest dream last night. About our old house in Fiji. I could see the mango tree from a window—and then I was trying to dig it up using a shovel.
“Oh God.” Had she brought up Ani’s death that morning? Was that what had set everything in motion?
