My father might be telling the truth . . . but lying about the timing.

“Convenient,” I said. “Will she back you up if I ask?”

“If she has a single brain cell, she’ll keep her mouth shut.” My father leaned back in his leather chair. “She was stalking Nina, you know that? Nina saw her—and I emailed Aurelie about it. Still have her reply admitting to it.”

His smile was razor-edged. “She came back two weeks after Nina vanished, but I was bored of her by then and let her know it—I was pretty sure you heard her bawling in my study, but you never said anything about it.”

I kept my silence, because his words hit a total blank in my mind. My father was a master game-player, and right now, I had no idea which game he was playing. “Except you just said she was with you when Mum drove away.”

He shrugged. “She’s smarter than she ever let on. For all I know, she paid someone to off Nina.” The faintest stretching of his skin over his bones. “If she did and I’d known that at the time, I’d have put my hands around her neck and squeezed the life out of her. Nina was mine.”

“Funny how you’ve never before mentioned Aurelie being there that night.”

“I forgot about her. She was nothing, just a bit of fun.” He waved off his former secretary’s existence. “But she was so obliging that she sat for photos for me more than once. I have to say I still take them out from time to time. Shanti is a good wife, but Aurelie had . . . talents.”

So he’d used the photos and the emails to blackmail Aurelie into silence. No wonder Aurelie had all but thrown up when I tracked her down. My father had gotten to her first.

The question was why. After all, she could verify his alibi.

Maybe it was because he’d taken great pleasure in painting my mother as the one at fault for the failure of their relationship. His halo would fall with a spectacular crash should his sexpot secretary come out with the salacious details of their affair.

Then again, he could be spinning lies out of murder.

I rubbed at my forehead, things so foggy and confused in my head that I almost missed his next words.

“Gossip around the police watercooler is that Nina’s ribs were marked as if she’d been stabbed multiple times.”

“How do you know?”

My father rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Find the right person, don’t push too much while keeping things sweet, and all kinds of information flows to you.” Reaching for the glass of water on his desk, he took a sip before putting it down with deliberate care. “You had cuts on your hands that night, son. Doctor noted it on your medical chart.”

I stared at him.

“All I’m saying”—he leaned forward on his desk—“is keep your mouth shut. You’re not Aurelie. Tu hai mera beta. Khoon ka rishta hai ye.”

How I wished the latter weren’t true. That I wasn’t his son. That we weren’t bound by blood.

“If you killed your mother,” he continued, “then we deal with it inside the home.” In his eyes glinted an avaricious joy; he thought he had me, could control me now.

The urge to do violence was a roar in my blood.

Restraining it with ice-cold deliberation—I needed answers more than I needed to smash in his face—I said, “I didn’t touch her.” I had to believe that; my love for my mother was a fundamental foundation of my personality, the thing that kept me on the right side of the psychopath line. If that proved a lie . . .

“Good.” My father smiled. “Keep repeating that until everyone believes it.”

53

That night, I dreamed of wheels on wet tarmac, of the world rushing by.

54

Taking a bite of the sandwich Shanti had made me for lunch the next day, I stared at my computer. After spending the morning writing in order to find some sense of calm, and forcing myself to eat real food instead of my usual diet of sugar and caffeine, I’d pulled up the social media accounts of people I’d known in high school. None of us were close now, but we stayed in contact online in that vague way of people who’d once been friends and weren’t now enemies.

I began to scroll backward through their photo archives with clinical precision. A couple of them—one girl, one boy—had been notorious for photographing everything and putting it online. I hadn’t cared one way or another, and as a result, had never avoided the camera. But neither had I posed for shots, which meant I was mostly in the background.

That was probably why no one had thought to use these photos to get a little payday after I morphed into a celebrity. I spotted the first relevant photo about an hour after I’d started the search. I’d drunk two Cokes by then, my body craving sugar too much for me to stick to my healthy-diet resolution. At least I hadn’t hit the candy drawer yet.

I was only partially visible in this photo, but there was no mistaking the cast on my leg.

I kept on searching regardless. I was looking for photos of my hands, to see evidence of the cuts my father had referenced. He was wrong in saying they’d been noted in the medical report. I’d read that report from front to back, then taken pictures on my phone to keep for later, not caring if the cops saw me. They were my reports after all—I could get copies easily enough, though it would take time.

All it had said was “scrapes and abrasions consistent with a fall from a fast-moving bike.” Nothing suspicious, just another kid going off the rails because his parents had a shitty relationship.

I kept on scrolling.

Nothing. Just that cast, the plaster of it unmistakable even in the most grainy shots. But I knew there had to be more photos out there. Who else did I know that was a compulsive clicker and poster?

Alice.

I wanted to kick myself. I’d commented on her obsession more than once since moving to my father’s house. And Alice being Alice, her entire online profile was wide-open. She wanted the likes, wanted the vapid admiration that came with being one of the rich “housewives” of the city. It was such a niche area to inhabit—I’d gone down the rabbit hole of it once while I was bored and alone after the accident.