My daughter. My first child. Walking out of school without knowing her mother existed.
I stayed there in that cafe behind my eyes while Mega did what he did. I watched my daughter get on the bus and disappear down the street and I held onto her image with both hands and I didn’t come back to the hotel room until it was over.
He rolled off me and went to the bathroom and I lay there staring at the water stain on the ceiling and felt something shift inside me. Not the baby, it was too early for that. Something else. Something harder than grief and quieter than rage. A decision being made in a place so deep inside me that it didn’t need words or tears or a plan yet. It just needed to exist.
I was getting out of this room. I was keeping this baby alive. And I was going to watch my daughter walk out of that school again if it was the last thing I did on this earth.
The tears stopped. I stared at the ceiling and started counting the water stains and planning my next move.
25
Mehar
Rita’s house was full of people and empty of peace. Everyone had come because that’s what this family did when one of theirs was in trouble. They gathered. They showed up. They filled the kitchen and the living room and the front porch with their bodies and their worry and hoped that proximity was enough to fix what was broken.
Prime and Zainab were there with the twins, who were crawling across the living room floor getting into everything they could reach. Yusef was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework like the world wasn’t falling apart around him, which was either resilience or denial and at his age it was hard to tell the difference.
Justice had Storie and Dream with him because he didn’t have a sitter and couldn’t leave them alone. Storie was in the corner on a borrowed phone because Justice hadn’t replaced the one he put down the garbage disposal yet and she had somehow finessed one from somebody. Dream was following the twins around trying to mother them even though she wasn’t much older than they were. Justice told me he had my brother still stashed in his basement for now.
Quest was pacing. He’d been pacing since we got here, moving between the kitchen and the living room with his phone in his hand waiting for something to ring or buzz or vibrate with information that would tell him where his sister was. I’d never seen him this agitated. Even during my kidnapping he’d been controlled, focused, methodical. This was different. This was guilt wearing a hole in Rita’s hardwood floor.
“Come sit down,” I told him when he passed me for the sixth time.
“I can’t sit down.”
“You’re going to wear a path in your grandmother’s floor.”
“Then she can bill me for it.” He kept pacing.
I let him go because some men needed to move when they were scared and Quest was terrified even if he’d never use that word. He’d asked Serenity to make that call to Mega. He’d put her back in the orbit of the man who abused her. And now she was gone and the weight of that was sitting on his shoulders heavier than anything I’d ever seen him carry.
Zainab caught my eye from across the room and tilted her head toward the back door. I nodded and we slipped outside to the small patio where Rita kept her potted plants and a bench that had seen decades of family conversations.
“How are you holding up?” she asked, pulling me into a hug that lasted longer than our usual greeting.
“I’m scared for her, Zai.”
“Me too.” She sat on the bench and I sat next to her and for a minute we just sat there listening to the sounds of the house through the screen door. Kids laughing, somebody opening the fridge, Quest’s footsteps back and forth.
“How’s Yusef doing?” I asked because I needed to talk about something other than Serenity for thirty seconds before I lost my mind.
“Good. He’s adjusting. School is going well, his grades are up. He’s been asking about you actually. Wants to know when Auntie Mehar is coming to his next recital.”
“Tell him I’ll be there.” I meant it. That boy had been through more than most adults I knew and he was still standing and still playing his piano. He was doing well in school. He had a bright future ahead of him.
“And how are things with you and Quest? Because from the way that man looks at you, I’m guessing things have progressed since the last time we talked.”
“Progressed is one word for it.” I almost smiled. “He’s reversing his vasectomy.”
Zainab’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“Yeah we both want a family. After getting kidnapped I realized I was just spinning in different directions trying to heal. But I’m beyond my past now. I want a normal life with a man I love. I want my spa and a family.”
“Mehar Ali, what did you do to that man?”
“I didn’t do anything. He just decided he wanted a different life. And apparently I’m part of that life.”
“You’re all of that life. I can see it.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “I’m happy for you, sis. After everything, you deserve this.”
