The Object of His Obsession (The Alexanders Book 4) (3 page)

Padma, however, knew it
was more than that. Lalita couldn’t put her atypical behavior off
on being busy. Padma knew what being busy was like. She was the
queen of busy, but that didn’t make her behave in a weird manner.
Being a business woman with more on her plate than what she could
handle didn’t have her depressed, walking around with her head
down. Losing sleep. Neglecting her appearance.

Padma may have been much
older, but she was one spunky business lady. Most times, she wore
business pant suits, even when she wasn’t going to a business
function. She was accustomed to the attire. Her gray hair matched
her gray eyes and her skin glowed beautifully. Healthy. She had
attributed that to drinking plenty of water and getting eight hours
of sleep.

Padma looked up at Lalita.
She didn’t appear to have been getting much sleep at all. She had
bags under her eyes, her hair hadn’t seen a brush in days and she
wore no makeup, not that she needed to, but Lalita loved makeup.
She hadn’t even had on any lip gloss. She could lie all she wanted,
but something was wrong and Padma intended to find out what it
was.

Padma took a sip of tea.
“Is everything okay between you and Prasad?” she pried.

“Yes, Padma. We’re doing
fine. Like I said...just been busy.”

“What have you been busy
doing, Lalita? If you need help, you know I’ll be there for you,
sweetie.”

“Yes, I know,” Lalita said,
scratching her head like she was agitated. “You know the kids have
me running around...they’re doing this thing at the library now
where—”

“Wait, Lalita,” Padma
interjected, tired of hearing excuses. “Now, I’m no expert on
behavior by any means but I think it’s something more than just the
kids occupying your time, because Prasad does just as much with
them as you do.”

“Yes, but—”

“It seems to me that since
we returned home that trip we took to Chicago, you’ve been very
distant. Now tell me what’s been bothering you.”

Lalita eyes filled with
tears. She didn’t know exactly what to say or if she should say
anything at all but she’d been carrying this burden around for far
too long. She couldn’t even bring herself to say anything to Prasad
about it, thus putting a strain on their marriage.

Padma watched her
daughter-in-law tremble. She was scared or nervous, visibly shaken
by something. Whatever the case, Padma wanted to know what that
something was, and she was going to find out.

“Now what’s been bothering
you?” she asked, touching Lalita’s forearm.

Lalita squeezed her eyes
shut and shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Lalita...”

“I don’t know if I can tell
you this, Padma.”

“Lalita, look at
me.”

Tears escaped Lalita’s
eyes but she didn’t open them.

“Lalita, please...look at
me,” Padma begged.

She opened them this
time.

Padma handed her a napkin
to wipe her eyes. “Now listen, sweetie. Whatever it is that’s
bothering you, you have to let it go. You can’t let it take over
your life, Lalita. And I promise you will feel better getting it
out, now tell me what’s bothering you and I promise I will do
whatever I can to help. You know that don’t you?”

Lalita nodded.
“Yes.”

“Haven’t I always helped
you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so talk to
me.”

“Alright,” she said
sniffling, getting herself together enough to make sounds come out
of her mouth as words. “You mentioned Chicago...you remember the
Chicago trip, right?”

“Yes, of
course.”

“Remember Dilvan had showed
up?”

“Yeah. Who could forget
that?”

“Okay, what about the night
you and I went sightseeing, and Gabrielle stayed
behind?”

Padma nodded. “Yes. I
remember.”

“Well, when we came back to
the hotel, I was walking down the hallway to our room, you know,
because me and Gabrielle shared a room, remember?”

Padma nodded.
“Right.”

“So as I’m walking to the
room,” Lalita said, more tears falling from her eyes as she
sniffled, “I saw Dilvan leaving.”

Padma frowned. “Leaving
your room?”

“Yes. And he looked like he
was up to something. I mean, he always look like he’s up to
something, but I knew something was up by the way he eased the door
shut so that the latch didn’t even make a clicking noise. Then he
took off walking the other way and never saw me. All the while, I’m
thinking that he and Gabrielle must’ve had an affair or something,
because why else would he be leaving our hotel room? So at this
point, I’m furious. I was ready to confront Gabrielle and ask her
what happened. So I hurried up and opened the door to find that
Gabrielle isn’t on her bed. She’s on my bed. I thought that was
odd...she was still dressed, but—”

“But what?” Padma frowned
and could feel her heart rate increase, pounding against her
chest.

Lalita dabbed her eyes.
“She looked like she was sleeping, so I went over to her and I
shook her, trying to wake her up because...I wanted to find out
what happened, but...” Lalita’s tears started back up again,
pouring out of her eyes.

“But what,
Lalita?”

“She wasn’t waking up. No
matter how hard I shook her, no matter how many times I called out
to her, she wouldn’t wake up. She was breathing, but she wouldn’t
wake up, Padma, which could only mean one thing. He drugged her.
Dilvan drugged her. I know he did. There’s no way Gabrielle would
ever, in a million years, invite Dilvan back to the room with her.
Think about it. After everything he did to her. No way.”

Padma grew speechless. She
released a heavy sigh but it did nothing to lessen her frustration.
Would Dilvan really do such a thing? She knew her son had issues,
but why would he go to such lengths to be with a woman whom he
didn’t want, couldn’t stand the sight of and refused to love. Why
plan to come to Chicago just to be near her?

Padma recalled the way he
had been staring at Gabrielle at dinner. For sure she thought he
was making Gabrielle uncomfortable but when Gabrielle seemed
unbothered by him, she didn’t pay it much attention. She should’ve
known Dilvan had come to Chicago just to be close to
Gabrielle.

