I don’t have an answer.
Maybe I just didn’t feel like talking after Aster died. And Troy—sole witness to the torture I went through immediately after her death—became the last person I ever wanted to deal with.
There was no deeper reason than soul-crushing grief and single parenting. I never had time to analyze it in gritty detail.
Now, standing here in the same room with him and seeing the same old Troy, I can’t say I regret it.
“I expect reports on the availability of our peaberry stock at each farm by four,” I say coldly, taking a step toward the door and halting when I’m almost there. I look back over my shoulder. “Remember, Troy, I manage our people. You handle the farms.”
His head rolls from side to side slowly.
“I don’t get it. Did you have me fly in from Indonesia just to berate me?”
“No. I called you here because I need detailed reports. This is too important. I also thought you could add value to the daily briefings as we work on this new specialty line,” I say, all business, answering him but not addressing his real question.
I’ve had enough of his shit, and I’m out.
Before he can utter another word, I’m stomping out the door.
Brooding in paradise feels illegal, but here I fucking am.
I sit on the lawn under my favorite tree, inhaling the sea salt and sun-kissed air. The clouds overhead gather in a thick line, marching across the sky and making me think there’s a rainstorm on the way.
I welcome it.
The quick island cloudbursts usually last no more than a few minutes—just long enough to cool the skin and wipe the grease off my soul.
It’s like the weather wants to match my mood.
Destiny walks by, holding a couple yellow-green bananas freshly plucked from a tree. Anyone else would mistake her for happy.
But I know my daughter. Her shoulders are too high, her spine too straight, her body too stiff, and her smile is fake as hell.
“Destiny, what’s wrong?” I call.
Her brows lift. “What?”
“You’re traipsing along like a scorned cat.” I shrug. “Just wondering.”
“No, Dad, I’m good!” She says it with way too much enthusiasm, searching for a diversion until her eyes land on her hand. “Banana?”
“No thanks. You enjoy.”
Part of me wants to tell her it’s okay to have a hard time here. It isn’t wrong to grieve, to process, especially now that she’s a young adult and not a child who lost her mother years ago.
But another part of me says I’m better off leaving it alone and not dealing with the fallout until she signals she’s ready.
She passes by too quickly before I can say anything else.
Why shouldn’t she be guarded?
Aster’s death was a fucking shock. There were always more questions than answers surrounding it, too.
A tragic drowning. No mystery in the end result. As for everything else...
Why the hell was she out so late?
She knew how dramatically the ocean changes out here.
Did she just walk into the waves or fall off a cliff?
I’ll never understand why she just had to go to the beach alone in the dark.
Sure, Aster always kept me guessing, especially as her mental health worsened. In the beginning, her unpredictability was what drew me to her.
If my family put me up to marrying a woman of their choice, at least it was one with a spontaneous side.
Still, I wonder. Did her condition worsen, far beyond any danger her doctors noticed?
She was never suicidal or prone to self-harm.
She took risks, but not outrageous ones.
In all the time I knew her, that nighttime death swim didn’t seem like something Aster would ever do.
She was there for a reason, but why?
Did she take her own life after all?
Was it part of some fucked up energy cleaning ritual she read about?
I don’t know.
There’s a hole in her final chapter and a yawning chasm in my life.
If she took her life, that’s partly on me. I couldn’t give her a happy home.
Everything I did to support her was never enough.
The sex was fine—when it happened at all in the last few years—and once Destiny came into the picture, I liked watching them together. They had their good moments between her storms.
If only we’d had a connection beyond entangled finances and raising a daughter together.
Deep down, I think she craved that connection, the kind of love Hollywood serves up to the masses. She was a romantic at heart.
A romantic who found her way into a goddamned arranged marriage.
Her parents owned a major shipping company, making coffee cheaper to import to North America.
My parents never asked me what I loved about her—or even if we needed more time together before I agreed to a life with her.
For our families, it was business.
My folks were too excited about the soaring increase to their net worth and status, plus the prospect of new investments. Hers were no better.