The Love I Never Knew: Contemporary Romance Mystery (Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery #1) Read online

  “Hello? Yes, this is Ariadne Silver”

  A brief telephonic intercourse turned Ariadne Silver’s life completely over. Her eyes lost their characteristic resentment for the Arizona sun and all was white before her eyes, like a virgin canvas. One phone call changed Ariadne Silver’s life and reconfigured her history.

  “My … grandmother… dead?”

  A brief telephonic conversation gave Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver a family and made her an orphan once again. She had The Love I Never Knew, who lived in Salers and had died, leaving her earthly possessions solely in the hands of her capable granddaughter. Ariadne didn’t have time to think. She liked to stick to a plan. No matter what, she had to go by the rules of the business. She couldn’t let this sudden phone call distract her from her itinerary. With stiff jaws and unfocused eyes, Ariadne drove on to her big inauguration. She could hardly hear what was being said at the inaugural ceremony about her life achievements. She kept turning the phone call over in her mind and tried to remember a lost granddaughter very hard. Growing up was a tough job for Ariadne. She hardly had time for herself with all the moving and shifting and the pitiful charity of community services. She grew up in adverse conditions. Her mother had died in a pool of drugs and vomit. She didn’t have a lot of happy memories with people she could call her family. No, she couldn’t remember anyone mention any grandmother to her. The man on the phone said that the legal documents would be sent over to her very shortly. Ariadne couldn’t wait. While a part of her felt guilty for wanting to celebrate the riches of a deceased old woman, she felt comforted by a constant reminder of her childhood and told herself that she deserved to have some fun and good time after all these years. This phone suggested three important things for Ariadne. First and foremost, she was rich. Secondly, she got to know of a family tie that she never knew existed and third of all, her newly discovered dead grandmother was all the way from France. This could only mean one thing; Ariadne would have to go to France. An unplanned trip to her favorite country is exactly what she needed to take a break from all the hard work she had got herself into recently. The day was indeed very slow at the inaugural ceremony. Ariadne only wished the “hatter” would show up soon now. She really thought it was time.

  V

  Several days passed by since Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver received that mysterious phone call with bittersweet tidings of windfall. She didn’t know how to curb her anxiety on restless days of waiting and speculations. Ariadne raked her brain and searched every nook and corner she could possibly manage for a faraway grandmother, a mention of a distant relative in France. Perhaps that explained her bemusing attachment to the country she had never seen in her life. Ariadne was sorry the old woman had to die for her to get rich. Sure, she didn’t know her and it would make no difference to her life, but it would be nice to get to know a grandmother and developing familial feelings for her. She could never fantasize about home-made meat loafs and Sunday roasts because she never had the chance to have a home in her life. What was her grandmother’s name? How old was she when she died? What did she do to end up living in France and get so much money? Ariadne was constantly haunted by these questions. She hated her mother’s corpse even more now. Every time Ariadne closed her eyes and saw her mother’s dead body, the memory grew more intense and darker. She saw her mother’s corpse as an insult to her daily living. Her mother’s dead body often came back to haunt her dreams and make a mockery of her childhood. She did nothing good for her daughter. She devoted herself to a lifetime of drugs, brought a daughter to this world and ended up killing herself, leaving her daughter to the care of this cruel, mercenary world. The more she thought about it, the less enthusiastic Ariadne felt to get to know about her past life. How would a grandmother whom she had never seen or saw know the existence of this self made young woman? And how were her alcoholic and dope head parents connected to such a resourceful individual anyway?

  The absurdity of Alice’s wrong Wonderland had only begun hammering itself in. One fine morning, when Ariadne was taking a swim in her pool, the phone rang as it did on that fateful day in the car. With a new spa and added responsibilities, Ariadne had completely forgotten about the phone call that had given her a family for a few seconds only to take it way. It was a certain Mr. Cosby from Boston, calling on behalf of Mrs. Lucy Silver. Alice’s grandmother had not only left her money, she had also bequeathed all her material possessions on her. That included a car, a big house in the sleepy village of Salers and ten million dollars. All Ariadne had to do was visit her newly acquired property and understand her ownership privileges from the local probate officer. A few hours following the phone call, a big package arrived at her place with Ariadne’s name on it. She found all the requisite documents there and a flight ticket that had already been purchased in her name. All Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver had to do at this point of time was take the flight and go to France. Alice had no idea where the rabbit hole would take her.

