by Lynn, Sophia
“Wait, their new lives? What about their lives here?”
For a little while, Myriah had allowed herself to get lulled by Halil’s calm words and the picture that he was painting for her of what her girls’ lives would be like. It felt wonderful in many ways. She and Rose had had a hard-scrabble life growing up, with everything always a little threadbare and a little strained. They had never starved, but they had missed a meal or two, and Myriah had always sworn her children would never know what an empty cupboard would look like.
Halil wasn’t just talking about full cupboards and summer camps, however. He was talking about a completely different way of life, and Myriah shook her head.
“Does it matter that they were born in Boston?” she demanded. “They’re American citizens too; is that something they will have to give up?”
Halil looked shocked, as if her even asking that question was ludicrous to them.
“I’m not taking anything away from them,” he said in surprise. “They are going to be of Ealim, cared for and kept in luxury their entire lives, even if they are not my heirs. How can you even compare a life here to what they would have in Ealim?”
He rose to try to take her hand, but she jerked it back from him.
“No! You were lying to me, weren’t you?”
Halil’s face clouded over with darkness, and she remembered how he hated to be called a liar.
Well, then I guess you shouldn’t have lied to me, huh?
“And how, pray tell, have I lied to you, Myriah?”
Oh God, she had to stay angry. If she didn’t stay angry, she was going to start to cry, and then Halil might feel compelled to comfort her, and she could not take that. It might actually drive her crazy.
“You told me that you didn’t think I was doing a bad job! You told me when you brought all of those things into my house, things that yes, I liked and I have grown to enjoy, that you didn’t think I was treating my children poorly, that I was a good mother! And now you’re telling me that no, that’s all wrong, they can’t live happy lives here, you have to take them to Ealim so they can be truly happy.”
Halil stared at her.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I know that they could have a good life here with you and with Rose. In Ealim—”
“Without me? Is that what you’re saying? You think you’re going to take my girls to Ealim without me?”
“No! Listen to me, Myriah! For just one damned moment, drop your damned stubborn pride and just listen. No. You will come to Ealim with us, of course. The girls need their mother, and I need . . .”
He shook his head, looking as furious and as frustrated as she felt, and that only made her angrier. Why in the world was he upset? She was the one who had the right to be furious.
“I am not some villain sweeping down out of a dark cloud to take your children from you, Myriah. I am a man who has a duty both to the children he helped create and the country that he has served. I have many duties, but one of the first is that I have heirs to continue my family line. That is something I take very seriously.”
“Did you take it so seriously when you were fucking baristas in London?”
The words were barely out of her mouth before Halil’s hands shot out, landing heavily on her shoulder. Myriah gasped and she had no choice but to look up into his eyes. She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a steep drop, one that would surely kill her if she fell.
“You weren’t just . . . some barista that I fucked,” he growled. “You were always more than that, even after you became the mother of my children. I was going to . . .”
He broke off, letting her go, but not before she saw a tumult of emotions go through him, a riot of pain, anger, need, fear, and something else.
“You can’t think that our daughters don’t deserve more.”
“I think our daughters deserve the world,” Myriah said. She was grateful that her voice was low and calm. She couldn’t take it if she sounded hysterical right now, if Halil could possibly take what she said and assume that she was simply being a foolish woman who was ruled only by her foolish heart.
“They deserve the world,” she said, her hands clasped in front of her. “They do. But your world is not the only one. Your way is not the only way. And when you tell me that of course you are going to take them to Ealim, you are asking them to give up a half of themselves. And even if you do that, even if you take them to Ealim, and make them princesses and make one of them your heir and all of the people in the country love them, they will still, deep in their hearts, understand that they are missing something that makes them who they are.”
“Because you will remind them.”
“No. Because there are so many parts to all of us, Halil, and if you ignore any part of it . . . well, maybe you run wild through Europe and never get home until your family is in crisis.”
His face darkened, and for a moment, she wondered if she had crossed some kind of line that could never be taken back.
Then he nodded. “You’re right.”
“You’ll find that I’m right about a lot of things. Halil, never, ever do something like that to our girls again without talking to me.”
To her shock, she felt tears pricking at her eyes again, and she wiped at them angrily.
“Dammit. Dammit. I didn’t want to cry. I don’t want you to think that . . . that this is some hysteric request from a woman who is full of hormones and anxieties. It’s not. You did something wrong, and I want you to promise me that you won’t do it again, not because I’m crying but because you understand why it’s wrong . . .”
To her surprise, she felt Halil’s arms around her. Somehow, despite everything that they had been saying, despite how high the tensions were between them, it still felt good. For a moment, Myriah resisted the urge to collapse into him, and then she simply couldn’t. She leaned into him because he still felt like the best thing in the world, and because somehow, for just a moment, she needed to step back from the entire situation.
