She frantically grabbed an arm of the man in front of her. “Was anyone in there when it burned?”
“No ma’am. Weirdest thing. Nobody saw the smoke till this morning, but it burned a while.” His young eyes sharpened. “You know who it belongs to?”
She came to her senses with a wash of cool fear, seeing ahead of her a dozen questions she couldn’t answer. She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. I thought it was a different car, but it isn’t. Thank you.”
She ran back to the car. “Let’s go.”
Allen complied. “Is it his?”
“Yes.” Her mind raced with possible explanations, a deep illness growing in her stomach. Nothing she came up with boded well for Samuel. All she could think of was that he had been kidnapped for some reason. But they had wanted to kill him, so why would they bother to take him from the car?
Unless they hadn’t wanted the body to be found.
She swallowed. Hassid had obviously engineered the bombing of The Shell and Fin, then attempted to connect Samuel to it. Perhaps there was more violence in the works, violence for which the missing Samuel would be blamed.
She felt suddenly hollow, as if all the vital portions of her body had drained out through her feet. Her hands trembled, and her stomach churned. “Allen,” she said weakly. “Please stop again.”
One glance at her face was all he needed. Lila jumped out of the car a second time, and rid herself of the bitterness in her belly.
* * *
They reached Seattle late in the afternoon. Allen would not hear of her staying in her own house, and headed for his own.
“Did you get my car, Allen?” she asked, suddenly remembering her station wagon.
“It’s at my place. You were right. It had a bad starter. It’s fixed.”
“I’ll pay you tomorrow. I don’t have any cash on me.” They climbed the hilly territory that had once cradled The Shell and Fin. “Allen, I want to see the restaurant.”
He frowned uncertainly. “No, you really don’t.”
“Will you stop trying to protect me?”
“All right. It’s your life, after all.”
Lila didn’t bother to comment that it had always been her life, for as he drove along the boulevard toward the site, she was remembering the first day she had seen Samuel in his beautiful car, was reliving the drive back to her house that evening, when she’d been enveloped by violins and the sound of rain. How safe she had felt in that car, she thought. What an illusion it had been.
Police tape encircled the former Shell and Fin, and Allen pulled up alongside it. “There it is,” he said. “Or rather, there it was.”
It wasn’t a pile of crumbled rock, as Lila had expected. The roof was mainly gone, doors had been blown outward and several walls leaned at dangerous angles. But that made it all the worse. An unexpected pang of loss touched her at the sight of the broken building. “I worked there a long time,” she said quietly.
Then, in the parking lot, she spied a crushed bit of metal and glass beneath a huge chunk of roof. “Oh, no! My bike.” It had been sitting there since the night Samuel had taken her home—thousands of years ago. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would have been the point?”
She looked at him. “I guess you’re right.”
“I know it’s hard to believe at this point, but things will work out, in time.”
Lila closed her eyes, leaning her head against the seat as Allen turned the car around and headed for his house.
Things would not ever be the same again. Not ever again.
* * *
In a city thousands of years old, Samuel waited in an alleyway. A rooster crowed, impatient for the sun to appear, and not far away a car maneuvered along the narrow street. It was cold.
Beneath his coat the comforting bulk of a .45 automatic rested against his ribs, heavy and cold—and deadly, should the need arise. He wished for a cigarette but did not light one, preferring to keep himself hidden. From a window two stories above, a harsh argument in a guttural tongue rang out.
He shifted, rolling his shoulder against the stiffness that was setting in after the long wait. It had healed, but the strength of it was still small, and the cold made it ache. Like Lila’s back.
He wondered what she was doing now, if she had left the cabin or stayed there, if she had seen the bombed-out car at the side of the road, and what she had thought of it. It had disturbed him to do that, to leave the car so conspicuously, for in sending a message to the assassins, there was a chance Lila would have received it, too. And she would believe him dead.
It pained him to think of her sorrow. But perhaps it was best. Perhaps the accident that had joined them was a cruel joke, and the sooner it ended the better.
