“Elise,” Iris says, stepping up to the hedge. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
“Yeah—yes. Of course.”
Bambi whine-howls discontentedly.
“You’re upset.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
She glances dubiously at her companion—the grandson she mentioned the other day? He gives her an uneasy shrug. She leans over the hedge to examine Bambi’s sandy paws. “Did you come from the beach?”
My eyes feel swollen, my face chafed. I’m desperate to be inside, but I feel like I can’t bail without explanation; they’re gawking at me like I just fell out of the sky. I clear my throat. “I did,” I say, only just realizing that Bambi left her tennis ball under the picnic table. This, ridiculously, brings another rush of tears.
“Did somebody bother you?” Iris asks.
“No—nothing like that.”
“You’re sure? Maybe you shouldn’t go alone. You can’t be too careful.”
I force a smile and inch toward our front door. “You sound like my mom. I’m sure she’s waiting for me, so I’m just going to head in—”
“But you haven’t met my grandson!”
God. Could there be a worse time?
“Maybe later, Gram,” the blond says, giving Iris a pointed nudge.
“Nonsense. I’ve told Elise all about you. Come say hello!”
Ryan. She dropped his name yesterday. He’s cute—of course he is. We stand at the hedge, awkwardly shaking hands over its top.
“Nice to meet you,” he says. Another accent: his, a Texan’s lazy drawl.
“You, too.” My cheeks burn hot thanks to my run and my cry and my mortification. “Hope you have fun in Cypress Beach.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Maybe you can show him around,” Iris says to me.
“Gram, don’t put her on the spot,” Ryan says with a flustered chuckle. “She’s probably busy.”
“No she’s not,” Iris says. “All she does is spend time with her dog.”
Wow. Yeah, I guess I do. Until today. For a few minutes this morning, I had what might’ve been a new friend. Now, loneliness floods my heart, hollowing it into a deep, dark pit. Because not only is Mati from Afghanistan, the country where my brother was killed, but he’ll likely be heading back soon.
Channeling energy into a friendship with him… It’s absurd.
I sigh and sniffle and wipe my eyes and, because civility demands it, tell Ryan, “Yeah, I could show you around.” Bambi barks and turns a circle. “Not now, obviously,” I add, waving a hand at my rolled-out-of-bed, stood-in-a-wind-tunnel appearance. “But sometime, maybe.”
Ryan gives his glasses a nudge. “Yeah? That’d be really cool.”
He grins. He has nice teeth, straight and even and white. His hair is trimmed neatly, his face is round, and his eyes, framed by his hipster glasses, are placid blue. He’s very handsome, but from an artistic standpoint, a little generic. He wouldn’t be as interesting to photograph as Mati, whose bone structure is sharper, whose lips are fuller, whose eyes glint like they’re embedded with slivers of gold.
Mati, from Afghanistan.
In the back of my mind, in a cavern where good sense is currently cowering, I know he isn’t responsible for my brother’s death—of course he isn’t. But what if he has friends who fight with the Taliban? What if he has relatives who are linked to al-Qaeda? On the flip side of that same coin, though, it’s entirely possible that he and his family belong to the group of Afghans who help American soldiers—thefarmers and shopkeepers andmullahsNicky used to write about in his letters.
Based only on our few brief conversations, I peg Mati as someone who’d choose ally over adversary.
