“Didn’t feel like hanging out with Rafe tonight, huh?” Tahi asked wisely, following her. Laila flipped on a light, illuminating the kitchen. It was one of her favorite rooms in the Near North Side condominium Tahi and she had bought last year. Laila had started to do well with her singing, and Tahi had landed a really good job two years ago. They could afford the condo, and then some. The rest of the apartment was sophisticated urban chic, but the kitchen was cozy and warm. It had been the room Tahi and she had fallen in love with immediately.
“Rafe can be a little . . . intense,” Laila said, opening up a cupboard.
“Intense? That can be so sexy in the right guy, and a total turnoff in the wrong one.”
“He means well. Do you want some atay?” Laila asked, referring to the staple Moroccan tea they’d drunk since they were kids and had never outgrown.
“I better stick to some chamomile. I’m wired enough.”
Laila nodded, distracted by the persistent image of the man on the other side of the train doors. He’d looked so fierce. Almost savage. It was as if the young man she knew so many years ago—all of his focus, his determination . . . his sex appeal—had become distilled.
“Hey. Hello. Laila?”
Laila blinked and looked over at Tahi.
“You just gave me a bag of atay, but I want chamomile,” Tahi said, nodding at their tea glasses.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Laila mumbled.
“Never mind. I’ll get mine,” Tahi said, laughing. “Why are you so out of it? Is it something to do with Rafe? Is he crowding you?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
Laila turned on the gas burner, searching for words. The language for talking about Asher Gaites-Granville had slowly left her in all the years of forbidding herself to speak of him.
“Laila?” Tahi prompted. Laila glanced at her cousin, who was giving her a puzzled look. For a few seconds, she nearly quashed the urge to tell Tahi. But somehow, she just knew if she didn’t speak now, she never would. She’d grown too accomplished at the skill of denial. The pain would slowly fade, as it always did. Tonight there was little relief in the idea of being numb, however.
“You said earlier I looked like I’d seen a ghost,” Laila said, busying herself with pulling some cookies out of the cupboard. She handed the cookies to Tahi while she retrieved a plate.
“Yeah. So did you see one?” Tahi joked, putting a few cookies on the plate to have with their tea.
“In a manner of speaking,” Laila said slowly. “I saw Asher tonight. Asher Gaites-Granville.”
One of the cookies slid off the plate. Tahi gave her a wide-eyed, startled glance.
“Asher?”
Laila smiled wistfully. “It feels weird, to say his name, doesn’t it?”
“You haven’t talked about him for years. . . practically since that night,” Tahi said significantly, picking up the cookie and putting it back on the plate.
“You haven’t either,” Laila reminded her.
“I thought you didn’t want me to bring him up, so I didn’t. Things between you and my brother have never been the same since that night when he hit Asher.”
“I’m always polite to Zarif,” Laila defended.
“Yeah. Politely cold,” Tahi said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I knew why your mom and dad wouldn’t mention Asher, and Zara’s parents. . . why everyone avoided the topic, my parents included.”
“You mean because my deep, dark shame might spread to you, the innocent one, if someone so much as said his name?” Laila muttered dryly.
Tahi laughed. “Maybe that is what they thought, in some weird way. You have to admit, with everything that’s happened to Zara in the past few years, anything that was related to that summer in Crescent Bay has become even more hush-hush and charged with our family. I mean, you and I both know Asher had nothing to do with Zara or the train wreck of her life, but—”
“But Eric did. Asher and Eric might as well have been the same man, in our parents’ eyes . . . both of them interfering with their daughters. Corrupting them.” Laila sighed, regret and sadness filling her, as it always did, at the mention of Zara. They weren’t even sure of Zara’s exact address at this point. Last Laila had heard was from a high school friend from Detroit. He’d seen Zara working at a “gentlemen’s club” downtown. When her friend had noticed Laila’s expression at the news, he’d hastily explained that Zara had been cocktail waitressing, not stripping. The additional information helped ease Laila’s worry a little, but not much.
After Laila told Tahi about it, the two of them had ventured into the club one night, determined to confront Zara since she’d left home when she was twenty-one—and hopefully haul her away from that seedy place. They’d gotten tips on Zara’s whereabouts and gone out to find her on four other occasions before this one. Each time, they’d failed. Zara always seemed to keep one step ahead of them. The news at the strip club had been that Zara Barek hadn’t shown up for the past five nights she was scheduled to work. According to the rude club manager, she definitely didn’t have a job anymore.