And yet he wanted to live more certainly than he ever had. Lila had renewed him, giving him back his wonder and his hope, a hope he clung to even in this dim place with the sound of an argument over his head. For her, for his love of her, he wanted to live.
The sound of boot heels on the street alerted him, and he faded more deeply into the shadow of the doorway, waiting until he could see the face of the man who had entered the alley before he showed himself. In the darkness it would be impossible to pick out anyone but Mustapha.
But even in the darkness Mustapha was unmistakable. His long stride and broad shoulders could have belonged to any number of men, but the quirky double click of his heels on the stones of the alley told Samuel it was his brother. It had annoyed Samuel as a child, but he was glad of it now.
He emerged from the shadows to stand in Mustapha’s path. “You’ve come.”
“Alone, as you asked,” he said. “This is very dangerous for you, Samuel. There are assassins who have been paid to kill you.”
“You knew.” Samuel turned, gesturing for his brother to follow as they walked.
“Only recently. Surely you do not think I would hire them?”
“No.”
“Then why are we here?” Mustapha paused in the alleyway. “I apologize for the actions of the League, but it will not help if you are shot.”
Samuel drew out a cigarette and lighted it. “You have been marked, as well,” he said.
Mustapha had grown cagey over the years. He glanced away, down the alley, then back the other way before he looked back at Samuel. His eyes showed nothing. “If that were true, what would your people offer me?”
Samuel shrugged. “What do you want?”
“Asylum. In America. A hidden place, a new name.”
“And in return?”
“The names of the others.” Now his eyes were bleak, and Samuel felt much the older of the two. “I did not know the real truth of the League when I became involved, Samuel.” He bowed his head. “I have been a fool, but never a murderer.”
Impatiently Samuel wanted to ask, What did you expect? but he knew it was a futile question. Mustapha had expected power. It made him sad. “I wish,” he said quietly, “that you could have lived in France with me. It would have helped.”
“Perhaps.” He sighed. “We all have a fate we are meant to fulfill. Perhaps this is mine.”
Samuel dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his heel. Fate. The word disturbed him. “All right,” he said. In a quiet tone he outlined the plan to spirit Mustapha to America, a plan that had been worked out in advance with Organization leaders. “I will not see you until you are cleared for immigration.”
Mustapha nodded. “Thank you, my brother.”
In the split second it took to turn from Mustapha toward the end of the alley, three shots rang into the stillness. One tore into Samuel’s right arm. Another thudded into the stones of the ancient building behind him. Samuel scrambled for his gun with his useless arm, but in the slow motion reserved for such moments, saw Mustapha draw and fire.
The third bullet caught Samuel in the chest, and the explosion of pain knocked him down. For long moments he felt nothing but the roaring fury in his chest as he struggled for air
. Nothing but one more breath mattered, one more breath to sustain him.
Slowly he became aware of Mustapha kneeling over him. “The chain,” Samuel choked out. “Give it to her.”
“Be quiet. The police will be here to take you to a hospital.”
“No.” With an enormous effort of will, he moved his hand to the chain Lila had given him, feeling along the edge of his fingers the blood that stuck his shirt to his chest. “Give it to her.”
“Be quiet, fool.”
Samuel gasped, unable to find the next breath at all, as if he had no lungs. The edges of his vision blackened. “Promise,” he whispered, feeling life leave him. But he didn’t know if Mustapha had answered. The black turned to red, and then there was nothing at all.
Chapter 12
The night before Allen’s wedding, Lila was alone, decorating his cake while the wedding party rehearsed. The cake was a beauty, both traditional and unusual. There were the usual tiers and terraces of a wedding cake, and the frosting was as white as new snow, but there the resemblance ceased.
She stood back to admire her handiwork, feeling a glow of pleasure too real to ignore. “Well, Arrow, what do you think?” she asked the dog watching her. His tail thumped on the carpet. “One of the best I’ve done, if I do say so.”
