by Liz Crowe
“I know.” Emre had sighed. “He was special to many people. But she needs to get past it. Hopefully living here for a while will help her focus on something other than herself.”
She’d bristled at that. Selfish? Her?
“Can you help us, son? I can’t lose her. Please, do what you can for our beautiful tulip.”
She glanced at the complete stranger with whom she would have sex and let the phantom conversation exit her brain. The man stared at her in a way she understood. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs. He leaned over and put a hand on her knee. “You are incredibly beautiful, but I think you know that.” She tried to fight the impulse surging through her. The guy was not that great. What did she think she’d get out of it exactly? Her plans for America included trying to act more like a grown up, not like a horny slut. She sighed. His hand traveled up her thigh. She glared at him and he removed it.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if we are on the same page here.” She tried on a look of sincere indignation. The man loomed over her once more.
“I think we are.” The wedding ring did not escape her notice. She stood, grabbed her purse and carry-on, and started walking. He followed, caught up and clutched her arm.
“I’m a member of the frequent flier lounge. Let me host you there.” He let go of her and smiled.
She followed him then, mad at herself, wondering how in the hell coming to America was going to be “better” if she fucked another total stranger before even making it to the West Coast. Did she even bring condoms? She’d have a drink with him, that’s all. She squared her shoulders and let him lead her into the quiet lounge, past the receptionist, and into a semi-private room. He dropped his briefcase, turned and laid an amazing kiss on her. Her traitor body heated up and performed. At one point, while she bounced up and down on his lap, still orgasm-less, he groaned and clutched her hips. She sighed. Denied again. So much for feeling good while being bad.
***
By the time her plane touched down in California, Lale was hot, exhausted, and utterly furious with herself. She’d bolted from the guy’s make-out room in the airport, given herself a quick wash-off in the bathroom, and plunked back down on the long line of seats in the main terminal. She hadn’t even bothered with a good-bye kiss. The new change of scenery had to help. She had to focus, help her brother and his wife and their kids. She’d be the epitome of perfect twenty-something helpful. Anything that got her out of Turkey had to be worth that.
Emre held her tight when she emerged from baggage claim, which shocked her. He’d never been affectionate with her, merely tolerating her and Tarkan for the most part their whole lives. But she returned his embrace. She truly was glad to be there and grateful he’d arranged it.
“You look great,” he said, studiously ignoring her lip piercing. She grinned.
“Oh, spare me. I look like a gypsy to you with all this jewelry. I know it.”
He put an arm around and took the luggage cart, kissing the top of her head. “Maybe, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“How is she?” Lale asked once they were situated in Emre’s SUV.
Her brother clutched the steering wheel. “She’s okay. Not great. Doctors say she will recover, but it will take a while. She had a heart murmur apparently, but never had it diagnosed. The baby weighed too much by the time she hit thirty weeks, and her body simply couldn’t support him and her at the same time. It’s why her blood pressure shot up.” He blinked. Lale stared at him. Her big brother—the responsible, mature one, always in control—about to cry? She didn’t know what to do so she patted his leg. He hadn’t shed a tear during the Tarkan fallout, not even during the so-called funeral. She realized at that moment she hadn’t forgiven him for that, but maybe he had dealt with it the only way he know how—by being stoic while everyone around him fell to pieces.
“Well, you didn’t know so...I mean, don’t feel guilty.”
“It’s all I feel, frankly. We never should have tried for a second child. She wanted it so badly and I...well, shit.” They crept through LA traffic. “I should have said no. I knew it wasn’t safe.”
“But Aslan is fine, right?”
“Yes, he is perfect. No issues whatsoever.” Emre’s face broke into a smile. Lale sighed. Typical. Big Man make big son. This she could handle.
“Good. How is Ayla?” She reached into her bag for a cigarette. Emre frowned at her.
“No smoking. Not in the car, or in the house or anywhere near the house for that matter.”
“Okay....” She fought her urge to lash out, unwilling to have an argument before they even got home from the airport.
“Ayla is acting out. She blames Aslan for Elle’s illness. She’s mad ninety percent of the time.”
“Sounds like my kinda girl.”
He shot her a look as they inched their way toward Irvine. “Yeah, well, she’s going to be all yours for a while, if you can take it.”
“Sure. How hard can it be?”
Her brother chuckled. “You have no idea.”
***
“We’re home! Come my darling Ayla and see your auntie Lale!” Emre called out in Turkish as he dropped the luggage in the large foyer and groaned. “Jesus, sister, what is in there, dead bodies?” he muttered in English.
Lale needed a cigarette, bad. This might be tougher than she bargained for. When the small form launched itself at her legs, she nearly fell backward. She peeled the little girl off her shins and knelt down to her eye level. The child wore a dress that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week, her curly brown hair in knots, her eyes red and puffy.
“Darling! Where is my beautiful girl? What is this rag you are wearing? Come let’s take a bath, okay? With Auntie?” Emre and Elle wanted to immerse their daughter in the language so she could be truly bilingual so Lale played along using a familiar sing-song tone she’d heard adults use with children. The little girl scowled.