Heshan came in through the
back entrance, pushing the swinging kitchen door that separated the
dining area as he always did when he arrived at the restaurant,
just to let other employees know he was there, but when he heard
Padma and Lalita talking, instead of disturbing them, he stood
there and listened.

“I knew something happened
between them,” Lalita said. “I just didn’t know what to do at the
time. And Dilvan doesn’t even know I saw him leaving the hotel
room. Now, Gabrielle’s pregnant and I’m sitting over here stressed
out and sick to my stomach because I don’t know if her baby is
Tyson’s or Dilvan’s.”

Padma’s mouth fell
open.

So did Heshan’s as he
stood behind the door, absorbing what Lalita had just
said.

Lalita was bawling
uncontrollably, soiling more tissues and Padma threw an arm around
her neck, trying to console her.

“Thank you for telling me
this, darling. Thank you.”

“What can we do about it? I
thought about telling Tyson, but—”

“Well, first things
first...instead of jumping to conclusions, we need to figure out
exactly what happened, and we can’t do that until we talk to
Dilvan. Until then, all of this is just speculation.”

Lalita shook her head. “I
can’t. I can’t even stand to look at him.”

“Lalita, we have to talk to
him, okay. You said you saw him leave her room, so you have to be
there when I confront him about this. You are the only witness to
him leaving her room. And you’ve been holding this in for eight
months. Eight months. It’s time to see if you really have anything
to worry about or if this was all one big
misunderstanding.”

Lalita inhaled a deep
breath. “My gut tells me it wasn’t a misunderstanding.”

“Okay, sweetie, but we have
to talk to Dilvan before we bring this to anyone else, because the
truth of the matter is, only Dilvan and Gabrielle were in that
room. We don’t know what happened.”

Lalita reluctantly agreed.
“Okay. When are we going to do this?”

“I’ll have to call Dilvan
and set something up. Then I’ll get back to you.”

Lalita sighed again and
felt her stomach turn sour as she did so.

“It’ll be alright, Lalita,”
Padma said, watching a few patrons come in.

Lalita took a napkin and
blew her nose. Then she said, “If you say so, Padma. He is your son
and I know you’ll get to the bottom of this. I just hate it, you
know. I hate being in the middle of conflicts and
chaos.”

“As do I, sweetie, but
we’ll get through it. We have no choice but to, right?”

“I guess so.”

Padma smiled, then watched
Lalita stand, remove her apron and walk toward the kitchen
doors.

Once Lalita was out of
sight, the smile disappeared from Padma’s face and she rested her
elbows on the table, propped her forehead against her hands and
sighed. She thought Dilvan was being genuine when she began to see
the changes in him – changes he fought hard to make over the past
eight months.

A few months ago, he quit
modeling altogether – no odd jobs here, small ones there. He
dedicated all of his time to the family business. He worked from
his home office mostly because his portion of the business involved
being behind a computer. And it was extremely convenient for him to
work at home. All he had to do was roll out of bed and take a few
steps down the hallway.

Padma like that idea
because the more he stayed at home, the less she had to worry about
him getting into trouble. And she thought it had been an effective
plan of action for him, but if it was working, what was all this
that Lalita was alleging?

Meanwhile, Heshan, who had
gotten an earful, went into the back office, paced the floor with
his hands on his head.

“This isn’t happening. This
isn’t happening,” he kept saying over and over, feeling like he had
arrived into the twilight zone instead of being at work. Did he
really hear what he thought he had heard? That something might have
happened between Gabrielle and Dilvan and the baby might not have
been Tyson’s? Gabrielle wouldn’t do something like that to Tyson,
would she?

“This isn’t happening. This
isn’t happening,” he chanted.

“What isn’t
happening?”

The soft, female voice
jerked him out of his worries. He immediately looked to find its
source. There stood, Charity Eason, the volunteer waitress that
he’d had his eyes on for a while. She’d come in while Lalita was
heading out. She’d be working the dinner shift. Right now, she was
leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed like she’d
caught Heshan in the act of doing something.

“It’s nothing,” Heshan told
her, and while she was in his company, he took a moment to look her
up and down. She had her long, cinnamon hair pulled back into a
ponytail. She wore a white shirt, black pants with a black waitress
apron covering her outfit. Her makeup was done to perfection. It
always was, and he had a feeling that she didn’t need a drop of it
to be beautiful. And why was she even talking to him when all she
had been doing was avoiding him, even to the point of volunteering
only on days she knew he would be off, just so she couldn’t run
into him?

“You sure it’s nothing? You
look like you’re about to pass out over there. You need some
water?”

“No, thanks. I’m
fine.”

“Alright...guess I get to
work then.”

When Charity walked away,
he sat down and thought about it for a moment. Gabrielle was the
happiest he’d ever seen her. When she was with Dilvan, he did
nothing but hurt her every chance he got. Tyson loved her without
conditions. He cherished her. Why would she risk her marriage to be
with his brother, the man who abused her when Tyson treated her so
much better? It didn’t make sense. But he knew what he heard Lalita
say just now.

He sighed. The thought
crossed his mind to pick up the phone and call Tyson right now, but
how could he with only a small portion of the story? Instead, he
would give himself time to think about it, replaying the
conversation and letting it sink in. Maybe this was all just a
misunderstanding, and if it was, he wouldn’t be the one to alert
Tyson to something that didn’t happen.

Chapter 4

“Sweetie,” Tyson said,
whispering in Gabrielle’s ear the next morning. She was still
asleep and he hated to wake her. They’d been out late, well, late
for her, yesterday looking at houses. Tyson had chosen five houses
for them to look at – all with five or more bedrooms. So she was
going up and down stairs for most of the day and now she was making
up for it all in rest.

“Bri,” he said, watching
her stir a little at the sound of his voice.