  Chapter 2

  I

  Two weeks had passed since the phone call and Ariadne was beginning to convince herself that it was all a hoax. Perhaps she was on the receiving end of a big practical joke. Ariadne didn’t want to be a victim of a big cruel prank. She didn’t want to get her hopes high only to be shattered by a phenomenal realization of her crude reality. She was all alone in this cruel world. The idea of France, the imagined intellectual superiority of the people, their assumed geniality had kept the innocence intact in Ariadne. France was more than just a place to her, it was an incorruptible idea of her childhood innocence. She was paranoid of someone playing on her vulnerability. She had to work hard to achieve everything she ever wanted. The idea of gaining a dream without effort aroused her suspicions. She was a cynic to not believe that a pumpkin could turn into a royal chariot. The whole affair had to be a hoax! There were no reasonable explanations for the occurrence of this strange event. The logistics made no sense at all. Ariadne’s skepticism of humanity helped her survive in this godless world. Perhaps that is what she needed to do. She was doing well without the offered sum of money and the big house in France. She could not simply accept this gift from the world of the dead. She had not even earned the gift. Life had taught her well that unearned gifts were usually the harbingers of trouble and there were seldom any exceptions to the rule. There would be many other big houses and several opportunities to walk freely on a shaded boulevard or laugh with casual mirth at a vineyard. All of it could wait. Ariadne needed to take care of her business and go on to become a self-made woman, a woman of substance. With these firm resolutions, the telephonic conversation was conveniently forgotten and no further attempts were made to revisit the fragmented pieces of a childhood for a grandmother who only recently died. Ariadne lived her life in circles and completed her daily chores effortlessly. She was a successful owner of a chain of spas and an accomplished woman of quality. She concluded two weeks of uneventful hard work with a joint and a hot bath.

  The joint and the calming caresses of the lukewarm water took Ariadne back to the hall of scattered reminiscences of days gone by. She sifted through the complex layers of her past, gleaned every bit of disjointed memory she could find to make a concrete whole grandmother live in the crevices of her memory. She tried her best only to draw a blank. She could not recollect any hint of a grandmother anywhere. Could it be because her mother never told her? Perhaps because her mother never got the chance to tell her about the rest of the family she had. Those smoke-riddled wet hours in the pool unhinged Ariadne. She wondered how different her life would have been had her mother been alive. She would not have been sent away to live in a tattered orphanage and life would be stable. She would not have met her hatters. Ariadne tried hard to think of an alternative lifestyle for herself. She tried hard to imagine a school life where she could hang around with a girl gang of her own. She arduously attempted to think about what course her life would take if she had not dropped out of school. Just a little less of drugs and alcohol, and her life would have b
een a different story. She drifted off to the tipsy tunes of maudlin blues playing beside the pool. The harsh monotony of the doorbell brought Ariadne back to consciousness. She dressed hastily and went for the door, muttering imprecations under her breath. She did not like to be disturbed during her time in the pool. She disliked meeting anyone beyond business hours. But what she simply could not tolerate was someone interrupting the buzz in her head when she was high. On the other side of the door stood a man in an official black suit, with an expression of perpetual pompousness on his face. His hair was greased and combed neatly. The man at the doorway meant business. Before Ariadne could say anything, the man introduced himself.

  “I am Kenneth Myers from Cliff & Richardson. This meeting is in reference to the last will and testament of Mrs. Lucy Arabella Silver. May I come in?”

  Ariadne could not believe what was happening in front of her. The next hour and half transpired without any conscious contribution from Ariadne Silver as the legal representative from Cliff & Richardson clarified to Ariadne, the extent of the privileges extended to her by her dead grandmother’s will. She had to visit her grandmother’s house and correspond with the probate officer to seal the final transfer of ownership. Her grandmother was indeed real. She lived in France and had left her a lot of money and property. These thoughts were nothing short of outrageous and Ariadne could not help but feel bemused by her condition. Ariadne did not hear half of the jargon the legal representative was hurling at her. In her head, she was falling down the rabbit hole, into the Wonderland. The Wonderland seemed alright but something about it felt very wrong. She was about to realize her biggest fantasy at the cost of death of what could have been a start to a new family. Ariadne’s deep rooted resentment of her mother started surfacing. She could never forgive her mother for not letting her know about a grandmother in France. Would not she have had a better life without the orphanage, prostitution and gradual descent into poverty-stricken madness?