“No. I don’t like baths anymore. Let’s play a game.”
Lale glanced up at her brother. He stared at his daughter with complete confusion tinged with anger. She winced at the familiar look. She knew it well, from her own father’s face.
“Sounds perfect, darling. What game?”
Ayla led her down the hall and into her utterly messy room. Lale didn’t care. She was no neat freak. But the reminder that things were not good in her brother’s house made her throat tighten. She flopped down on the girl’s fluffy, cluttered bed. “So about this game?” She bit her tongue to keep from suggesting they play “clean up our room” and “get a bath” games. That would come later. Lale tried to be patient and remember how it felt to be constantly pissed off, although Ayla channeling extreme anger at five years old seemed a little unsettling.
“How is your baby brother? Can I see him?”
Ayla took the Candy Land game she’d grabbed from her shelf and threw it at her aunt’s head.
“Ayla! You almost hit me!” She stood, unwilling to coddle the kid much longer.
“I don’t care! I hate that baby! He is bad! I don’t want him!” After the tirade, she flung herself on the floor and proceeded to throw a tantrum worthy of Lale herself.
Emre stood in the hall holding his son, concern and weariness etched on his face. “See what I mean?”
“Oh, she’ll be fine. Give me a few days. I’ll have her back to her old self. Let’s leave her to the pity party a minute. Where’s Elle? Can I see her?”
Emre nodded and led her to their bedroom. “Elle, my darling, Lale is here.”
She eased into the room. Elle sat, propped up on a pile of pillows, laptop on her lap, glasses resting on her nose. The bed groaned with charts, graphs, sales reports and research information. The woman’s pale face brightened when she saw her sister-in-law.
“Kiz kardes! It’s so good to see you.” She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry I’m such a weakling, but glad it got you here.” Elle gave her a fierce hug. Lale was shocked by how frag
ile she seemed. She shot a worried look at her brother.
Emre frowned. “Why are you working so much? You’re supposed to be resting, remember?” He sat on his wife’s other side and handed her the baby, who had begun to fuss at the sound of his mother’s voice. Lale started to tell her brother to stop being so bossy. But the look on Elle’s face when she gazed at Emre made her breath catch. These two loved each other to distraction. But to see it, so blatantly, so close up, it was almost as if she had caught them having sex. A strange, jealous feeling stole over her. Would she ever find anything so special? But she fixed a smile on her face.
“I’m glad to be here, too, Elle. And even more glad you’re okay.”
Elle took the baby and kissed his small, furrowed forehead. He instantly silenced and started making little cooing noises Lale remembered from Ayla’s early days.
Emre put a hand on Elle’s leg and looked at his wife and son. Tears threatened behind Lale’s eyes. Wow, when did I become such a sap? She shook her head.
“I, um, I’ll go check on the little one. I left her in a screaming heap on the bedroom floor.” She stood. Elle reached out for her.
“No, wait. Here, want to hold him?”
Lale backed away. For some reason she didn’t. Picking up on Ayla’s jealous vibe perhaps, she realized the boy would be getting plenty of love. She needed to focus on her small, angry niece for a while. “No. I’m going to grab some food then try and coax the temper princess into a bath. Is the pool open? Maybe she and I could swim.”
Elle smiled at her. “I knew you would know what to do. We’ve been at a loss, and without any energy to deal with her, which isn’t fair. Having you all to herself will help a lot, we think.”
Emre patted his wife’s leg, stood and kissed her lips, lingering a tad longer than Lale believed entirely necessary. She cleared her throat. He broke away and started out of the room.
“C’mon, sister. Let’s find some food for you and a bottle for my son.”
She blew a kiss to Elle and followed him out.
After some yogurt, cucumbers, tomatoes and bread, Lale thought she might survive the next twenty-four jet-lagged hours. Emre opened a beer for himself. She stared at him.
“What? I don’t get one?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I forget you’re able to drink now.”
She nearly choked on her water. “Yeah, I’m able all right.”
Her brother gave her a dark look. “Father is really worried about you. He says all you do is drink, take drugs, and run with men.”
“Oh, God, can we at least go a day without having this conversation? I have jetlag. And I need to get your daughter out of her funk. Spare me, for at least a day?”
He pushed the brown bottle across the marble counter top. She grabbed it and drank half of it in one gulp. The familiar anger she thought she left behind with her parents crowded out any altruistic feelings. But she shoved it away. Like she said, no arguments, not yet.
“Fine. But please understand I am not going to tolerate that here. You won’t have a car or a driver. If you need to go somewhere, I will take you or you can take a bus. Father sent me money to support you while you’re here. But you are only to get a small amount of it for shopping or whatever. Not for running around until all hours of the morning doing...whatever.”
Lale bristled. “Great. From one Deniz Prison to another, just on a different continent. Swell.” She acknowledged she should shut up and go find Ayla. But this was too much.
Emre finished his beer and grabbed another. “Caleb is coming over tonight.”
She blinked, forgetting how well her brother deflected. “Okay.” Her heart pounded. Don’t rise to the bait. Remain calm.
