“I did,” she admitted. “And I told her so. My husband was adamant that she marry someone who lived closer. We believed your father was not dedicated enough to her.”
“He loved her,” I said fiercely. “Regardless of where he chose to live.”
“I know that now,” Deepali replied. “But I wish I had been able to understand it then. I made a mistake, one I regret every day of my life. I cannot get back the time I lost with my daughter and granddaughter. Especially now that she’s gone.”
I could finally meet Deepali’s eyes. There, I saw the remnants of the family I had lost. She and I had the same long angled nose, thick eyebrows, and full lips.
“Have I been here before?” I asked. “At this house?”
“A few times when you were an infant,” she answered. “I doubt you remember, but I did babysit you once or twice.”
“We lived right up the street,” I said, unable to keep the note of blame out of my voice. “You could have come to visit whenever you wanted. You could have at least made an attempt to rectify the situation.”
Deepali calmly sipped her tea. “Your mother inherited her pride from me. We were at a stalemate, neither one of us willing to wave a white flag. I see you have this trait as well.”
“I didn’t come here on purpose,” I snapped. “I had no idea this was your house.”
Evelyn rested her hand on mine, and I checked my temper. I had not come here to restart old wars. I wanted answers.
“It wasn’t my intention to barge in here and accost you for what happened in the past,” I said. “I have questions about my mother’s death.”
“As do I.”
My eyebrows scrunched together. “Like what?”
“By the time you were eighteen, your parents had completely cut us out of their lives,” Deepali said. “Your father didn’t tell me your mother died. I found out about it in the paper.” Her collected manner cracked, and she looked into her mug to avoid eye contact. “I was not privy to the details of her death, as your father never bothered to share them with me. I know as much as you do.”
“Which is what?”
“That she was murdered along the river path whilst walking home at night,” she replied. “That her attacker was known as the Box Cutter Killer and had struck multiple times before. That you were not there with her, safe at school instead. For that one detail, I was eternally grateful.” She blotted her eyes with a napkin. “It was too late to make amends with my daughter, but people reached out regardless. Nadine, for instance, has been like a second child of mine for the past several years. I believe she has suffered as much as I have in Priya’s absence.”
“The killer was never found?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Your father prevented the police from keeping me in the loop. After a year, he refused to hear the updates himself. If I remember correctly, you were going through a difficult spell, and he thought the news would upset you further.”
I flashed back to the years following my mother’s death. During that time, I had given up all hope on my future. Without my mother to guide me, I was lost. I spent eighty percent of my time restlessly sleeping and the other twenty percent buried in serial killer lore. I could hardly eat, and I dropped to a dangerous weight. The skin around my face grew tight against my bones. The pictures from that time period lay buried at the bottom of a drawer in my San Diego apartment. It was no wonder my father wanted to separate me from the official investigation.
“I need to know who the Box Cutter Killer is,” I told Deepali. “I have nightmares about Mum’s death, and they won’t stop unless the man who did those things to her faces the consequences of his actions.”
Deepali used the table to push herself up from her chair. “I don’t have much for you to go on, save for this.” She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a leather travel journal. “I’m not proud of it, but I stole it from your father shortly after your mother’s funeral. I wanted something of hers to keep. I hope you won’t resent me for it.”
She rested the journal in my palms. It was worn with use. The leather was soft and supple from the amount of times my mother had folded it back. It was the kind of journal you could add more pages to once you’d filled the first ones, so some of them were wrinkled with age and others stiff with newness. The journal even smelled like my mother, a scent like fresh snow. Her looping cursive handwriting filled the pages.
“That’s from right before she died,” Deepali said. “I never read it out of respect for her personal privacy. Perhaps there’s some clue as to why she was out so late that night.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it genuinely. “I didn’t know she kept journals.”
Deepali hesitated. “I only ask one thing in return, but if it’s impossible for you to give, I’ll understand.”
“What is it?”
“Visit me,” she said. “Whenever you have the time. I should like to get to know my granddaughter.”
13
For the next several days, I lost myself in my mother’s writing. I quickly discovered she wrote without a plan. The subjects jumped from one to the next without warning. Nevertheless, a cohesive voice held it all together. Mostly, she wrote about her time at Oxford. She talked of older and wiser professors, professors who spoke as if with a stick up their arses, stupendous students, students with the potential to be stupendous if only they applied themselves, and her star pupil, Nadine, who at the time had just graduated and begun her career as a professor under my