  Ariadne took time to recover from the shock the lawyer gave her, in the morning. Once she was over the initial shock, she came to terms with her resentment for her dead mother. She packed her bags carefully, took only the bare essentials and organized her official documents in one single file. Ariadne wanted to make sure she would not be taken for a ride. She was a woman of experience and was aware of the skullduggery that went on in Western world. For all she knew, this could easily be a scam to rob her of her money. Ariadne would never be on the receiving end of a game; life had taught her better than that. She wanted to make sure everything would go according to plan. She would not look at the splendor of the Parisian markets until she got the promised money safely transferred to her account. Then again, if she did not think of the legal hassles and the morbid discovery of a dead family member, it all made Ariadne very happy. She would go to Paris, shop at the stores and eat outside a café. Ariadne would finally get to walk on those shady boulevards and drop nameless poems on the graves of dead poets. Ariadne wanted to live the French stereotype. She could almost smell the vineyards and taste the ecstatic sweetness of French red wine. Ariadne was completely undone by her dream. She made sure her trip to France would be a safe one. Her task was simple. She had to take the copy of the will the lawyer handed over to her and produce it at the office of the probate officer in Paris to claim her inheritance. From Paris to Salers, Ariadne would soon have a home in France. Somehow she could not believe her luck. Although she missed out on the Mad Hatter, the weird Wonderland had given her a lot of wonderful surprises. The fairy tale took off for Paris within two days of the lawyer’s visit.

  II

  Mrs. Lucy Arabella was born Lucy Arabella, the only child of Ariadne Arabella and Louis Dolan. Lucy Arabella was a fiercely independent woman for her time and always advocated liberation of the body. She earned her livelihood posing as a nude model for art classes and by freelancing with a counter culture magazine. Lucy Arabella studied in Sorbonne and grew up worshipping the avant garde poetry of Baudelaire, Gautier and Rimbaud. She suffered from philosophical detachment and held on to decadence for survival. Lucy Arabella met Ferdinand Silver in her baccalaureate days at Sorbonne and knew they were destined to die in each other’s isolation. They started living together and tied the knot when Lucy realized she was pregnant with Ariadne’s mother. The primary reason of conflict between Ariadne’s mother Sue and her grandmother Lucy was Lucy’s proclivity for a detached lifestyle. Sue got to know that Arabella wanted to go for an abortion and was forced to raise her as their child. An unplanned child coupled with an alcoholic husband made Arabella’s life miserable and unbearable. Ferdinand had lost his job and took to a life of drinking and gambling. With no money to buy food and greater debts incurred by gambling, he was forced to take his own life one fateful night. That was the most poignantly horrific sight Lucy Arabella Silver ever saw on waking up in the morning. She woke up to find her husband dead in his sleep, on his bed. Her creamy peach bed sheet sparkled with the dead man’s blood. He had slit his wrist and slept for once last time beside his mon amor. Sue was only ten years old when her father had died and somehow she always held her mother responsible for her father’s death. Sue and Lucy had a bitter fight over the next couple of months till one fine morning; Sue woke up to find the house empty. She found a note in the kitchen that informed her that her mother had left Sue forever. She never cried, never spoke about her mother ever again. Right after her she got to know that her mother had gone away, Sue gathered herself together and went about her daily chores without thinking twice about her mother. Somehow, the cruel twist of fate had left such a deep wound in Sue’s mind that she got traumatized out of her wits. She did not quite understand how she felt. She felt hurt and mistreated. She was too young to understand her mother’s side of things. Perhaps Sue was not supposed to understand how her mother felt. She was just a child who needed to be taken care of. The intricacies of the adult life were not hers to understand. She was not even supposed to be a collateral damage in the rat race that the parents competed in. She was only supposed to grow up safely in her parents’ embrace till she could take care of herself. But the sins of the parents always visit upon the children and they suffer the worst, without a fault of their own. Whatever it was, she had lost all hope in humanity and had turned into a great misanthrope. Sue hated every form of human interaction and gradually started exhibiting symptoms of a confirmed sociopath. She did not understand her problem and did not know where to go. She felt unloved and ignored and learned to stiffen her jaws. She did not find anyone willing to sit with her for a few moments and try to understand her. There was no one around who would want to take this damaged little girl and show her that not all hope was lost. Nobody seemed to have the time apply the balm of care to her wounds. She was left absolutely alone and unwanted. Sue gradually took to drugs to keep her calm and soon fell victim to substance abuse. She was addicted to coke and heroin and was borderline alcoholic. Sue’s reckless lifestyle and a lack of productive endeavor soon landed her in a strip joint. Sue started working for the joint every night and gradually settled down to a moderate lifestyle. She met Kenny at the strip joint and they hooked up one night after having a lot to drink. Kenneth and Sue Silver were not entirely dissimilar from Ferdinand and Lucy. While Ferdinand and Lucy were the victims of an intellectual philosophy of detachment, Kenneth and Sue were instinctively emotionally detached. They did not know, rather refused to understand, nuances of social behavior, concepts of relationships or love. These were concepts that did not make any sense to either of them. They lived in the moment, enjoying their intoxication and the recklessness of their lives. They were born free and there was a constant war in their minds. Ariadne was a product of a family where matrimony was a cursed institution.

