A Flight of Broken Wings: Aeriel Trilogy #1

Chapter 122

"Well, it looks like your father wasn't as uninteresting as you'd thought after all," Ashwin quipped, sitting back on his haunches as he perused a file containing reports from the last case that Abhas had apparently worked as an officer of the IAW. "He looks to have had quite an interesting career before he drifted off to the countryside to become a potato farmer."

"He wasn't a potato farmer," Ruban said absently. He felt as if he was losing his mind, like his head was going to spin off his shoulders in a thousand different directions any moment now.

None of this made any sense. If his father had worked for the IAW, how could he not have known that until now? Did he not know anything about his own family, his own father? Why would Baba have lied to him anyway? How could he? Luana's words came crashing back to him: 'He'd gotten a scholarship to that Hunter training school in the capital. Bracken, it's called, isn't it?' and 'Of course I was only a girl when he left for the capital to be a bigshot officer. He never did like being cooped up in a small town, that one.'

How could he have been such a pathetic, oblivious idiot?

His thoughts shifted to Uncle Subhas. If his father had worked for the IAW, Subhas had to have known about it. What possible reason could his entire family have had to lie to him about their past? His past?

"It makes sense, I suppose," Ashwin said quietly, drawing Ruban's attention momentarily away from his own spiralling thoughts.

"Nothing makes sense anymore," Ruban declared. And if he was being just a tiny bit melodramatic, he thought he had earned the right.

Ashwin ignored him. "He quit the IAW on the last day of June, exactly twenty-three years ago."

Ruban's breath caught in his throat, and for a moment he feared he was going to choke on air. "Oh God."

20th June 1994, the day his mother had died after a year-long battle with lung cancer, leaving behind a grieving husband and a three-year-old son whose only remaining memory of her was that of wavy brown hair and the fragrance of wildflowers in spring.

He wondered for a moment how Ashwin had known about it, the date of his mother's death, but dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had occurred. Obviously, the Aeriel would have researched his past before joining him in the investigation. After all, had he not done the same to the redoubtable 'Ashwin Kwan'?

"Heleft because she died," he whispered, the words barely audible even to himself."That's why he never talked about it.Because it reminded him...of her. Of what he'd lost."