It was a strange sensation to feel the flickerings of satisfaction in her work, to finally see a tear in the gray cloak of hopelessness she’d known the past week. And it made her feel oddly treacherous to feel happy about anything, even for an instant.
And yet, for the past two days, a lightness had been growing within her. As the moon approached its zenith, she ordinarily felt bloated and uncomfortable, a sure sign that her period would plague her in a day or two. Tonight the full moon glowed silver in a clear sky, and all she felt was sleepy.
She kept reaching inside herself, trying to divine the workings of her body. Could it be that her prayer had been granted? Was it possible that she would take, from the perfect days with Samuel, something more tangible than memories?
Walking to the sink with tubes and knives covered with frosting, she tried to keep the hope at bay. If it turned out she was not pregnant, just out of cycle because of stress, the disappointment would be hard to bear. Better to just ignore it.
She melted the frosting with hot tap-water, then ran a sinkful of soap suds. Behind her the television played, a cable news network Lila had been monitoring for seven straight days. Not a word about the Freedom League had been mentioned. She had also combed every newspaper and magazine she could get her hands on, with the same results. In fact, it had been a remarkably peaceful week all over the globe—one of the rare periods when the news was good in most places.
That, too, kindled hope in Lila’s heart. Surely there would have been something in the news if the mission Samuel had undertaken had not proceeded as planned.
There had been a sense of urgency in his leave-taking, as if it could not be put off any longer.
And she thought, loving him as deeply as she did, she would know if he were killed. She would know if his essence had been erased from the earth. No matter how she tried to talk herself into believing the evidence that pointed to the contrary, she kept returning to one simple fact: he had not been in the car when it burned.
A pert, dark-haired woman on the television screen swiveled behind the flat white counter of the studios. “And now for the world news.”
Lila rinsed the clean tubes and found a dish towel to dry them, watching television with half an eye. “In other news, officials took Freedom League leader Mustapha Bashir into custody in Beirut early this morning after a shooting in an alley there.”
Lila stared at the screen. A picture of a harsh-looking man, smoking, illustrated the story. As the newscaster continued, Lila felt the internal quaking of her organs, never distant since Samuel’s departure, start up again, viciously.
“Wanted in connection with several terrorist bombings in recent months, Bashir evidently shot and killed his brother Samuel Bashir, an American citizen, before dawn.”
Lila dropped the tubes and towels in her hands with a cry, her hands flying to cover her mouth, a white roaring blocking the sound of the newscaster’s next words, although she could see her lips moving as the pictures flashed on the screen—a bombed building someplace where palms grew, a video of a smoking car and The Shell and Fin.
Her heart stopped beating, and her intestines grew cold as the white noise sizzled louder in her ears. When a photograph of Samuel flashed, she tried to concentrate on the words of the newscaster, but heard only, “—in custody.”
Moving on legs as stiff as steel, she walked to a chair in the dining room, collapsing without a sound. There was nothing inside of her—no hope or hate, no pain or past, no love or longing or sorrow. Vaguely she heard the pulsing of her heart begin again, stubbornly taking up its long-standing practice of keeping her alive. Her chest moved with breath, in and out. Only her hands, ice-cold in her lap, reflected the frozen state of her thoughts.
* * *
For two weeks the insulating mist of shock protected her. She finished the wedding cake, even attended the ceremony, and drifted through the days with a variety of tasks to keep her busy. She and Arrow took long walks in the late afternoons, enjoying the unbroken stretch of sunny weather.
She was shopping one bright, cold Saturday morning when her feet turned of their own accord into the aisle offering women’s products. There, next to a display of lipsticks and mascaras, were the discreetly packaged boxes of home pregnancy tests. With a steady, sensible hand she selected one at random and put it in her basket.
When the test the next morning confirmed her suspicions, the protective chrysalis about her abruptly shattered. The world brightened, sharpened, becoming unbearably solid and three-dimensional. She saw the pale blue tiles in the bathroom in perfect, acute detail, felt the linoleum cold below her bare feet, smelled the cleanser she had used on the bathtub. And deep within, where there had been nothing at all, she felt a quick rush of joy.
