“Does she call Beau?”

“No, but he hates talking on the phone. He just doesn’t pick up.”

I wondered again what had caused the irreparable schism between the sisters. Diana appeared ready to bury the hatchet, but Sarah clearly wasn’t in agreement. So unless Sarah was an asshole, Diana was the one who’d done the unforgivable.

It wasn’t any of my business, but I kept thinking: what if one of the two died? What if they never got a chance to fix the relationship? It would haunt them. As my final moments with my mother haunted me.

We hadn’t fought. Nothing like that.

“Ari, beta, we’re off.” A quick kiss on the cheek as I sat in front of the computer.

I’d barely looked away from the game on the screen as I said, “Party hard.”

My last glimpse of my mother might’ve been a fleeting snapshot of her in my bedroom doorway, her lips parting as she laughed—but something had made me get up and go to the landing, watch her walk down the stairs. She’d looked up once, and then she was gone . . . for the last time.

All three of us went quiet as I drove deep into the shadowed and rainy green of Scenic Drive, past the sheer drop where my mother’s car had gone off the road. It was Mia who broke the silence at last. “That must make you sad.”

“Yes.” She was too young to understand that I was full of as much rage as sadness, as if one couldn’t exist without the other. “But I’m glad we’ve found her after all this time.”

“Will you have the funeral soon? Mum was crying and saying she hates it that she has to bury her best friend, but she also wants to stand up for her. She said she’ll wear a dress your mum gave her even though it’s bright red.”

“I have to wait until the police say it’s okay.” In truth, I hadn’t thought about burying the bones since the day they’d been found.

My mother was dead; there was nothing of her left in those bones. But maybe a funeral would help turn over some rocks, bring more dark secrets to light. Checking everyone’s alibis for that night was an impossibility at this point—ten years on, spotty memories weren’t exactly suspicious.

A motorcycle wheel on wet tarmac, rain hitting the face shield of my helmet.

Transcript

Session #10

“She had a profound impact on your life.”

“Yes. Some days it’s all I can do to stop thinking about her—as if she’s taunting me.”

“Yet from all you’ve said, the two of you didn’t have a combative relationship.”

“We had . . . a different kind of relationship. It was about power, and about who held it, and it wasn’t . . . healthy in the way that kind of relationship should be.”

“How do you mean?”

“She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that lends a person extreme power. I saw her twist men around her finger simply by smiling and giving them a particular look. Women didn’t always respond to her, but they did when she tried. And she did try at times—she had female friends, even a best friend.”

“So how did her beauty get between you?”

“It—let me think.”

[Pause]

“People like her, they don’t always consider the consequences of their actions. She did things that . . . hurt those who loved her.”

39

Constable Neri called in response to my message an hour later. “Thank you for your patience,” she said. “I’ve spoken to my superiors, and the remains will be released in five days’ time.”

The remains.

Such a graphic statement if you thought about it. A box of bones was all that remained of a human being who’d once laughed and danced in the rain and kissed her son good night. “Thank you.”

“Have you considered what you’ll be doing?”

“A simple cremation.”

“We’d like to attend.”

“Just like on TV?” I stared out the balcony doors, watching Hemi’s Mercedes SUV turn into his drive at the same time that Isaac’s car appeared in the distance. “In case the perpetrator turns up?”

“You never know. Sometimes, guilt is easy to live with until you come face-to-face with the evidence of your crimes.”

As Hemi nosed his car into his garage, I considered my father’s bitter words. Fights aside, was it possible Hemi had still been my mother’s lover at the time of her death? Or was I right about Brett? About Isaac?

There were too many possibilities and it was making my head hurt, my mind spin.

Perhaps the words my mother had thrown at my father had been designed to wound, and her lover was an invisible third party . . . maybe a stranger who’d come to a funeral. “I’ll send through the details as soon as I have them.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

After hanging up, my first call was to Paul and Margaret. “Mags,” I said when she answered, all throaty-voiced and languid, “Isaac’s stalking toward your house like he has something on his mind.”

“Bloody hell. Thanks, sweetcakes.”

A minute later, I watched through the binoculars as Mellie exited through the Dixons’ back door, and tiptoed around the corner of the house. At the same time, Isaac was banging on the Dixons’ front door. It opened, Margaret’s sequins-of-the-day flashing in the light as she invited him in.

Mellie hotfooted it back across the Cul-de-Sac to the home she shared with Isaac, her shoes held in one hand and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Halfway along, she stopped and waved in my direction. I laughed, the bit of domestic comedy a much-needed respite.