“I know that will be hard for you. You haven’t seen him since....” Emre ran a hand through his dark hair.
She put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. He and I communicate plenty. I know all about his new boyfriend. Funny he found another Turk.”
He shrugged. “He’s a nice guy. A gourmet chef. Has a restaurant down south. They are apparently thinking of moving there permanently. It’s making Elle nuts at the thought of losing him. She swears she’ll never find another assistant as good as he.”
“Is the boyfriend coming tonight, too?”
“I’m not sure.” Emre grabbed a formula bottle from the fridge and warmed it under running hot water. A long howl from the general direction of Ayla’s room made him close his eyes. Lale stood.
“I’ve got this.” She walked around the island and kissed her brother’s rough cheek. “Leave it to me.”
Emre smiled at her. “Yeah. Somehow I’m comforted and terrified by that all at once.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and made her way toward the little girl’s room.
***
Three weeks later
Lale woke when the sun hit her eyes, the small warm body snuggled into her side crowding her off the bed. She eased out, padded over to the bathroom, and stared at herself in the large mirror. She’d never gone this long without going out, getting drunk, and having sex since she’d discovered how it filled the empty space in her life after Tarkan’s death.
A little stir craziness hovered over her psyche, but overall it had been fine. She’d taken over Ayla’s care completely. The nanny came and went, helping with the baby so Emre and Elle could work a few hours each day. Ayla and her aunt shopped, swam, took taxis to the park and to endless movies, went on walks and bike rides, read books and played more rounds of Candy Land than Lale cared to admit. She loved the girl unconditionally, understood her tiny rage and had even gotten her to admit she wanted to hold her little brother. Elle showed signs of real improvement and strength, which helped. So Ayla no longer believed the baby might kill her mother. When she would have the rare temper tantrum, she understood she’d get zero attention for it. It seemed to be working.
Lale wandered into the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. She sat, looking out over the Pacific Ocean view from the kitchen and let the steaming hot mug warm her hands, nervously clicking the ball in her tongue against her teeth. She heard the baby cry out then settle. The perfection of it was starting to grate on her. She needed to get out, just for a night.
Emre wandered into the kitchen, dressed in workout clothes. She leaned back on the counter and watched him fill a large cup with coffee and sit heavily at the table. After a few silent moments spent sipping, he locked eyes with her.
“How is Mother?”
Lale startled. Deniz family dynamic gossip didn’t usually come up much. But she realized he had to talk to someone about their swiftly aging parents, since they no longer had the buffer of the easygoing Tarkan between them. She slipped into Turkish without realizing it. The language of their childhood home felt right for this conversation.
“Uh, fine, I guess, considering.”
He sighed and ran a hand over his tired-looking eyes. “They are so worried about you,” he said out of the blue.
“I know. I’ve been a real pain in the ass to them. But she’s such a hypocrite really. She won’t defend me to father when he gets all....”
“What? Fatherly? Protective?”
Her chest tightened. “No, you ass. When he starts accusing me of being a slut, just because I’m out late or drinking. I mean, I am an adult. I so need to move out of the house. But thanks to you and...well, you know. I can’t.”
They stared at each other. Lale smiled. “The one and only time I’ve ever seen Mother in her cups, she’d had too much raki at a picnic and regaled me and Tarkan with tales of her and Father...oh, God, I can’t even imagine it.”
“Spare me.” Emre put a hand up.
“No, no seriously, you know father was the dashingly handsome son of the servant family to the Consulate. Seduced the hell out of her, right under her parents’ diplomatic noses. She claims they did it all over the place in that huge house for a year before getting caught after she made him ‘work for it’ as she said.” She giggled. “Mother and I had a lot
of fun that day.”
She slid into the seat opposite her brother at the kitchen table and studied his face. So familiar. So beloved. He and Tarkan had gotten the bulk of their father’s genetics. Their dark skin and eyes belied a traditional heritage. She with her lighter skin and eyes more green were a testament to her mother’s American family genes.
Emre frowned at her. “All I know is she couldn’t go back to America to see her family, not even after Tarkan and I were born. It took you, a granddaughter, to convince Grandfather Kincaid to step foot in Turkey again. A mess. They should have known better.”
Lale stared at him. “You? A non-romantic? After all you did to capture that woman in there. Who you don’t even deserve? You’re as big a hypocrite as Mother.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, it happens to you once you have children of your own, I guess.”
Lale let that pass and held out both of her hands across the table. “You’ve been a fuddyduddy your entire life, Emre Deniz. An old man in a young body. But it’s okay. I love you, anyway. You and Tarkan are...were...perfect foils. And I know you still get moony eyed over your wife so don’t get all righteous with me.” Her brother put his hands in hers. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of his unshed tears.
“You know, I miss him every single day. It never gets better.” Emre looked down, collected himself and gazed at her, his eyes dry and steady again. Just like she needed them to be. “And I know it’s worse for you. I just hope that you and I...well, that we can at least try to get along, if not be as close as you were with him.” He smiled at her. Lale released his hands and leaned back in her chair.