“So, Dora Jones,” he said by way of greeting, sizing Serene up. “A gift.”
Serene knew him long enough to know he was referring to the meaning of her name and that the statement was meant as a double entendre. She took a seat at the table.
“Why your mother’s name?”
“What?”
“Brenda Dora Wilson.” He smirked.
Serene frowned. She never knew her mother had the middle name Dora. All the times Ramani talked down to Serene about pretending to be Dora, she never mentioned Dora was her middle name.
“How do you know that?”
Darpan cocked his head to the side. “You know me and names. Apparently, before Ramani made her way to Shangri-La and received her spiritual name, she preferred to go by Dora.” Darpan’s eyes lingered searchingly on Serene’s face. “Did she never tell you?”
“Yes, I knew,” she lied, not willing to give him the upper hand.
He leaned back, a coolness descending over his features. “You’ve held up well,” he said softly.
Serene did not respond right away. Snippets of their neighbors’ conversations filled the void and the guard surreptitiously picked his nose.
Serene leaned forward and a grin spread across Darpan’s lips.
“We are love,” she said softly. “What do those words mean to you?”
Darpan’s mouth twitched and his light blue eyes appeared almost translucent. “He is always with us, isn’t he?”
Serene waited.
A vein protruded at Darpan’s left temple, throbbing out his emotions. His lips twisted, but he couldn’t quite pull off the look of nonchalance Serene knew he wanted to portray at the moment. “You said you thought I might be innocent?” He asked instead.
“We are love,” Serene said again. “What does it mean, Darpan?”
Tiny beads of sweat gathered along his hairline. “Yeah,” he exhaled. “Bhagwan Bishnu, revered protector and master to all the children.”
“Master,” she echoed.
This time, Darpan’s gaze caught and held hers. “If you were a child in the land of perfection and beauty, then you knew Master.”
Serene forced down the feeling of revulsion that came over her. She could almost smell the muskiness, feel the hot breath. She bit down on her lip to keep her jaw from trembling and tasted blood.
“He hurt us,” she finally managed to say.
Darpan’s nostrils flared. “They were hard lessons, but in the end, we came away blessed. You, Dora, are now blessed.”
A hard shudder wracked her body, but Serene forced herself to stay seated to understand this piece of her past.
“Is that what Ramani and Aarav believed?”
“No. But most adults didn’t get it. The blessing was really for us children.”
“Is that what you were trying to do that night? Bless Taylor?”
“Bless Taylor?” Darpan’s brow furrowed.
“When you told her that. ‘We are love.’”
His face cleared. “I was trying to help Taylor. Only ever trying to help her understand the relationship she had with her father and the deeper spiritual meaning behind what she perceived as a struggle. I suggested she find other fathers and we role-played, but only to help her grow. I would never have harmed Taylor.”
Serene closed her eyes briefly, a wave of nausea threatening to force sick up her throat. She swallowed and, by sheer willpower, forced the feeling down. When she spoke, her voice was steady. “Taylor’s father hurt her sexually, Darpan, and Master hurt us the same way. I can’t remember what he did to me, but that part doesn’t matter right now. It was wrong. You must know this. How can you not know it was wrong?”
Something flitted in his eyes––confusion, doubt? But then it was gone, replaced by that big sunny smile, his face lighting up with what Serene could only describe as fanaticism. He reached for her hand and Serene let him take it, too numb to pull away.
“We are love, Dora. That’s the takeaway. All these years, locked up for a crime I didn’t do, it’s what sustains me. I see the master in my prayers, and I know he is waiting for us on the other side to give us all the love. There is always a reason. It was ordained that Ramani and Aarav pick me up hitchhiking, that I be another father to you, a child of Shangri-La, like myself, that I meet Taylor and that I come here. I’ve been helping other prisoners, passing on the spiritual teachings of Bhagwan Bishnu.”
Serene pulled her hand from his grasp and pushed back her chair, rising to her feet. He stared up at her. “I’ll stay in touch,” she managed to say.
The smile fell from Darpan’s lips. “I didn’t murder Taylor.”
“No. You didn’t,” she agreed.
“Then who?”
“That person, I still need to talk to.”
His finger rose to his bottom lip and touched the crease, then he gave a slight nod.
“I’ll write you and we can set up another meeting,” Serene said. “But there’s something you should know. I…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, to tell him about the part of her that was broken. How there was a whole separate person living inside herself. It had been Dora who contacted him, though, gone through all the steps and arranged the date for the meeting. Perhaps, if she came back, she would know Serene had seen him and she’d follow through. Darpan watched her expectantly.
“I might be delayed in getting back with you,” Serene said. “It doesn’t mean that I forgot, or I won’t help.”
He held his hands up in prayer and bowed his head. “Thank you.”
Serene was back home by six that evening.
“Hey, where did you get off to today?” Erica said, encircling her arms around Serene’s waist, pulling her in for a kiss. Serene closed her eyes and let Erica’s lips press down gently on her
