“No.” My strained voice sounded alien to my ears. “But you knew my husband.”
Her gaze flitted over to Nasser. It took a moment for recognition to flicker in her face. “Nass?” she said to Ali’s cousin. “What is—?” She looked at me again, her eyes widening.
“Is she—?” Lizzie directed her questions at Nasser. “You’re her lawyer?” she said as if Nasser had betrayed her.
She’d know a thing or two about betrayal.My God.Had the old girlfriend Ali supposedly gave up to please his parents been in the picture this whole time?
“Lizzie?” Nasser wore a stunned expression. “Where’ve you been all these years?”
“Are you Samantha Price?” I asked, my pulse slamming so hard in my ears that I could barely hear myself.
“I’m sorry, but my talking to you is not part of our deal.” She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Please leave me alone. Take your money and go away. Please.”
I lashed out at her. “It would have been nice if you’d left my husband alone for the past twenty years.” My shock exploded into the outrage and fury that had been gathering force inside of me since I’d learned about the secret house. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to talk about being my husband’s sidepiece for twenty years. But I’m honestly curious. Did you even care that he was married? That he had children?”
“Please leave me alone,” she said shakily, scurrying toward Perkins’s office.
I reflexively went after her. She was pulling the glass doors open. I was losing my chance to speak to her. “Wait! I need to ask you—”
Nasser caught me. “You can’t follow her in there.” He looked as rattled as I felt. “You know that.”
“That bastard.”It had been Lizzie all along.She’d been like a jinn, invisible but always there, tainting my marriage. “What a liar Ali was.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. The guttural noises that escaped me sounded like they came from a wounded animal. My knees gave out. Nasser caught me. Strong arms closed around my waist, keeping me from crashing to the floor.
“Yalla,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
“What a piece ofkhara.” I tossed my keys on the island with more force than necessary, still shaking from seeing Lizzie Martins in the flesh. “Do you think he had kids with that woman?”
“What? No!” Nasser slipped his shoes off and followed me into the kitchen. “No way.” But he didn’t sound totally convinced. He didn’t know any more than me. And I didn’t know anything anymore. Upstairs,Bintibarked madly in her crate.
“It would make sense for him to leave one house to each of his families.” I almost gagged at the thought.
Nasser noticed. “Sit down.” He made sure I was seated on a counter stool before pulling the iced tea out of the fridge and pouring me a cup. “Drink this.”
I was unsettled in a way I’d never experienced. As if my insides were untethered, flying haphazardly around within me, wild and out of control. Not even yoga breathing, which I tried on the car ride home, could calm my internal chaos.
“This has to mean that sheneverleft. That lying, treacheroushamar,” I hissed. “I was an idiot virgin bride who believed every lie that jackass ever fed me. I was a faithful wife. For twenty-three years, I never evenlookedat another man while he—he—”
“Ali always said he made the right choice by marrying you.”
“But he didn’t make a choice, did he?” My contemptuous laugh was shrill in my ears. “Or, I guess he did. He chosebothof us. Me in this house. His girlfriend, his true love, in her stupid cozy house in North Carolina.”
“You have every right to be upset. I know it looks bad. But we still don’t know exactly what went on with—”
“Oh, shut up!” My body felt like an overfilled balloon that was about to burst. “Don’t you dare defend him!” I hurled the glass, tea and all, at the nearest surface. It clunked against the cabinet and landed on the floor with a satisfying shattering noise. The tea splashed my arm, the ice-cold spray a welcome shock.
“I wasn’t defending Ali.” Nasser moved to pick up the glass shards. “We just don’t know everything yet.”
“Fuck him.” I rose and went to the fridge to pull out the pitcher of iced tea. “Fuck him, and fuck his fucking girlfriend, and fuck his fucking iced tea.” I pulled open the sliding glass door and flung the pitcher over the side of the deck. “I will never drink that crap again.”
“Hopefully you didn’t hit anyone,” Nasser murmured. He pulled some paper towels off the roll and patted my neck and arm dry. I stood obedientlystill, like a child being toweled off by a parent after a bath, hurt and rage simmering through me. I studied him with a new perspective. My husband’s playboy cousin.
“You’ve dated a lot of women.”
He stayed focused on drying me off. “I wouldn’t saya lot.”
“Tell me honestly. What’s wrong with me—from a man’s perspective? I’m reasonably attractive, aren’t I? Why wasn’t I enough?”
He paused, bunching the paper towels in his fist. “You are incre—”