  III

  Sue and Kenneth started off well as a couple. They were not your regular run-o’-the-mill couple. Sue and Kenneth Silver were peculiarly similar. They knew each other perfectly and understood what they wanted. Sue’s loss had cut a deep mark n Kennet
h’s heart. Kenny met Sue at the strip joint and immediately fell in love. He was a rich handsome American lad, out with his friends on the evening his girlfriend broke up with him. His friends took him to a strip joint and made him drink his grief tipsy. In a drunken state, Kenny remembered an oddly charming woman pole dancing a few yards away from him. He was immediately besotted by her looks and forgot his girlfriend within a minute. Kenny’s friends arranged for a little close dancing during which he had asked Sue out on a date, a real date and not a professional meeting. Sue obviously did not take him seriously and gave him her professional smile. She had been asked out on ‘dates’ all her life. She had mostly managed to answer them with a smile, specially learnt for the purpose. It neither meant a yes nor a no. But it gave her admirers hope and they continued to tip her and ask her out for special ‘dates’. Sue was swept off the floor when, the next day after her shift, she saw Kenny waiting for her at the parking lot. He was sober and convinced her that he really meant it when he asked her out. Sue had no other option but to say yes. That was the happiest Sue had ever felt in her life. She was finally beginning to appreciate life a little bit more since her mother bailed out on her. Kenny and Sue shared some of the best times together and really managed to get out of their grimy and bleak existences. They were doing fine till the recession hit and Kenny lost his job. They repeated the treachery of their predecessors and refused to learn anything from their example. Kenny took to massive drinking like Ferdinand and Sue became a slut. In order to keep herself going, she stuffed herself with crack till she finally overdosed on a batch of extra pure crack. She was holding on to Ariadne and asking for her forgiveness. Sue lay on the floor and asked for her mum. She helplessly called out for her mother and died five minutes after. If only little Ariadne could see the whirlpool of grief in her mother at the final moments, she would perhaps not have resented her for dying on her. As Sue felt life ebbing away from her, she realized that she had been a terrible mother to Ariadne, perhaps more terrible than Arabella. Her little daughter had never known a moment’s worth of love. Ferdinand was a good father to Sue till he took to drinking, but Kenneth barely cared. She fought hard to somehow survive. She promised herself to be a better mother to Ariadne if she survived. During the last few moments of her disappointing life, all Sue wanted was to survive. She did not want to leave her daughter. She knew only too well the tornado that would ravage her daughter’s life if she died. But her body, already too weakened by constant drug use, could not survive. Ariadne would never forget that face. She spent an entire night with her mother’s dead body, foaming at the mouth and contorting in rigor mortis. She would never forget the horror of that particular night. She sat motionless and still in front of her mother’s dead body. Ariadne tried to scream but her voice could not be heard. Fear and utter loathing stifled her voice and she sat in unaccountable mental agony for hours at an end. Every time she heard the door creak, she expected her father to enter the room and help her cry. The night changed into morning and the neighbors buried the body without much hue and cry. Ariadne did not move or stir. She sat still and waited for her father to return. Her father did not come back. Perhaps he was dead; perhaps he had no idea that his daughter had just spent her night with her mother’s dead body. Ariadne did not know what went wrong with her father but she took a resolve to not take society very seriously. She would never believe another man again and would only associate with men for purposes of survival. They were not to be trusted. She felt men were weak and any association with them would only weaken her. Ariadne was constantly disappointed by her father. He had returned after a day, heavily drunk and with a black eye. He did not seem to notice that her mother was not at home. Little Ariadne could never figure out if he knew that his wife was dead and that his daughter had spent a sleepless night with her corpse and a day alone after the shock. Ariadne grew up in foster homes and orphanages. She started off in a Catholic foster home where the foster father tried to rape her in her sleep. She ran out of that place and turned herself away from God. Ariadne turned into an atheist. The only divinity that she believed in was financial stability.