Barbara took a breath. It was a risk coming to Ramani, but instinctively she felt she'd get no answers from her dad, Erica or Cuppa. “I think maybe––well, no one's said, but I think my mom might have it.”
Ramani smoothed her hair back with her large hands, but the curls sprang back from under her thick fingers and now stuck up unflatteringly on her head.
“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “Mm-hmm. Yes. Dora. She's been pretending to be Dora for years now.”
Barbara felt the blood drain from her face, shaking her head. “I don't––what do you mean?”
Ramani shut her eyes and pressed her fingertips into her forehead. “It was after Cedar fell.” She kept her eyes closed and lapsed into silence.
“Ramani?”
Her grandmother opened her eyes, and in their depths, Barbara sensed something stark and bleak.
“She'd played at Dora before, but after Cedar she started asking to be called Dora all the time. She went by Dora for a good two years, and then the name disappeared until recently.”
“But I thought she changed her name six years ago.”
“Oh no, no, no, your mother's been Dora off and on since she was a tiny little thing. I always knew when she was pretending to be Dora. This Dora character was loud, brash, overconfident.” Ramani paused, thinking.
“I don't understand. Why didn't you take her to get help? Take her for counseling?”
“Counseling?”
“For her dissociation.”
“I wouldn't call it that,” Ramani said. “Where's my pen?”
“You left it in the kitchen.”
Barbara watched her grandmother get up a bit unsteadily. When she returned with her pen, she said, “It was more of a coping mechanism. She was there, you know. She was there when Cedar fell, and she was there when––” Ramani's voice caught. “It was easier for her to be Dora. Dora's so much stronger.” Ramani laughed a humorless laugh. “Dissociative identity disorder,” she muttered. “That's the same as the multiple personality thing?”
Barbara nodded.
“It's one thing to pretend to have characteristics that you feel you lack and a whole other ball of wax to genuinely believe you're someone else.”
“You said she pretended to be Dora since she was little, but then stayed Dora after Cedar's death?”
“It was Serene's way of dealing with the tragedy.”
“But how do you know she didn't genuinely think she was Dora? Did you ever talk to her about it? About her going around as Dora sometimes and sometimes not?”
Ramani laughed again. “Barbara, honey, the internet is a wonderful thing, but sometimes we can simply come to the wrong conclusion trying to self-diagnose or, in your case, diagnose someone else.”
“It's not just amnesia,” Barbara cut in.
“Of course it's amnesia. Everything Erica told me about Dora's condition points to amnesia.”
“Ramani, Mom told me that her last memory is of leaving our house when she was my age.”
“Well, there you go. She's lost a lot of years. How are you making this jump to multiple personalities?”
“When Mom was my age, she was called Serene.”
“B, if you were a forty-year-old woman who changed her name and you suddenly lost your memory, and the last thing you recalled was being a teenager with your previous name, it doesn't necessarily mean multiple personality disorder.”
Barbara leaned back and Ramani took a few more puffs off her pen. “Actually, I've been thinking about that girl, Taylor,” Barbara said.
Ramani set her pen down and leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper. “That night at Enzo's. Those kids.” Her tone got fiercer. “One of them knew something or did something, then they pinned it on Darpan.”
Barbara flinched. Her recent research pointed to Darpan's guilt. The arguments for his more than probable attack of Taylor made sense. Plus, his semen was found in Taylor's body.
“Didn't he rape her?” Barbara could feel anger rising over her grandmother's defense of such a despicable person after all these years.
“Of course he didn't. You think I'd bring a rapist into my house?”
“Women do it all the time,” Barbara countered.
“You listen to me, B, Darpan may have been a lot of things, but he was no rapist and murderer.”
“Well, who then, Ramani? Who do you think did it?” Barbara was beginning to feel exasperated and more tired than she should be for one in the afternoon. “Because wasn't his stuff found in Taylor?”
Ramani sat up very straight. “They were having an affair.”
Barbara didn't want to argue with her grandmother about how she'd read that there were all sorts of holes in Darpan's story. Anger was slowly rising in Barbara.
“You defended him even though all the evidence pointed to him punching Taylor that night.”
“Except Darpan isn't left-handed, and it was Taylor's right temple that was struck,” Ramani said quietly.
“Neither is my mom, but she was grilled for weeks by the police. She wasn't just some kid. She's your daughter and she was a suspect, as well as my dad and Aunt Carrie, in a crime they didn't commit. Doesn't that mean anything to you?”
“Darpan didn't do it,” Ramani said evenly.
“Oh, what, and my mom did? My dad?”
Ramani was silent.
“You didn't stand up for her, did you?”
“She accused Darpan of being somewhere he wasn't.”
“How do you know he didn't go out to meet Taylor that night? You could have been asleep, like Detective Greiner said.”
Ramani's lips stretched into a humorless smile. “Believe me, there was no way he could have gotten up and returned to bed without waking me. I'm a very light sleeper. The flashing lights of the police cars woke me up, for God's sake. Darpan was right next to me. He didn't even stir. I don't know what happened with Taylor that night, but the idea that he was out there talking to her––that he would have struck her––is ludicrous. Dora never liked Darpan.”
“And you think she would make up seeing him talking to Taylor because she didn't like him?” Barbara had read the book and knew where Ramani stood on the matter. But talking to
