My head a place of chaos, I sat and stared at the site of my mother’s death. Had she been conscious as the car came down the slope? Had she tried to open the door? I hoped not. I hoped she’d slipped away without knowing she’d been entombed in the lonely dark. But that was cold comfort—because she’d known and trusted whoever had gotten into her car that night. She hadn’t raised a fuss. Because even drunk, Nina Rai could raise a fuss.

She’d known she was being murdered, and she’d looked into a face she trusted as it happened.

It couldn’t have been me. I’d crashed the Ducati. I hadn’t been in the Jaguar.

Who told you there were two people inside when she drove away?

Aurelie, it had been Aurelie.

Aurelie, who’d do anything my father said.

Aurelie, who was a liar.

You know what happened. You followed her, caught up to her, then talked her into the passenger seat because she was drunk. Then you surrendered to the rage inside you. Cuts on your hands, Aarav. Cuts on your hands. You murdered your mother.

“No, no, no.” My eyes burned on the heels of the insidious internal whispers, the dam inside me breaking in a crash that shook my whole body. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t even try. Raw, ugly, angry, my sobs were absorbed by the forest, my tears by the ground. Until I was wrung out, my throat rough and my eyes swollen.

Still, I sat there. I don’t know for how long. There was a strange peace here, in this quiet place where my mother had lain for so long. I stared at that spot that had held her and I wondered if her spirit lingered there, lost and alone. She wasn’t just bones. She’d been a living, breathing woman who’d been angry and sometimes mean, but she’d also loved fiercely and she’d done all she could to protect her friends.

“I miss you,” I said to her ghost. “I miss having someone in this world who loves me without question.” I could’ve fucked up a thousand different ways and she’d still have called me her Ari. “If a doctor had thrown me in a psychiatric facility while you were alive, I’d have gone in knowing you’d rain down hell to get me out.”

I’d been alone since she vanished. Paige had come the closest to breaching the walls around my heart, but she’d never quite gotten through. Not her fault. The question of why my mother had left me had haunted me, further eroding my already-damaged ability to trust.

I’d told myself she’d never have left by choice, but part of me had wondered if she’d taken the money and run, if she’d done what she’d dreamed of and started again. Without the son who was a millstone tying her to a life she hated.

A fantail flitted from branch to branch across from me, its tail sprayed out to display the characteristic fan shape that gave it its name, its eyes black buttons. A large and glossy wētā with a dark brown carapace, many-legged and harmless, crawled out of the end of the log and—long antennae twitching—began to pick its way over the moss.

I’d sat here so long in silence that the forest had accepted me as its own.

Perhaps I’d just sit here until the world ended and I could find peace. But I shook my head the instant the thought passed through my head. Someone had murdered my mother, ended the angry brilliance of Nina Rai, and I wasn’t about to let them live in peace. They wouldn’t get away with it. And they wouldn’t get away with messing with my head.

I blinked.

Yes, that had been a verifiably unhinged thought.

My skin chilled, my breath stuck in my lungs, and all I could think was that maybe it had been me. Maybe the reason I was spiraling into the abyss was because it had always been me. I was the monster I’d been chasing . . . the monster I needed to kill.

* * *

—

Dread in my pulse, the first thing I did when I finally made it home was go up to my room and log in to my bank’s online portal. If I was doing drugs, I had to be paying for it somehow. But all of the transactions were ones I remembered or from obvious locations. Including the significant payment I made to Shanti every week.

My father had laughed off my offer of rent and expenses, so I’d talked her into taking it.

Making sure she had a secret fund.

I opened my snack drawer when my stomach rumbled. My hand went to the new bag of mini Peanut Slab chocolates Shanti must’ve put in there. Laughing grimly, I pulled out a couple of pieces, leaving the fudge for now.

I’d suspected Diana of doing something to her sister, for Christ’s sake.

Dr. Binchy was right about the paranoia.

But one thing was clear—if I was doing drugs, I wasn’t paying for them. I hadn’t withdrawn any cash for months, so everything was on the cards and had left an electronic trail. And Thien, the only person I knew who could score drugs, never worked for free.

On the other hand, there was no arguing with the results of the blood tests.

Walking over to sit on my bed, I began to go through the meds on my bedside table. I’d already picked up all the ones I’d spilled. Now, I took out one of each, then used my phone to search online for images of them.

Each and every one came back as matching the manufacturer’s standard.

I stared at the small multicolored pile and thought about the last time I’d actually taken the whole lot. It had been . . . a while. Had I taken any before the first blackout? I couldn’t remember. I definitely hadn’t taken anything prior to my migraine yesterday.

But, since I couldn’t trust my memory, I shook out the pills from each bottle one by one, then painstakingly counted them. A strange sense of déjà vu pressed down on me. Shrugging it off, I continued on with my inventory, with a special focus on the painkillers.

There were definitely extra pills—which meant I hadn’t taken them.

What else had I eaten from the outside?

The pastries with Lily. But Lily had eaten them, too. Plus I was the one who’d asked her if she wanted to come for a drive.