Once inside the car, I grabbed the bag of pastries and took a cream doughnut. Lily removed an éclair, and we sat there eating fat and sugar as total darkness cloaked the world outside. In the bush below the lookout would exist an even darker night, pitch-black and impenetrable. My mother had breathed her last breaths in lonely darkness so complete there could be no hope.

“Where did you get the money for the café?” I shifted to look at her. “Just tell me. It’s fucking with my head and I’d like to have at least one person I know I can trust.”

She stared at me, a hardness in her eyes that was nothing like what I’d previously glimpsed. “You’re so privileged, Aarav. Do you have any awareness of that?” She slashed out her hand. “Yes, your mother was murdered, but I haven’t seen my mother since I was twelve and my father decided to kidnap me and bring me to this country. She died while they were still fighting for custody—and it was a horribly unfair battle because she didn’t have even a tenth his resources.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”

“Why would you?” Her lips twisted. “I was just the maid.”

“Don’t put that on me.” Yeah, I’d been a shit at times, but never with Lily. “You had the power in that relationship, not me.”

She sucked in a breath, exhaled in a jagged burst. “You know, I never felt guilty about what I did until afterward, until I’d already had sex with you—I was so angry the whole time.” A quick glance. “Why didn’t you tell your parents I stole your money?”

“I didn’t want you fired, and I figured you must’ve really needed it.” Two hundred dollars my father had given me in lieu of affection or attention. Lily had mattered more.

“Sometimes, you’re almost human.” Picking out a plum Danish from the bag, she began to carefully chip off and eat the sugar glaze. “I walked out of my father’s house the day I turned eighteen. He stole my mother from me—stole all those years I could’ve had.”

Pick. Chip. Eat. “That’s why I’d never have hurt Nina, no matter if she was a bitch. You loved your mother, and I liked you.” Tiny fragments of glaze fell to her lap. “At least I got luckier in the old-man department—mine apparently felt so guilty that he left all his property to me in his will.

“I came into three-quarters of a million dollars while I was still working for your parents.” A sardonic smile. “Wanted to throw that in your mother’s face so many times. But all that poisonous anger inside me . . . I just sat on the money for months, not knowing how I felt about it. But I sure as hell didn’t need to steal a quarter mil.”

“The café wouldn’t have cost anywhere near the value of your inheritance.” It was too small, with too little foot traffic, and not enough land to make it worthwhile for development.

“No, I still have a chunk of the money. Invested it into a retirement account.” She took a bite of the Danish, chewed with deliberation, swallowed. “I figured his money was the least of what he owed me. Paltry compensation for murdering my mother—she died of a broken heart and no one will ever convince me otherwise.”

I stared out at darkness so thick I could no longer even see the lookout, much less what lay beyond. I considered bringing up her other business . . . but there’d be no point to that beyond cruelty. She wouldn’t have needed a lot of money to start that up—and for all I knew, the house itself was a rental. Easy enough to verify that with a few internet searches.

“Did my mother know your circumstances?”

Laughter from the passenger seat that actually sounded real. When I looked at her, her face was aglow, her eyes sparkling. She was beautiful. “Aarav, your mother thought I was little more than dirt on her shoe. She didn’t give a shit about my life.”

There was nothing I could say to that—I’d witnessed my mother’s treatment of Lily firsthand. “I never understood why.” It felt disloyal to say even that. “Was it just because you were young and beautiful? She never treated any of the other staff badly.”

Lily’s shoulders moved under the black of her long-sleeved tee. “Maybe I reminded her of who she’d once been and she couldn’t bear it.”

I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could do life right.

Bitter laughter. Alcohol-laced words.

I looked away from the sharp arrow of truth. “Any pastries left?”

“Blueberry muffin.”

I took it, ate, and somehow, we ended up just sitting there in the darkness while the stars dug themselves out of the clouds. When Lily said, “Do you want to come home with me?” I thought about the oblivion to be found in the arms of a welcoming woman.

“No,” I said at last. “We’re both screwed up enough already.”

Another laugh, this one softer. “There you go, being human again. I almost can’t tell you’re one of the Rai family.”

Transcript

Session #11

“Sorry I missed the last session. You got my cancellation?”

“Yes, and of course I understand. How did it go?”

“As well as can be expected. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”

“Where would you like to begin?”

“Her. Always her.”

41

As it was, I ended up inside Lily’s flat anyway—she didn’t live in the Titirangi property where I’d seen her and Ginger and the other woman. Her home was a two-bedroom suburban flat that backed onto the regional park, and it had a little garden that had gone dormant for the winter.

When I dropped her back by her car in the Cul-de-Sac and she invited me to follow her home for coffee, I went because I was more comfortable with Lily than I was with anyone else. She saw the fractures that made me less than normal and she didn’t care. Maybe because Lily had the same papered-over cracks.