A secret smile. “You could say that.”
“Don’t you ever worry?” I asked.
A raised eyebrow.
“About Cora finding out?”
No obvious panic on her face, but I barely caught a glimpse of that face before she turned away to reach into the fridge for the milk. “Not you, too. I thought it was just our friendly local walkers who thrived on gossip.”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit.” I’d just wanted her off-balance. “You’re hot as hell and Cora has—to put it kindly—let herself go.” It had begun with a mugging that had left her with a permanently damaged left hand that might’ve derailed her career if she hadn’t already been a supervisor at the time; she was apparently brilliant at running her team and ensuring all work that came out of it was of the highest standard.
I knew that because a local newspaper had profiled her a year earlier. “I could’ve permitted my injury to stop me,” she’d said. “Instead, I took it as a challenge to find innovative new ways of working. I now do much of my input via voice-recognition systems, an area that’s a particular interest of mine.”
Professional success or not, the Amazonian Cora of my childhood was now … diminished. She still had the cheekbones and the height, her hair as dazzlingly white-blonde as always, but gone was the muscle and the intensity. “And you don’t exactly hide your sessions with Adrian,” I added.
Alice stared at me, her eyes piercing. “Why should I hide getting exercise?” A raised eyebrow. “You know he used to give personal sessions to your mother, too, right?”
She was tougher than she looked—but I had more cards up my sleeve. “I ran into him coming out from her room once. Freshly showered.”
She snorted with laughter, her cheeks glowing. “Did you give a shit then?”
“You know my father. At least Adrian left her smiling.” Weirdly, that wasn’t a lie. No wonder Dr. Jitrnicka thought Paige had been right about my “issues” when it came to relationships; I hadn’t exactly had healthy role models.
“Well, Adrian isn’t making me happy that way—I just get high off exercise.” Expression set in mildly amused lines, she poured the coffee into two mugs. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Neither.”
After handing me my cup, she doctored hers with milk and one teaspoon of fake sugar, then leaned back against the counter opposite where I sat. “You know, it makes me sad that you’re so cynical at such a young age. Cora and I are very happy.”
I thought of how I’d sat in this very room with my mother and helped Cora and Alice make up signs that demanded marriage equality. Both were major names in the LGBTQ community. With the added twist that Alice was from the conservative Pasifika community. She was as much a symbol as a person.
Divorce wouldn’t be a good look. Neither would any hint of trouble in paradise.
“Sorry,” I said, accepting that Alice wasn’t about to budge on this point. “I guess I have my issues.”
Alice blew on her coffee. “Don’t we all? Manaia’s gotten into this habit of saying ‘Do you need tissues for your issues’? I have no idea where she picked it up from, but if only we could fix all our wounds with tissues.” Her shoulder rose, her face half-hidden behind the coffee cup she’d lifted to her mouth and her lashes lowered to screen her eyes.
A second later, she put down her mug, and spoke in fluent Samoan to someone behind me. I’d heard the movement, knew Grandma Elei had come down the stairs. Now, I watched as she went around to hug her daughter.
Elei Savea’s hair was a small puff of steel gray she’d pulled back into a bun. She wore a shapeless ankle-length blue dress in a fabric printed with yellow hibiscus flowers. The kind of thing a woman might wear on a tropical island far from this land of forests that were much colder and darker and wetter than the waving palms of her homeland.
Alice said something to her mother before she moved toward the coffeepot, then reached for another mug and poured out a coffee, smiling all the while. “Aarav, have you met my mother, Elei?”
I heard my name again as she introduced me to her mother in their native tongue.
The older woman, her eyes sharp black dots in a dark brown face, took me in before speaking to Alice, while pointing at me.
“She’s asking about your leg—she saw you arrive home all banged up a month ago. Shanti told us you were in a car accident.”
I wondered what else Grandma Elei had seen over the years. She’d lived here a long time. “Yeah,” I said with a frown, because I couldn’t remember the car I’d been driving.
It hadn’t been the Porsche. I’d have remembered if it had been the Porsche.
Transcript
Session #3
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“We’ve spoken about this.”
[No answer]
“I’m happy to sit here in silence—after all, you’re paying me a rather exorbitant amount. But I can’t help you if you refuse to let me in.”
“Does that line work a lot?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m … It’s the anniversary. Today’s the day she …”
“Ah.”
“It shouldn’t matter any longer. She shouldn’t matter any longer.”
12
“Single vehicle accident, right?” Alice’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I nodded. “Skidded on a wet road, right into a massive pōhutukawa tree.” I had no memories of the accident itself, which wasn’t that uncommon, and didn’t concern me as much as the blank spot that should’ve held the details of the car. Because that info should be in my long-term memory … unless I’d been driving an unfamiliar car that day. “I was on my way home from a publishing party. Anyway, leg’s on the way to healing.”
Alice shared that with her mother, who asked another question. Alice answered that, too. Grandma Elei was actually smiling at me as she left the room, leaving the scent of a very expensive perfume in her wake. I wondered
