He was about to find out how wrong he was.
26
ZAINAB
I pulled out my cell phone and shot Zahara another text.
“I’m sorry it’s been so long. Life has gotten crazy but you can probably see that. I swear I’m gonna get Yusef back. And look, Mehar and I are together again. Love you always. Z”
Mehar looked like a different person.
We stood in the middle of Nordstrom, surrounded by racks of clothes in colors she’d never been allowed to wear. Bright reds. Electric blues. Soft pinks. She ran her fingers over the fabrics like they were made of gold, her eyes wide with a wonder that broke my heart.
“I don’t even know where to start,” she whispered.
“Anywhere you want.” I grabbed a silk blouse in emerald green and held it up to her face. “This would look beautiful on you.”
“It’s so…” She hesitated. “Bright.”
“That’s the point.”
For the first time since I’d picked her up from Union Station, Mehar smiled. A real smile. The kind that reached her eyes and softened the bruises still visible beneath the makeup we’d applied this morning.
“Okay.” She took the blouse from my hands. “Let’s do this.”
We spent the next hour tearing through the store like teenagers. Mehar tried on everything—dresses, jeans, tops that showed her collarbone, skirts that stopped above her knee. Each time she stepped out of the dressing room, she looked more like herself. More like the little sister I remembered from before Baba’s rules and Ahmad’s fists had beaten her down into something small and obedient.
“What do you think?” She twirled in a fitted red dress that hugged her curves. “Too much?”
“Perfect.” I felt tears prick my eyes and blinked them back. “You’re perfect.”
We hit the makeup counter next. The woman behind the register showed Mehar how to cover her bruises properly—color-correcting concealer, setting powder, the whole routine. By the time she was done, you couldn’t see the damage Ahmad had done. At least not on the outside.
“I feel like a new person,” Mehar said as we walked through the mall, shopping bags swinging from our arms. “Is that crazy?”
“No. That’s freedom.” I squeezed her hand. “You deserve to feel this way all the time.”
We stopped at the food court for smoothies. Mehar got strawberry banana—something Ahmad would’ve called “frivolous” and forbidden. She drank it like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
“Zainab.” Her voice went quieter. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Zahara.” She stirred her smoothie, not meeting my eyes. “Who killed her?”
The question hit me like a fist to the chest. I’d been waiting for it. Dreading it.
“A man. Someone she’d never met before.” I stared at my own smoothie, the memories rising up like bile. “He was lookingfor me. I’d witnessed something I shouldn’t have—saw him kill someone. He tracked me down, but I wasn’t home. Zahara was.”
“Oh my God.”
“He shot her.” My voice cracked despite my best efforts. “Shot her in the face because she looked like me. Because we were identical and he didn’t know the difference.”
Mehar reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“And tell them what? That I was working at an illegal gambling club? That I witnessed a murder and ran instead of reporting it? That my sister died because of my mistakes?” I shook my head. “Besides, if I went to the cops, they’d take Yusef. I had a record. Petty theft from when we first got to California. They’d put him in foster care, or worse—give him to Meech’s family. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you became her.”