“I’m sorry,” Halil said, and there was a remorse in his voice that made her heart ache. “I’m so sorry. I should have thought longer about what I did, and if I had, I would know that this is not something I want to do without you. You are their mother just as I am their father, and you have known them far longer than I have. I won’t do that again, not without your full knowledge.”
Myriah took a long and shaky breath before nodding.
“All right. Just . . . did they cry? I didn’t hear it if they did.”
She could feel Halil smiling against her hair. His hand was up between her shoulder blades, rubbing her back in a way that felt incredibly soothing.
“Not for a second. The doctor has been with my family for some time, and he is very good with children. He distracted them so smoothly that they never even felt the needle, and after he was done, he made sure that they had had some sweet bread to make up for it. He’s also checking for common and uncommon allergies as well as genetic markers that might be problems later on down the line.”
“He sounds good,” Myriah said, willing to help their tentative peace along.
“He’s still in Boston for a few days. If you want to meet him, we certainly can. If you’re not comfortable with him, there are several members of the medical community in Ealim who would also leap at the chance to treat the girls.”
Myriah shook her head.
“I’m sorry. This is all so very big. There’s so much going on right now, and I feel as if at any moment, the rug is going to get pulled out from under me again. I just . . . I just need things to be normal for a little while. Well, as normal as life ever gets with three little girls and our situation. Can . . . can we do that? Just be normal for a little while?’
Myriah wondered if it was cowardly or regressive. In light of all of the information that Halil had given her, change was coming and coming fairly quickly. She had to make sure that she was on top of things, if not for herself, then certainly for the girls. Right now,
however, she wouldn’t have minded crawling into bed and going to sleep. Perhaps when she woke up, she would never have gone to Ealim in the first place, and things would be much simpler.
Then she realized that she wouldn’t have found Halil again, and her heart rebelled against the idea so hard she knew it was impossible.
Halil was nodding.
“Soon enough, we are going to need to make decisions about what’s going to happen with the girls, travel, where they live, things like that. But we can wait for a little while.”
Myriah nodded, and to her own surprise, she took Halil’s hand.
“I have . . . so many emotions right now,” she said honestly. “I don’t think I have ever felt this full of feelings in my entire life. I came over here so mad that I wanted to bite you, and I was so angry, and so sad, and so upset . . .”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know. I feel . . . empty. Strange.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She had once been told that if someone told her sorry that she should never say that it was all right. It was better to thank someone for acknowledging that they had made an error, and in this moment, Myriah understood it very well.
“We should go back to the house,” she said at last. “Rose is being sweet to watch the girls, but we can’t keep taking advantage of her. Maybe we can talk about the au pair again tonight.”
Halil accepted the peace offering, smiling at her as he escorted her down the steps of his townhouse and up the steps of hers. There was something balmy about the weather, a promise of the summer to come. Myriah was slightly surprised to realize that it was barely past noon. She felt as if eons had passed since they’d started their fight.
“Thank you for being willing to talk about the au pair. I know my parents and my cousins have used them, and it was generally a good experience. I will say that life changes a great deal. Once, when I went to speak with a woman about bringing in another woman, it meant something rather different.”
Myriah didn’t know what he meant at first, but then she figured it out and gasped. Then she saw the slight smile on his face, and she smacked him on the arm.
“You’re terrible,” she proclaimed, and he shrugged, grinning at her.
“I promise I will do my very best not to be.”
Chapter Seventeen
Halil
Halil had some doubts that things could go back to normal after everything they had said that day, but Myriah surprised him once again.. Instead of letting things fester, or staying silent and making him work to win her approval, she threw herself into being with him and being with the girls.
The next day, she arranged for them all to go to one of the local nature preserves, bringing along a picnic lunch. Halil had been a little dubious about the idea of bringing three little girls out to a park, but Rose had agreed to come along at the last moment, provided she was given all of the cold-cut sandwiches she could eat.
The sandwiches were packed as promised, and all five of them loaded up into a minivan that Halil had sent over. He smiled a little wryly as the enormous vehicle pulled up. He really hadn’t been joking when he noted how things changed so very much after he had found out about the girls.
As Rose kept the girls quiet in the back, Myriah directed him around some desolate curves in the road, safe but lonely.
“You know, if you are bringing me out to the woods to kill me, there are going to be people that miss me. You know that, right?” Halil joked, and Myriah laughed. For some reason, hearing that beloved sound made him feel at once relieved and happy. He supposed that he had been worried that he wouldn’t hear it any longer after that fight the day before.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t bring the girls along if I was thinking about killing you and dumping the body. Murder and evidence-tampering is squarely something that the United States doesn’t teach until third or fourth grade. They are far too young.”
