Lies and Weddings(5)
“Sorry. I am just so angry, Gopal Das.”
“Your anger cannot hurt you.”
“I can feel myself burning up. I feel so much rage.”
“Your rage cannot hurt you. Just visualize that rage as a little red ball, a red ball that is spinning from your crown chakra, through your heart chakra, through your solar plexus, and out your base chakra. Exhale fully and just let the ball flow through you from top to bottom, top to bottom…”
Augie exhaled forcefully, deflating like a balloon.
“Is it flowing?”
“Ye-ess,” Augie exhaled, her body trembling.
“Now, take a deep breath, and using all the goddess energy you possess within you, just expel the ball to the center of the earth, where it can no longer hurt you.”
Augie breathed in, and she breathed out. She clenched her eyes tight and imagined a hot ball of rage tunneling through all the layers of the earth till it reached the inner core.
“Can you feel it leaving your body?”
“Yes! Yes! I can feel it moving through my body. I can feel the heat.”
“Good. I can feel it too.” Gopal Das took a deep breath and felt a sulfuric burning in his nostrils. He opened his eyes and saw that the ground behind Augie was literally cracking open with smoke.
“Motherfucker! Augie, run! FUCKING RUN!” Gopal Das screamed.
Skip Notes
* It was actually Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
III
Dr. Thomas Tong
GRESHAMSBURY COTTAGE ? THE SAME MORNING
The route of Eden’s morning run never wavered. She would jog up the field behind the cottage where she lived with her father, skirting the grounds of Greshamsbury Hall for 1.5 miles before she made a quick descent down the hilly path leading to the village. After popping into Nero’s to grab her usual latte, she would take the long way around the village square before ending up back at the cottage.
It was early enough when Eden returned from her run that mist still shrouded the lilac hedges in the garden. Entering through the kitchen door, she was surprised to find her father seated at the table, spooning marmalade onto his toast. Dr. Thomas Tong (Diocesan Boys’/Radley/Cambridge/MD Anderson UTHealth) usually slept in on Saturdays, as he spent all of Friday up in London doing surgeries and would return quite late in the evening.
“Everything okay?” Eden kissed the back of her father’s head as she passed behind him.
“Hemsworth woke me. Needs me to make a house call.”
“Oh, I was going to pop over too. Got an urgent text from Bea.”
“She sick as well?”
“Fashion emergency.”
“Toast?” Thomas handed Eden the slice he had just prepared and they sat in their usual cozy silence, Thomas taking slow sips of malty Lapsang from his favorite blue enamel mug as he flipped through the morning paper[*1] and Eden dipping her marmalade toast in her latte while scanning the news[*2] on her phone. After both of them felt sufficiently caffeinated, Thomas grabbed his black leather medical bag and they left through the kitchen door and took the shortcut through the boxwood maze onto the grounds of “the Big House,” as both of them referred to it.
It was a short stroll up to Greshamsbury Hall—five minutes if you walked quickly—and the route was so well traveled by Thomas and Eden that they could have done it blindfolded. The Big House was originally built as the hunting lodge of a much grander estate, Boxall Park, as it was situated on the very edge of the estate’s vast lands by the ancient Dartmoor Forest. The sixteenth earl had been forced to implement austerity measures after a particularly disastrous series of margin calls during the crash of 1929 and was obliged to lease out Boxall Park and move his family seat to Greshamsbury Hall. These reduced circumstances proved to be a rather fortuitous change for his wife, the countess, who sighed in relief at no longer having to run a two-hundred-room stately. Instead, she reveled in making do with a mere forty-three rooms set on a hundred and eight acres.
The other advantage of Greshamsbury Hall was its splendid situation. Majestically set on a hilltop along the upper reaches of the river Feign, it afforded every room with sweeping views of the glorious Devonshire countryside. To arrive at the house, visitors were given a unique set of directions: “When you arrive at the village of Greshamsbury, turn down the narrow country lane between the wooden fenceposts directly facing the HSBC bank and follow it for 1.5 miles.” That particular country lane gently rambled past a field of lavender and a postcard-perfect paddock where a pair of long-haired white horses grazed, and curved up a sloping allée of towering oaks, where beyond an old wooden bridge over the bubbling river the gracious mock-Tudor house dramatically came into view. With the sunlight against the elegant black and white timbered fa?ade and the sparkling river cascading down the hill, the effect was mesmerizing. Elsie de Wolfe, who paid a visit in 1938, purportedly proclaimed it “the most romantic house in all of England.”
This idyllic setting had been the Tongs’ refuge ever since Eden’s mother passed away when she was only five. Thomas had been granted a grace-and-favor lease to the handsome Grade II–listed Jacobean cottage[*3] neighboring Greshamsbury Hall by Francis Gresham—the current earl and his best friend since their Radley days. After Thomas completed his fellowship training in Houston, Francis had lured him into opening his clinic in the little town instead of returning to Hong Kong, where he had been offered a partnership at a prestigious private clinic. “It will give our corner of the world more cachet to have an oncologist of your standing here, and besides, who else would I watch Pink Floyd’s The Wall with twice a year?” Francis reasoned.