Behind the Curtain - Page 81

So Tahi and Laila lost the trail of Zara again.

“Do you think Zara could have really loved him? Eric?” Tahi asked, and Laila knew Tahi had been thinking about Zara too. Zara could be a handful at times, willful and insensitive. But she also could be fun, warm and loyal. She’d been at Tahi’s and her sides their whole lives. She was both sister and friend. You didn’t just wash your hands of someone like that . . . even if Zara’s parents tried to every day. Laila knew they never succeeded. Reda and Nadine had thought they’d been heartbroken by Zara’s promiscuity with a white guy. But they hadn’t known true anguish until Zara had left and never come back.

“I think she thought she loved him,” Laila said softly.

Tahi seemed to hesitate.

“What?” Laila prompted.

“It’s just . . . I didn’t not say Asher’s name in front of you because I was going along with everyone else in our family. I wouldn’t want you thinking that. I didn’t mention Asher after a while because I could see how much it hurt you.”

“Thanks,” Laila said, watching Tahi bite into the cookie. “I appreciate that.”

“So you saw him? Actually saw Asher? Tonight?”

She shook her head slightly, for a second wondering if, indeed, it had all been a dream. But then she remembered his eyes as he’d pinned her with his stare. The full beard. She’d seen him all right. And he’d seen her.

“I really did.”

“What’d he say?” Tahi whispered.

“My name. Just my name.” She saw Tahi’s puzzled look and quickly told her about their brief encounter down in the subway, and how the train closing between them had interrupted their meeting.

“Wow,” Tahi said after she’d finished. “Asher Gaites-Granville. It seems like so long ago, doesn’t it? That summer in Crescent Bay? But also like—”

“It happened yesterday?”

Tahi swallowed and tossed down the remainder of her cookie onto the plate. “I know he became a persona non grata with our family . . . kind of a he-who-shall-not-be-named?” Laila gave a bark of bitter laughter in agreement. “Even though you never talked about him much after that night, I want you to know that I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That it wasn’t a teenage infatuation. It wasn’t like Zara and Eric. It was special. You really loved him. Once.”

“How can you know that?” she asked Tahi, smiling to cover her unease and opening a drawer to get a spoon.

“For one thing, I know you followed his career. Closely.”

She gave her cousin a surprised glance. Tahi shrugged.

“We shared a computer for the first two years of college. I wasn’t being nosy, but I noticed a few times that you were searching his name. His articles. His bio. Tracking his progress as he moved around in the Middle East, working as a correspondent.” Tahi paused and Laila gave her a questioning look. “Did you know he’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the piece he did, following that family in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war? They say he was able to get it past censorship by never mentioning the government. Instead, he just focused on the family’s everyday experience, their struggles, the horrors they experienced and their little victories. He let the story about what was happening there tell itself.”

Laila placed her hands on the counter. She had to remind herself to breathe.

“I knew about it,” she admitted after a pause. “I’ve read the piece. It was brilliant.”

“It really was. Hey.”

Laila realized Tahi was gripping her arm. She stood close. Her brown eyes were filled with compassion. Anxiety. Understanding.

“Don’t tell me,” Tahi whispered. “After all these years?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. I was nineteen years old,” Laila said, laughing through the blockage in her throat. But then she thought of all his stories she’d read over the years, his fierce honesty, the compassion he somehow injected into his lean, concise prose. She wiped away a tear from her cheek. “Of course not. Right? That wouldn’t make any sense.”

“It didn’t make any sense to you back then either. That’s one thing that always stood out to me. How confused you were, like you couldn’t understand this . . . this force that had come over you, but how you couldn’t deny it. Asher was just as caught up in it. He was nuts about you. It was like watching something epic, seeing you two together.” Laila gave her a startled glance. “Everyone said so, not just me. Rudy. Jimmy. Even Zara, when she wasn’t too busy glowing green from envy about you two. Personally, I think Eric saw it too. He knew by betraying Asher that night, by cre

ating the possibility of you two being ripped apart, that it was the purest, meanest way to get back at Asher.”

Laila shook her head. “It’s so strange, talking about it . . . hearing all their names again.”

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