Lacking anyone else to share the news with, she ran from the bathroom to find Arrow, who wagged his tail as Lila came around the corner. “I’m pregnant,” she shouted, and threw her arms around him. “I’m going to have a baby.” Burying her face in his coarse fur, she breathed a prayer of gratitude, one sent as fervently as the one asking for the same child had been.
Then, automatically, she called her mother in Oklahoma to tell her she needed to come home for a while. Her mother accepted without question.
* * *
Lila was able to settle the untied ends of her life in Seattle much more quickly than she would have believed. By Tuesday the house she’d rented for several years, the house with its satin pillows and lacquered tables, was cleaned and cleared out, the keys returned to the landlord. Her plants she settled with Allen; what little furniture she’d accumulated was put into storage until she had mapped out a plan, and everything else went to the Salvation Army. The motorcycle was beyond worrying about, but oddly it proved to be a blessing in disguise, for the insurance money would stretch her savings a little more—and even she wouldn’t be needing a motorcycle while she was pregnant.
That left the dessert business she’d built over the past year. With a pang of regret she took the records of her accounts to a home-style bakery she’d always enjoyed, and asked the woman who ran it if she’d like to purchase them. The woman accepted eagerly, with an invitation to Lila to work for her if she ever returned to the city. Lila shook he head. “I won’t be back, not here. Thanks.”
The resultant cash gave her a bit more of a cushion of security. If she was careful, she might be able to live on her savings for a year and pay for the baby’s medical care, as well. In Oklahoma, she had no doubts that she’d be able to sell her cakes and confections without much trouble, thus supplementing her income.
In a year’s time she might have a clearer idea of what came next in her life. Instinctively she knew it would be a while before she woul
d be able to make decisions of any kind.
* * *
On Friday afternoon, as Lila drove down the two-lane county road toward her parents’ ranch under an early-winter sky as blue as native turquoise, she marveled that any place could look the same as long as this parcel of land had.
The house, a two-story white clapboard big enough to house the eight children who had grown up there, stood in the center of a stand of trees that circled it like a small army. Even now, when the trees were bare of their leaves, the stand was visible for miles, rising as it did out of the flat yellow land around it. Fields planted with winter wheat stretched from one side; on the other were a barn and a corral. A single gray-spotted Appaloosa stood by the fence, ignoring a bothersome black goat not far enough from the kid stage to suit the horse.
In the yard was Lila’s mother, evidently trimming the roses in their arbor. She turned as she heard the sound of Lila’s car, and her round, weathered face broke into a smile as she spotted her daughter.
At the first sight of the ranch, spread alone on the empty fields, Lila had felt her stomach drop in unexpected loneliness. But when she saw her mother’s warm smile, she knew she had done the right thing. She got out of the car, leaving the door open for Arrow, and flung herself into her mother’s waiting arms.
Maria held her without speaking. But when Lila raised her head, she said, “You look tired, child. Come inside and let me get you some coffee.”
Lila shook her black curls away from her face. Holding her mother’s arms, she said quietly, “I’m not tired. I’m pregnant.”
For an instant, dismay and surprise and excitement warred for predominance on her face. Surprise won. “Lawsy mercy,” she breathed finally. “Are you happy about it?”
“I have never wanted anything as much as I want this baby.”
“And the father?”
Lila swallowed and looked toward the house. “He’s dead.” For an instant she could see Samuel’s face as he bent to kiss her in the deep fog the morning of his leave-taking, could see his sorrowful black eyes and the long lines around his mouth, the lock of errant hair on his forehead. Her grief was a concrete thing, with a shape and substance as solid as the shoes on her feet. With the effort practiced over the past week, she pushed the picture back, unwilling yet to allow that pain a place in her life. For the sake of the child she carried, the pain would have to wait.
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