I still liked them. Unlike most people, the two women didn’t hide who they were or pretend for an audience.
“Coffee please, Lily,” I said. “Usual.”
She moved jerkily to the gleaming machine and I wondered not for the first time how she’d afforded this place—and how she kept it going. Yes, it had the local traffic but that was hardly bustling. When Calvin originally set up the café, it had been as a “hobby” shop designed to occupy Diana. They’d sold it off to a similar couple after the birth of their first child, and that couple had later on sold to Lily.
Lily certainly didn’t seem to be hurting. Her black sweater and jeans weren’t from the budget shop, and the sparks in her ears were diamonds. Nothing ostentatious, but obvious to a man who’d grown up with a mother who’d hoarded jewels and a father who’d thought he could buy anything if he offered enough carats in exchange. I’d wondered more than once if Lily had a rich lover in the background, one who wanted to keep his mistress close.
The Cul-de-Sac had plenty of possibilities: my father, Calvin, and let’s not forget Hemi Henare. The school principal and recipient of generational wealth via his wife was the model “outstanding” citizen, but those were often the people with the biggest secrets.
Then there was Isaac, owner of an ad agency and an inveterate gamer. He was also a player in another sense; in his late forties, he was already on wife number four. According to Trixi, said wife—the plump and voluptuous Mellie—had been his side-piece while he’d been married to wife number three.
Last but not least was Adrian. Much younger than the others, but owner of his own gym in the local town center—and often in the Cul-de-Sac for personal training sessions with a clientele that seemed to skew almost fully female.
“Will you be able to carry your coffee?” Trixi asked as Lily walked around from the coffee machine. “I can carry it for you.”
Maybe it was a genuine offer and maybe she wanted longer to dig at my soul, but I smiled my best sociopath smile, charming and warm with nothing behind it, and said, “Lily’s put it in an insulated go-cup for me. It’ll be a bit awkward, but I should be fine not spilling it.” I shifted my attention to Lily. “Thanks for that.”
“It’s not a problem.” She handed over the coffee, a look in her brown eyes that was difficult to read—but that was no surprise. Lily, I’d learned, had a way of opening herself up while keeping herself shuttered at the same time.
The day she’d taken my virginity, she’d been a sensual siren, but afterward, her expression had hardened, holding an edge as harsh on the tongue as the bitter melon my father’s second wife so loved.
8
I thought of Lily’s postcoital expression at times, had often wondered if I’d been a pawn in a much bigger game. Maybe my mother had been right—but the one thing I’d never been able to square away was why Lily would’ve slept with the school-aged son if she was involved with the powerful CEO father.
Leaving that question for another time, I walked out the door—trim and tanned Lexi helpfully held it open for me. Her surgically plump lips were downturned, her thick brown hair pulled off her face in a ponytail. “I’m sorry, Aarav. Your mum was always nice to us when we saw her on our walks.”
“She enjoyed talking to you.” I remembered how the three of them had laughed together more than once.
“They remind me of the gossips from back home in India,” she’d said to me with a smile. “I never thought I’d miss those biddies.”
As I went through the door on the ghostly echo of my mother’s laughter, I had the sudden thought that I’d be better off picking up a cane. It’d give me the full use of one arm while also offering my leg some support.
I paused just beyond the Cul-de-Sac gates to take a sip of the coffee. Only as it went down, burning all the while, did I realize I was frozen. Numb.
“Aarav!”
Diana, dark hair shiny and tumbled with a few curls where it hit the middle of her back, her body clad in cuffed jeans and a fine pink cashmere sweater. Whether walking the dog or watering the lushly blooming plants in her garden, Diana was never less than perfectly put together in a neat and elegant way that befit the wife of one of the country’s best surgeons.
She also baked cookies with her children and went to every school event. Any time I’d turned up at her house as a kid, she’d smiled and asked me to grab a seat, then given me milk and cookies. I’d watched her since the day she and Calvin moved in to the Cul-de-Sac. She’d been a luminous young bride, had turned into a lovely young mother.
My first crush.
Today, she hugged her arms around herself as she stood on the other side of the drive, her creamy skin flushed from the cold. A small French bulldog sat panting at her feet. Glossy black, Charlie was old, had been around when my mother disappeared.
At Diana’s side stood Calvin, tall and lean. Must’ve been one of his rare days off. Born of immigrant Chinese parents he’d lost in a traumatic incident in his youth, Dr. Calvin Liu was the clean-cut high-achieving son of Asian parents’ dreams. I, meanwhile, was the opposite. Unlike Diana, Calvin wore running gear. Probably heading out to one of the few open trails.
It had been Calvin who’d partnered with me while I was training for that half-marathon ten years ago. I’d never completed it, though Calvin had urged me to keep going, telling me that it might help take my mind off my mother’s sudden absence from my life.
Though I was in no mood to talk, I shifted direction to cross the drive. I respected Calvin, and Diana was one of the few people in the Cul-de-Sac whom I genuinely liked. Not because she’d been my mother’s best friend, but because she hadn’t gossiped about her in the aftermath of her disappearance. She’d also made the time to find a confused sixteen-year-old and tell him that the one thing on which Nina had never wavered was her love for her son.
“She’ll come back for you,” Diana had promised. “I know she will.”
She’d been wrong, but I’d never held it against her. I’d known my mother in ways even her best friend hadn’t. My mother’s love had come with strings attached. She’d demanded absolute loyalty, heartfelt devotion—and I’d just gotten serious with my first real girlfriend weeks before she disappeared.
“Aarav, why do you go out with these silly girls?” Her fingers in my hair, kneading, her fingernails scraping my skull. “Aren’t I enough?”
She’d been drunk, the taste of vodka in the kiss she’d pressed to my lips.
Hadn’t told my shrink that one; he’d probably start worrying about child abuse. It hadn’t been that. My mother had been kissing me on the lips since I was a toddler, just her way. But the attachment she’d demanded, the unflinching dedication, that hadn’t exactly been healthy. Had she lived, my mother would’ve become the mother-in-law from hell.