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Reeva smiled slowly. She couldn’t wait to tell her sisters they were completely wrong. Leela was in a relationship with a woman, and their father had never cheated on their mother. Her phone vibrated. Still grinning, she turned to read her message. Lakshmi.Good luck gorgeous girl. So sorry I can’t be there. You’ll be amazing. Sending all my love. Can’t wait for all the post-funeral goss! Xxx.
“Always with the phones, your generation,” complained Kavita Kaki. “Beep, beep, beep. All the time.”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Reeva. “It’s just a message from my best friend.”
Kavita Kaki peered over to look at Reeva’s phone.“Good friend?”
“Uh, no, an actual friend,” said Reeva, awkwardly trying to angle her phone away from her aunt. “It’s just a good-luck message...”
But her new kaki was still staring at her phone. “You have a cat?”
Reeva looked down. Her phone was showing her lock screen—one of the few selfies she had with Fluffy Panda where the cat had acquiesced to look at the camera without scowling. “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, angling the phone better so her kaki could see the photo. “Fluffy Panda. Isn’t she gorgeous?”
“It’s good you have another one. You always loved your cat so much as a child.”
“Sorry?”
“Your cat. You loved it so much.”
Reeva stared blankly at her newest relative. “Ihad a cat? Don’t you mean my dad?”
“All of you! A black cat. Your sisters were babies, but you loved this cat. You chose it—I remember your mum telling me.”
“But... when? What was it called?”
“I don’t remember. But I remember when it died. Very sad. Hemant also cried a lot. You were very little. Maybe the same age as the little girls there. Your nieces.”
“I can’t believe I don’t remember any of this. How did it die?”
Her kaki frowned. “Very sudden. Bad accident, I think.”
Reeva’s mouth fell open. “Wait. I had a black cat that died in an accident when I was the same age as the twins?”
Kavita Kaki nodded. “Very sad. I think that was the last time I saw you. Then, your mum moved away with you all.”
—
The service hadbegun, but Reeva hadn’t taken in any of it. She was too busy thinking about what Kavita Kaki had said. She’d had a cat. The cat had died when Reeva was five. And then they’d moved away. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Because Kavita Kaki had said the cat had been black. Which was exactly what the cat in her dreams looked like.
Reeva sat and looked around the packed crematorium. The guests were all listening to the priest up on the dais—if listening meant fidgeting, readjusting saris, and whispering to each other. They were all here to say goodbye to her dad—a man they’d all loved—but none of them knew the truth about who he was. Not even Reeva.
She closed her eyes shut tight and tried to think. The facts. What were the facts? Something had happened when she was five years old that affected her more than her sisters. That had led to her parents separating and faking her dad’s death. She’d had a cat—something both Kavita Kaki and Satya Auntie had confirmed. Only, when she was around five, her cat had died. A cat she kept seeing in her dreams.
What if Jaya had a point and she’d seen something as a child that was coming up in her dreams? Reeva forced herself to try and remember every detail of her recurring nightmare.
It started with one of the twins holding Fluffy Panda—only it might not be FP. It might be her childhood cat. And... what if it wasn’t one of the twins?
Reeva started again.
There was a young girl holding a black cat. Then there was some kind of altercation. Shouting. And then a shadowy figure pushed the cat. It was flung down the stairs. Where it crashed into some furniture. There was blood. The girl was crying and screaming. And then there were flashing lights.
Reeva opened her eyes and gasped. Sita turned around from the pew in front and frowned at her questioningly. Reeva didn’t know how to explain what she’d just realized, so she blinked helplessly at her sister. Sita rolled her eyes and turned back around to look at the stage, where the priest was still exalting their dad.
But Reeva couldn’t take in a single word, and it wasn’t just because of her poor Gujarati. She was too busy realizing that she’d gotten her nightmare—hermemory—completely wrong. It wasn’t about Fluffy Panda or the twins. The cat was the same cat she’d had as a child when she’d lived with both her parents. And the young girl she’d assumed was the twins was her.
Reeva’s mind spun frantically as she pieced it all together. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but all the evidence felt glaringly obvious. She’d somehow gotten in the middle of a fight between her parents. She’d been holding her cat. And her dad had gotten angry and taken it out on the cat. He’d thrown it down the stairs. The cat had died.
Reeva felt sick. Her head was spinning and she couldn’t breathe.Was this what a panic attack felt like? She reached out a hand to steady herself against the pew. This couldn’t be true. She needed to calm down. Parents rarely murdered pets. Especially not middle-class optometrists with three kids. But faking a parent’s death was also extreme, and that was apparently a normal activity for her family. Something majorhadto have happened for their mum to say their dad was dead for all this time—and why couldn’t it be that her dad had killed her cat?
