“Yes, you do. This is our past rising up to the surface again, isn’t it? You say that you’ve forgiven me, but you haven’t. You try to pretend that you’re okay with who I am and how I deal with my family, but you’re not,” she shouted. “The truth is, you think I should focus solely on what I want for my career and my life, and screw what anyone else thinks. For you, the selfish way is the right way, and to hell with whoever gets in your way. You think I should be like you, don’t you? You know what, Asher?”
He turned to her as he slowed at a stoplight. His face was rigid with anger—and possible disbelief at her uncharacteristic shouting.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, calling your father an arrogant WASP because he only thinks about his goals and his values and his needs. You’re just like him. No wonder you two can’t get along.”
She opened up her car door and snatched her purse.
“Laila, what the hell? Get in the damn car,” Asher yelled, reaching for her forearm.
She shook him off. He stared at her in angry disbelief when she stepped out and turned to slam the door shut.
“I’ll catch a cab,” she told him through the partially opened window. She turned and marched through two lanes of stopped cars to the curb and grassy verge.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Asher didn’t call her that afternoon, nor did she call him. He didn’t come to her performance that night. She knew that for certain, because she swallowed her pride and asked Rafe if he’d seen him in the audience. Rafe’s answer had been no, but Laila had already known the truth. She’d learned that there was some nameless thing inside her that always alerted her to his presence, even when the curtain separated them. If he was there, her performance was different.
Because when he was there, she sang to him alone.
She was miserable at his absence. It would have been bad enough, under any circ
umstances, fighting with him. But she was agonizingly aware that the hours they had together were precious, because they were so few.
She couldn’t eat much that Saturday. Tahi grew concerned about her when Laila didn’t leave the condo. Knowing how she’d been spending every moment with Asher recently, Tahi immediately guessed that they’d fought or broken up. But Laila was too caught up in a sense of fatalistic fear to take solace from opening up to Tahi.
“Are we still leaving for Detroit in the morning?” Tahi asked her hesitantly that night when Laila joined her in the kitchen after her show. Laila felt bad for the people who had paid good money for her show. Her heart just hadn’t been in her performance. Afterward, she’d taken the L home. But when she’d stepped past that white column in the underground, there’d been no Asher.
“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t,” Laila told her cousin listlessly as she took down a glass for tea.
She noticed Tahi start to speak, and then stop herself. “What, Tahi?”
“You say that like if there had been a good reason, you would have. Isn’t this disagreement you and Asher had good reason? It’s just a few family dinners, Laila. You’ll have a thousand more of them in the future. Why don’t you stay back, and patch things up with Asher before he leaves for London? Say you came down with something. I’ll back up your story.”
The familiar trapped, panicked feeling she associated with that summer in Crescent Bay suddenly overwhelmed her. Would there be thousands of family gatherings in her future? She suddenly pictured it, a series of imagined dinners in Detroit taking place over the years. As time wore on, each of her cousins—even the younger ones—would be joined by a fiancé or spouse at their side. Yet no one special would ever sit beside Laila. Not in that familiar place, they wouldn’t. Because that place would no longer be her home, she realized.
Because one thing was achingly absent from the picture: Asher.
A feeling of doubt and dread building in her, she mumbled an excuse to Tahi and fled the kitchen.
She tried to call Asher when she entered her bedroom. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach swelled when it almost immediately went over to voicemail. He’d turned off his phone.
“Hi. It’s me,” she said. “Look, I know you’re mad. So am I, still. A little anyway. But I don’t want it to go on. We need to talk. I’ll be in Detroit tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if you remembered,” she mumbled, feeling a bit stupid, because of course he’d remember. They’d fought about it. For him, it was one of the examples of how she existed in two different worlds, never committing fully to one. She swiped irritably at a fallen tear on her cheek. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know where I was. I hope we can talk when I get back Monday morning.” She hesitated.
“I miss you. So much.” More tears spilled down her face. She hung up the phone with a trembling hand, afraid she would say more, terrified she’d humiliate herself by begging him on hands and knees not to shut her out of his life.
• • •
Asher hunched over the bar at the Galway Arms, staring down blankly at his half-full glass of Scotch. The alcohol wasn’t doing much to still the whirlwind of his thoughts.
“You need to talk to her. In person,” Jimmy Rothschild said from the seat next to him. Asher glanced aside at his friend. Jimmy was dressed casually, for once, it being the weekend. Weekend or not, Jimmy had been in the office working when Asher called and asked if he’d have a drink with him. He’d spilled the whole story about Laila. Jimmy had been surprised, and then fascinated, to discover that Laila Barek, that shy, beautiful girl from Crescent Bay, was the magnetic stage performer known as the Veiled Siren. He didn’t seem too surprised to find out that they had resumed their love affair.
“She’s at her folks’ house up in Detroit, celebrating the engagement of a cousin. That’s the one place I can’t go.”
“That really bugs you, doesn’t it?” Jimmy observed.
“Shouldn’t it? I feel like I’m a leper in that part of her life.”
He noticed Jimmy’s furrowed brow. “That’s a pretty strong way of stating it.”