He teared up. “So it is true?” His face contorted. “How could you not tell us?”
“Tell us what?” Ayla padded into the kitchen in her baggy red-and-black plaid pajama bottoms topped with a white T-shirt. I noted the dark circles under her bleary eyes. “What’s going on?”
Adam handed her his phone. “Read it.”
My mind slowed to the point of almost stopping. How was I in yet another unfathomable situation? Where was Ali when I needed him? And then I remembered that he was to blame for putting me in this position.
The beat of my heart throbbed in my ears. “Can I see?”
“You’ve known all along,” Adam said accusingly. I watched helplessly as whatever innocence my son had left, whatever naivete remained after his father’s sudden departure from his life, drained away.
Ayla’s face transformed as she took in the contents on her brother’s phone. It was like watching a house implode, shrinking into itself, closing and shuttering all its windows. I silently cursed Ali for breaking our little girl’s heart.
She looked at me. “How did they find out?”
“What the fuck is going on, Mom?” Adam demanded to know.
Normally I’d come down hard on my children for using curse words. Swearing was always unacceptable in our house. But that was before. Our lives would forever be cut into two parts now. The before, when Ali was alive. And the after, the vast space of time ahead of us that we were supposed to live without him. College graduations. Marriages. Births. Celebrations. Revelations. All faced without him. One era ended. Another beginning. In this new era, profanity didn’t even register. We lived on a different planet now.
“I’m still trying to figure everything out,” I said to my children. “I was going to tell you after I had all the answers.”
“What is there to figure out?” Adam demanded, his face red. “This is crazy. There’s no way it’s true.”
Ayla studied my face for what felt like forever. “It’s not bullshit.” Her voice was almost a whisper.
Tears filled my eyes. Their shock and disappointment, their hurt, was a physical pain inside my body, a knife twisting in an open wound. “I didn’t know.” My voice faltered. “I had no idea.”
“About what?” Horror spread across Adam’s face.
I reached for his hand. “Oh,habibi.”
He backed away. “What are you saying?”
“Just spit it out, Mom,” Ayla said sharply. “The article says Dad left a house to his old girlfriend and that you found out after he died and sued her to get it back.”
I was trapped. What could I do except tell them the truth? Even if it shattered everything they thought they knew about their father. “For the most part, yes.”
“That fucker!” Adam burst out.
My voice trembled. “Whatever your father’s faults, he loved you two more than anything.”
“Apparently not more than his girlfriend,” Ayla retorted. “She got a whole house to herself. The three of us get to share this one.”
“Who is this lady?” Adam asked. “The story doesn’t mention her name.”
“She’s an old girlfriend. Dad was dating her when he met me.”
Ayla’s eyes narrowed. “He dated you and this lady at the same time?”
“No, he broke up with her after he met me.”Supposedly.“He knew your grandparents would never accept him marrying a non-Muslim.”
“If he broke up with her, why did he leave her a house?” Adam asked. “Anentirehouse.”
I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know. I only learned about the house after Dad died.”
“What the hell?” Adam asked, incredulous.
“Where’s the love nest?” Ayla asked with a bitter twist to her lips.
