“My husband isn’t as strict as Baba, which is the only reason I’ve been able to travel. To look for you.” She laughed, but there wasn’t nothing funny about it. “But I still hate him. I’m sneaking birth control pills so I won’t have his baby. I can’t—I refuse to bring a child into that life.”
“Can you leave him?”
“And go where, Zainab?” She shook her head, looking defeated. “I don’t have money. Don’t have education. Don’t have no skills. Baba made sure of that. And my husband won’t let me go. To him, I’m property. Just like I was property to Baba.”
I reached across the table and grabbed her hands. They were ice cold and trembling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I ran. I’m sorry I hid from you when you came looking. I just… I wasn’t ready. Seeing you meant dealing with everything I’d been running from. Baba. What happened to us. What happened to Zahara. I couldn’t face it.”
“I understand.” She squeezed my hands tight. “I do. I’m just…” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m just so gladyou’re alive. Even if Zahara isn’t. Even if everything is different now. My sister is still here. You’re still here.”
Something cracked open in my chest.
I slid out of my side of the booth and moved to sit next to her. Wrapped my arms around her and held her while she cried into my shoulder. Her hijab was soft against my cheek, her body warm and fragile in my arms.
We stayed like that for a while. Two sisters who’d been separated by years and trauma and a monster who called himself our father, finally finding their way back to each other.
When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red and puffy but there was something new there. Something like hope.
“Can I have your number?” she asked. “I want to stay in touch. I want to know you again. The real you.”
“Of course.” I pulled out my phone and we exchanged numbers. “But Mehar—you gotta be careful. If Baba finds out you’ve been talking to me?—”
“He won’t.” Her jaw set with a stubbornness I recognized real well. That was the same look me and Zahara used to give each other when we was plotting our escapes. Apparently it ran in the family. “I’ve been hiding things from men my whole life. I can hide this too.”
I almost laughed. “Look at you. All grown up.”
“I had good examples.” She reached out and touched my face, gentle. “Even if I didn’t get enough time with them.”
The bell over the door chimed and Cookie’s voice cut through the moment.
“Z! Table 4 needs a refill, girl!”
Real life. Always interrupting.
“I gotta get back to work,” I said, not really wanting to move. “But we’re gonna talk soon, okay? I wanna hear everything. And I wanna tell you everything too.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” I squeezed her hands one more time. “No more secrets. No more hiding. At least not from each other.”
Mehar nodded, wiping the last of her tears away. She stood up and smoothed down her hijab, putting herself back together piece by piece. Becoming the woman she had to be when she walked out that door and back into her life.
“Zainab,” she said softly.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you made it. Zahara would be too.”
My throat got tight. “Thanks, Mehar.”
She gave me one last look—full of grief and hope and the promise of something new—and then she walked out of the diner and into the morning light.
I watched her go, and something loosened in my chest that I ain’t even know was wound up so tight.
For three years, I’d been running. Hiding from my past. Avoiding anybody and anything that reminded me of who I used to be. But Prime was right. The running had to stop.
Maybe it was time to start rebuilding instead.
