Quiet in Her Bones Singh, Nalini (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

54

Taking a bite of the sandwich Shanti had made me for lunch the next day, I stared at my computer. After spending the morning writing in order to find some sense of calm, and forcing myself to eat real food instead of my usual diet of sugar and caffeine, I’d pulled up the social media accounts of people I’d known in high school. None of us were close now, but we stayed in contact online in that vague way of people who’d once been friends and weren’t now enemies.

I began to scroll backward through their photo archives with clinical precision. A couple of ­them—­one girl, one ­boy—­had been notorious for photographing everything and putting it online. I hadn’t cared one way or another, and as a result, had never avoided the camera. But neither had I posed for shots, which meant I was mostly in the background.

That was probably why no one had thought to use these photos to get a little payday after I morphed into a celebrity. I spotted the first relevant photo about an hour after I’d started the search. I’d drunk two Cokes by then, my body craving sugar too much for me to stick to my ­healthy-­diet resolution. At least I hadn’t hit the candy drawer yet.

I was only partially visible in this photo, but there was no mistaking the cast on my leg.

I kept on searching regardless. I was looking for photos of my hands, to see evidence of the cuts my father had referenced. He was wrong in saying they’d been noted in the medical report. I’d read that report from front to back, then taken pictures on my phone to keep for later, not caring if the cops saw me. They were my reports after ­all—­I could get copies easily enough, though it would take time.

All it had said was “scrapes and abrasions consistent with a fall from a ­fast-­moving bike.” Nothing suspicious, just another kid going off the rails because his parents had a shitty relationship.

I kept on scrolling.

Nothing. Just that cast, the plaster of it unmistakable even in the most grainy shots. But I knew there had to be more photos out there. Who else did I know that was a compulsive clicker and poster?

Alice.

I wanted to kick myself. I’d commented on her obsession more than once since moving to my father’s house. And Alice being Alice, her entire online profile was ­wide-­open. She wanted the likes, wanted the vapid admiration that came with being one of the rich “housewives” of the city. It was such a niche area to ­inhabit—­I’d gone down the rabbit hole of it once while I was bored and alone after the accident.

Alice, I’d discovered, was friends with a network of other “housewives”—­I always thought of the term in quotes, because like Alice, half these women had jobs, a number of them very ­high-­powered. The other half all had so much staff that the only housewifely thing they probably did was sign off on the odd dinner menu, or instruct the maid on how many people were coming over for ­late-­afternoon cocktails.

Suddenly my breath sped up, my heart pumping. Shit. Shit. I’d forgotten to make notes about the earlier photos. What if I forgot? What if I’d already forgotten?

Snatching up the notebook with trembling fingers, I flipped through to the last used page. I remembered writing those lines about my meeting with my father. There were no other cryptic notes. Forcing my breathing out of its panic cycle, I began to make short, sharp notes about my current research.

My hand was cramped in the aftermath and my handwriting so shambolic that it probably looked like I was on speed, but I’d gotten it all down.

All of what I remembered.

Opening the sweets drawer, I pulled out a wrapped piece of fudge and put it in my mouth. I relished the taste, but stopped my hand from reaching for a second piece. No doubt I’d need another sugar hit soon. Might as well try to pace myself since the no-­sugar thing was a total failure. After successfully fighting off the churning in my stomach, I began to go through the images on Alice’s profile.

And hit the jackpot.

We’d had Cul-­de-­Sac parties back then, spearheaded by Diana. She’d stopped at some point, maybe because she was tired of being the only one who tried to organize fun stuff, but more likely because she’d gotten busy with her kids’ activities. But the parties had been a fixture in my teenage years. The one from which I found photos had taken place a month or so after my mother’s ­disappearance—­and it had been organized by Alice.

In very bad taste for it to go ahead if people had known she was dead, but just slightly awkward if they’d believed she’d abandoned her family and run off with a quarter of a million dollars. I remembered that party, mostly because of how pissed I’d been at my father for driving away my mother. I’d stopped thinking about the scream by then, telling myself that if she’d been able to handle the Jag, she must’ve been fine. I’d even gone to the party, just another surly teenager.

A pulse of pain up my leg.

Wincing, I rubbed at my thigh even though it hadn’t been injured in the crash. And I wondered how my mind had so carefully edited out all mention of my cast from my memories of that time. Dr. Jitrnicka would no doubt have something to say on the ­point—­there was probably a psychological explanation for why my memory issues seemed concentrated around this one seminal event in my life.

There.

A younger version of me seated in someone’s deck chair out on the main drive, with Beau beside me, and my cast a masterpiece of signatures and drawings. I didn’t look grim or angry despite the fact I’d been full of fury. I was ­half-­smiling as I held a bottle of Coke in