“Really?” Laila asked hopefully. “Can you make it so she doesn’t ask Ben over again? It made me so uncomfortable.”
He nodded. “I’ll take care of it with her. But are you sure you don’t want to give him another chance?”
“Another chance at what? I’m nineteen years old. I’m not looking to get married,” she insisted.
Her dad put up his hands in a surrender gesture. “Okay, okay. No one says you’re going to get married tomorrow. These things take time. I’m just saying, a young man like that: he sounds decent. He might be worth keeping on the hook.”
“Why, because he’s got a good job as a CPA? Because he’s Moroccan? Do you really believe that, Baba?”
“Ah, probably not,” her dad said after a moment, waving his hand. “Y
ou’re right. You’ll know when the right one comes along.”
She hesitated for a moment, listening to the rhythmic sound of the surf breaking on the beach. She’d never really trod on this ground with her father before.
“Baba? How do you know he’ll be Moroccan? The right one, I mean?”
“Marriage is a tricky, lifetime business,” he said thoughtfully after a pause. “It’s hard enough to make a successful one when the man and the woman have so much in common. Without shared values and culture, it gets difficult. And it’s not fair to the children of the marriage, because that strife is passed on to them. Now, I’m not saying that every Moroccan male out there is good enough for my Laila. Far from it,” he said with a smile in his voice. “I’m just saying this Ben sounds like the type that’ll provide a good, solid life for his family someday.”
“Like you have for us with the shop?” Laila asked softly.
“My family is everything to me. It wasn’t just my duty to provide. It was my joy, little girl.”
She gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. “And you have done it so well. Thank you.” He smiled and patted her hand fondly.
“Baba? Remember when you and Ami Reda were thinking about starting that business together, custom-building those luxury sports cars?” He made a sound to the affirmative. “Do you ever regret not doing it?”
“No. It would have been a very risky business, starting a niche company like that.”
“It was a wonderful dream. And you and Ami Reda are so talented when it comes to building cars.”
“Family is forever. Dreams come and go. And they don’t put food on the table either.”
Laila gave an uncomfortable laugh. For a moment, she just stared out at the lake, her mind whirring with thoughts, that horrible friction building in her. Something occurred to her.
“You said I’d know when the right one comes along. Did you? Know it when Mamma came along?”
“Oh yes,” he said without hesitation.
“Right away? Really?”
“Really.”
“That must have been some first meeting,” Laila said, grinning despite her chaotic mood. “What did Mamma say that blew you away so completely?”
“Oh, it’s not what she said. It’s what she sang,” her father said, his teeth flashing as he smiled. “The first time I ever saw your mamma, she was singing. And I was a goner.”
• • •
Later that night, Zara fell asleep faster than either Laila or Tahi. Their beach picnic had been delicious but filling—not to mention eternal, as far as Laila was concerned.
Her conversation with her father had been unexpected and so sweet in some ways, but it had only added to her volatility. Part of her felt as if she’d been fooling him. She was becoming someone different than her father thought she was as they conversed together on those steps. The fact that he didn’t seem to recognize she was any different, when she felt it so acutely, only increased her agitation. She was going to explode through her own skin. Or escape. One of the two.
Tahi stared at her disbelievingly when Laila stood from her sleeping bag at eleven thirty and quickly began to change out of her sleeping clothes into a simple white button-down sundress.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” Tahi asked quietly, clearly stunned.
“I’m going over to Asher’s,” Laila said, shoving her sleepwear into her pillowcase.