Halil laughed at that, and that was a pleasure too. He and Myriah were still the people they were, and at the end of the day, there was no end to the care that he had for her.
Care . . .
That was what he was calling it, but he was not so much of a fool to think that the phrase was broad enough.
When they had laid eyes on each other in Ealim, he had felt something awaken inside him. It was the most extraordinary feeling.
Halil knew he was a good sheikh. He was respected by his government, he was adored by his people, and his family cared about him. He had thought for a long time that his cup was full. At some point, he would find a beautiful woman from his social circle, either close to home or abroad, court her, marry her, and probably develop some true affection for her as time went on, assuming that disaster didn’t strike.
Nowhere in that vague plan had he accounted for laying eyes on Myriah again after three years and feeling as if his heart had been lit on fire.
That was the closest he could come to what had happened.
One moment, life was the satisfactory situation that he had cultivated with some care, and the next, it was as if something inside him he had put to sleep years ago woke up and started roaring for her. He even remembered putting it to sleep.
“What are you thinking about?” Myriah asked, and he thought for a moment, and then shrugged. She knew him, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, and that meant that he could be honest with her.
“I’m thinking about a time in my life not long after I was brought back from London to Ealim.”
She went still, and he could see that she still remembered that terrible morning. He hadn’t forgotten it or the painful ache that seemed to lance through his entire body.
“I saw you walk out on the street, and I saw a car pick you up.”
“You looked?” he asked in surprise, and a briefly angry look crossed Myriah’s face.
“You wouldn’t have, in my place?”
“I certainly would have. I just . . . It’s not important. But you asked me what I was thinking about, and I was thinking about being back in Ealim for the first time in years. I was surrounded by the rush of my family, and I stepped up to help my father figure out the situation with my cousin’s son. It was fairly straightforward once we figured out what had happened, that it was some woman’s delusion rather than an act of terrorism, but a few false leads had us chasing our tails and thinking things were much worse than they really were. It was a difficult time, and a few days after I got back, I ended up on the roof of the palace, looking out over the city.”
He could remember that day, one of the coldest in the year. He had slept about four hours in the last forty-eight, and it was his first break in a while. He could still remember how cold the wind was that blew down from the mountains, and how raw his throat felt after comforting his cousin for a while.
To Halil’s surprise, he felt Myriah’s small hand come cover his own on the wheel.
“It sounds terrible.”
“It was. Even if it ended up having a happy ending, it certainly wasn’t as if we knew that at the time. I stood up on the roof and I thought about many things. I thought about you.”
Halil glanced into the rear-view mirror where the girls were napping and where it looked like Rose was getting her sleep as well.
“I had thought you never thought about me at all after you left London.” There was no blame or recrimination in Myriah’s voice, and maybe that was the part that stung the most. He wanted her to be angry with him about this for some reason.
“Never think that,” he said, staring at the road ahead. “Until that night on the roof, I thought about you almost constantly. Then I realized how very dangerous my life could be. I thought about how terrorists might have taken my cousin’s baby, how none of my family were currently allowed out of the residence without an armed escort, by order of my father. I couldn’t imagine you in a place like the palace was at that point, and so . . . I forced myself to stop thinking about you. I couldn’t imagine you in d
anger, so I stopped imagining you at all.”
“You make it sound easy,” she said, and Halil laughed.
“It wasn’t. Believe me. But it got easier, and for that, Myriah, I am sorry. I am sorry I ever thought that I could put you out of my mind. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you would have chosen—”
“I would have chosen you.”
The words were quiet, but there was a steel resolve to them that Halil could never question. Myriah continued.
“We never talked much about what we were doing together, I guess. I look back on that version of myself, and all I can think is how very young she was. How very much she wanted to be with you. But if I had known that you were going back into some kind of danger, and if you would have had me? Yes. I wouldn’t have hesitated. I might have asked if I could go back to the cafe to make sure they didn’t think you had murdered me or something, but I would have gone with you.”
Halil swallowed around the suddenly thick lump in his throat. This was not a conversation that he had ever thought that he would have, and for some reason, it made his heart ache.
“And here I thought you were so devoted to the cafe. You never even wanted to take sick days.”
Myriah grinned at him, as sudden and unexpected as the sun coming out on a cloudy day.
“I know. I had to think about it very hard on a roof that I managed to climb up on one day that year. I mean, it was really important and dramatic . . .”
Halil laughed, stifling it at the last moment so he wouldn’t wake the sleepers in the rear of the van. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Noooo . . . well, maybe just a little bit. I don’t mean to. But yes. If you had asked me, I would have come with you. I loved you.”
The words hung between them, and when Halil risked a glance at Myriah in the next seat, she seemed as surprised that she had said them as Halil was to have heard them.