Quiet in Her Bones by Singh, Nalini (good e books to read txt) 📗

she having an affair with?” I asked softly, deciding to slide under his lowered defenses.

“One of the fuckers in the Cul-­de-­Sac. That’s what she told me. Said I had beers with him every goddamn barbeque. Probably lying. Always lying. Always.”

Leaning against one side of the doorjamb, I continued to speak in a gentle, nonaggressive tone. Wearing masks was my specialty after all. “No other hints?”

A ­one-­shouldered shrug. “Who the fuck cared? I didn’t.” He lifted his nodding head without warning, his eyes full of broken blood vessels and hate. “Wasn’t the first time, either. Did you know that? Your sainted mother was a whore.”

“Did you ever ask yourself why?” I said with a smile. “I mean, you’re rich, ­good-­looking, and yet you couldn’t hold on to your wife. Probably because you’re an asshole.”

Making a roaring sound, he lurched at me, but only succeeded in stumbling into a wall. I thought about just leaving him to it but he’d probably fall on his face on the broken glass, and right now, I didn’t need distractions. I needed answers only Ishaan Rai could provide. Sighing, I went over, the muscles of my right arm flexing and tightening as I put my weight on the cane; even with only one usable hand, I managed to lead him back to his armchair.

It helped that he’d gone from anger to sobs. “Bitch,” he said, and it was almost a croon. “So beautiful. Like a bullet to the gut,” he mumbled. “Nina. Nina.”

Disgusted with him, I nonetheless walked out to the kitchen and came back with the little dustpan and brush Shanti kept under the sink. The weekly cleaning service rarely had much to ­do—­Shanti ensured the place was spotless.

I thought he’d fallen asleep by the time I got back, but he jerked up his head when I swore as I got myself to the ground. I basically had to sit on my ass and sweep. No other way to do it without losing my center of gravity.

As I did so, my eye fell on the family photos arranged on Pari’s gleaming piano. One with all four of us, the rest mostly featuring Shanti and Pari together, but there was a selfie of me and Pari with ice cream. And a faded image of my father on his motorcycle from back when he’d been young.

Poor Pari. She kept looking for her knight in a father who was the villain of the story.

“This floor is fucking hard,” I muttered. “Needs a proper rug.”

My father slurred as he spoke. “Threw it away. Too stained after ­you …” A snore erupted from him while I was still staring in his direction, my mouth dry and my brain clawing for the next word.

Too stained after ­you …

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Sitting there amidst the edges of glass, I ran back the tape in my head from that night.

My mother’s scream.

A desperate race to the balcony.

The red lights of her car driving off into the night.

I’d never left my room. I couldn’t have hurt her.

But my father was blind drunk, his inhibitions gone. He wasn’t functional enough to have consciously thought up a way to screw with my head. I’d somehow damaged the carpet. How? Why couldn’t I remember anything of the incident?

“Likely because it never happened,” I muttered, and got to sweeping up the rest of the glass. “You’re taking the word of a man so drunk he’s drooling while he snorts like a pig.”

Yet he’d sounded very rational when he’d spoken about my mother’s lover. On the other ­hand … maybe he’d had no idea who he’d been addressing with those final words. Could be he thought he was talking to my mother. After all, I have her eyes, her smile. If that was true, he’d just accused my mother of staining his precious rug.

That made a hell of a lot more sense than any other explanation.

If only my mother wasn’t bones. Then perhaps we’d know if blood had been involved.

A scream.

Red lights in the darkness.

But if my mother had been bleeding heavily enough to have necessitated the removal of the rug, how could she have driven off so smoothly? No, wait. I kept forgetting she’d been found in the passenger seat. Someone had driven her. But if it had been my father, how had he gotten a bleeding and badly wounded woman in the car so quickly? Even weak, she’d have fought, made noise. He definitely couldn’t have carried ­her—­my father had never been buff enough to pull that off, especially in such a short time frame.

Or was I remembering it wrong? Had there been a longer gap of time between the scream and when I actually got out of bed?

I knew how I could find out.

Putting the dustpan to the ­side—­there was no way I could get up holding it without spilling the glass to the floor ­again—­I maneuvered myself onto the knee of my good leg, then used the cane to haul myself upright. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

Leaving my father drooling in the armchair, I made my way first to the kitchen.

I was hungry.

“Ari, I knew it’d be you rustling about in the kitchen.” My mother’s ghost trailed in after me, her silk dressing gown open over a spaghetti strap nightgown in black with red blooms. “My hungry beta.” Ruffling my hair. “Sit, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

My mother hadn’t been the most domestic person, but she’d loved to cook for me. My eyes stung as I slapped butter onto a couple of slices of bread, then found the ham and cheese and tomato. She’d have turned up her nose at my shoddy construction.

“Use the best cheese, Ari. And thodi si relish. Throw in a pickle but only with the correct flavor combinations.”

Some of the best memories of my life are of being with her in the kitchen late at night. She’d ­been … gentler in those nighttime hours when it was just me and her, no masks or pretenses.