Quiet in Her Bones by Singh, Nalini (mobi reader .txt) 📕

exactly the same boy, just one who’d grown into my body. “It was my first big party.” A chaos of lithe young bodies around a campfire on a beach, my first kiss a mash of mouths behind a sand dune. “To be honest, I had the hangover from hell the next day. I still wasn’t feeling too crash hot that night, and that’s why I went to bed earlyish for me.”

“Did you wake up at any point?”

“I heard a woman’s ­scream—­my mother’s—­and it woke me up.”

Regan leaned forward. “How can you be sure of what you heard if you woke out of a deep sleep?”

“That scream’s haunted me for ten years.” I held his ­dishwater-­blue gaze. “I almost went back to sleep again, but then I heard the front door slam twice.”

“How do you know it was the front door?”

“My room’s always been right above ­it—­I know the sound.”

“And you’re sure it was twice?”

“Yes. With a gap in between of a few seconds. I ran to the balcony that overlooks the ­street—­I knew both my parents had been drinking and I didn’t want them driving.” It didn’t matter if they knew the truth now; this wasn’t a ­drunk-­driving ­case … or was it? Had my father skidded out and just left my mother there? Murder by incompetence? “I was calling out my mother’s name, but I’d injured my leg ­and …”

My eyes fell on my leg, on the moon boot.

“A broken limb?”

Jerking out of the strange slip in time, I shook my head, the facts having re-­emerged in my bruised brain. “No, I’d cut myself when I fell onto some glass at the party and I had stitches all up my calf.” The faint line was still there, a scar that marked the night of my mother’s death. “It made me slow, and then the door to the balcony stuck. It always used to do that in the rain.”

I could feel the strain in my biceps from how hard I’d had to pull at it, how I’d struggled with the lock. “It was too late by the time I got out there and called out for my mum to stop. All I could see through the storm were the red taillights of her car and then the Jaguar was moving down the Cul-­de-­Sac and away into the night.”

Neri, who’d been silent throughout, said, “You’re sure it was her vehicle you saw?”

“The taillights were distinctive and no one else on the street had a Jag. Plus, I saw her park her car in the main drive earlier that ­day—­my father had blocked our drive and internal garage with his own vehicle.”

So many small pieces that had all contributed to her death. I would’ve been fast enough if she’d parked in the garage. I might’ve been able to stop her. I always had before.

“What happened after that?” Detective Regan asked, his voice calm and soothing.

As if I was a wild animal that had to be stroked into compliance. I wondered if that type of gentling really worked on suspects. It must do, if they kept on using such things. “I stayed on the balcony for a while, hoping she’d come back, but I heard nothing. Since I was already awake, I went downstairs to see if my father was around.”

I’d really gone to ask what asshole thing he’d said to her now. Sixteen was also the year I’d begun to call a spade a spade when it came to my father. “There was no one in the house. The living area was empty, but I saw shattered glass on the hearth.”

“Shattered glass?”

“My parents were both big believers in throwing crystal tumblers at any available wall or surface when they fought.” I shrugged. “I left it, and decided to go back to bed.” A sense of wrongness gnawed at me, but that was no revelation; everything about that night had been bad. “I thought my mother would be there when I woke up. She always came home once she’d cooled down.”

The two officers exchanged a look, before Neri said, “So this wasn’t unusual? For her to drive off?”

“No, though she usually didn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking that he’d scared her off. She’d stand and fight and take pleasure in telling him to take it like a man.”

“Aarav, I know it’s a difficult thing to imagine, but do you believe your father could’ve harmed your mother?”

I answered almost before Regan had completed his sentence. “It’s not difficult at all. They hated each other but they also had this weird compulsion to be together. It was toxic.” The kind of toxic that poisoned from the inside out. “I can imagine him following her to her car to continue their fight, doing something he couldn’t take back, then dumping her body.”

It struck me all at once that that didn’t explain the rug. I’d seen shards of glass on it that night, but no blood or anything else incriminating. Was it possible my mother had actually come back that night, only to be murdered in the living area?

“We’ve found no reports of domestic violence at the home.” Regan made a show of looking at his notebook.

“Rich Indians don’t report domestic violence, detective. It’s bad for the ­reputation—­and reputation is everything. The shame, the shame, what will people say?” Popping open the tab of my Coke on that mocking litany, I listened to the gas fizzing out. “And the houses in the Cul-­de-­Sac are far enough apart that the neighbors can’t hear anything. Even if they could, they’d keep out of it. None of their business.”

“Are you saying there was domestic violence?”

I took time to have a long hit of the sweet, sugary drink. It was a rush to the system. “Not as you’d think of it. My father didn’t beat my mother. They were violent to each other with words the majority of the ­time—­along with the odd smashed glass or other thrown object. A lot of screaming of ugly words punctuated by the breaking