Farah sighed. “You’re so weird. If you happen to see him, could you pass along a message?” She glanced significantly at the closet behind Maryam and raised her voice slightly. “Tell him that while I think he’s areallynice guy, and my parents are, like,totallyinto him, I’m sort of dating the gym teacher at my school. So it would be SUPER AWESOME,” Farah said, practically yelling, “if he could just act like a jerk or whatever during the wedding? So I’ll have an easier time convincing my parents we aren’t meant to be?”
Maryam bit back her smile. “Sure,” she said. “If I happen to bump into him, I’ll pass along the message.”
Farah squeezed Maryam’s hand. “Thanks. Bummer about the wedding. Maybe something good will come out of all this.Desiweddings lead to more weddings, right? It’s practically the law.” She winked and disappeared around the corner.
Maryam opened the closet door and raised an eyebrow at a sheepish-looking Saif. “I hope you heard all that because itwould be really embarrassing for both of us if I had to repeat it. What was the plan here, exactly?”
Saif emerged, blinking in the light of the room. “I thought she was trying to... um...”
Maryam’s eyebrow climbed higher. “Let you down easy? I mean, we all have a fear of rejection, but this might be taking things too far. Have you considered therapy to deal with this phobia?”
Saif flushed, his ears turning a bright pink. “My parents told me Farah was looking forward to meeting at the wedding. She tried to corner me in the airport last night, and then again this morning atsuhoor. When I spotted her walking down the hall, I might have panicked.”
Maryam grinned at him. “Jumping into random closets is definitely the best way to avoid a setup. It beats having an actual conversation.”
“You’re hilarious.” Saif was dressed in a white collared shirt and slim-fit black pants; she decided she liked him better in a hoodie and jeans, when his good looks were more manageable. Right now, it was hard to ignore how devastatingly handsome he was. Her smile faded, thinking about the conversation with her parents this morning. Saif had a girlfriend, and yet he had been flirting with Maryam this morning, according to Farah, and possibly was doing it again right now. And she was letting him.
She held the door open for him to leave, but Saif didn’t move.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “My parents have been trying to force the marriage issue. I prefer to do things on my own, without all that pressure. You know?”
“I think the people you need to have this conversation with are your mom and dad,” she said firmly, trying not to let her eyes linger on the way his shirt framed his shoulders. “We don’t even know each other. Remember?”
Saif nodded, embarrassment clear on his face. “It’s just that...” He trailed off, and there was that searching look again, his gaze moving from her eyes to her lips, and for a moment Maryam wondered if Farah had been right. And the follow-up question: Was she flirting back?
“Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?” he said, the words sounding as if they were being pulled out of him.
Maryam looked into his beautiful brown eyes, and then away, nodding slightly.
Saif continued. “Every day I feel like I’m just going through the motions. I did what I was expected to do, and now my reward is, what? To repeat the same day, over and over, for the rest of my life?”
Saif’s words reflected her own thoughts so well, Maryam had to catch her breath. Strangely, as she mulled over Saif’s confession, she thought about her father.
Ghulam Aziz had moved to the United States from Hyderabad, India, as a twenty-two-year-old graduate student with plans to return home and open a fleet of successful drugstores. Instead, he had fallen in love with Azizah, the American-born daughter of a family friend, and she had agreed to marry him, even though her married name would be Azizah Aziz.
They had settled in the outer suburbs of Denver, where Ghulam had opened one independent pharmacy. When teenage Saima had confided in Maryam about her dream of working with Doctors Without Borders, twenty-one-year-old Maryamhad applied to the local pharmacy college, and then loudly declared her enthusiasm for carrying on the family business. She had worked alongside her father ever since her graduation, over five years ago. This was what family did for one another: they sacrificed their sleep, time, and energy to make one another’s dreams come true. Except disquieting thoughts had been hard to ignore lately.
Something had happened on the plane. A tiny cloud of unhappiness had been shaken loose, and with it the questions she had buried—Who am I? Who do I want to be? Am I happy?—had come roaring to the forefront. Sitting behind her on the plane, Saif had been a captive listener, but maybe he hadn’t found her words hilarious, as she had initially assumed. Maybe he had found them relatable.
As if reading her mind, Saif said, “We grew up with the same pressures and expectations. I don’t regret becoming a lawyer, but sometimes I wonder if there’s anything... more.”
She used to walk around with a notebook, when she was younger. A cheap spiral-bound thing, somewhere to jot down her scraps of story ideas, character sketches, even the funny conversations she heard on her way to school. When she had shared some of her half-finished stories with Saima, her sister had told her they were really good, that she should polish them up, try to get them published. Maryam never had. Because she had been too afraid, and then too busy with school, and then distracted by other things. It had been easier to think about a charming smile and an easy compliment rather than running after a hazy dream she had no idea how to pursue. Later, when her life had taken an unexpected turn, she had been too broken to return to writing.
Except now, a tiny, uncertain flame of...wanthad been lit, and after only a few hours, it was proving difficult to ignore.
But she would. She didn’t have time for this—not for charming men who lied, not for failed dreams that fizzled. She didn’t havetime. Saima’s wedding festivities—desiweddings were multiday affairs—were supposed to start tomorrow. Her family was counting on her. She wasn’t some tragic heroine from one of Dadu’s Bollywood weepies, pressured and cajoled into a life she never wanted. Her choices had been her own—both the good and the bad—and she owned them. Maybe this was what happiness looked like for her: a small life with a few lost dreams. That wasn’t so bad, really.
Maryam straightened and held the door open wide, her dismissal unmistakable this time. “Don’t make me lie for you again,” she said to Saif, her voice cold and resolute.
After a final searching glance, he left.
SEVEN
Anna
December 21
Voices outside her door woke Anna at—she checked the clock radio beside the bed—10:27 a.m. The two-hour time difference between Denver and Ottawa had caused her to sleep late. She lay still, blinking up at the stained ceiling as her eyes adjusted and she remembered everything that had happened the day before. The perilous plane ride, the arrival in Snow Falls, the festive sports bar. The mysterious Josh Tannenbaum, the way he had carried her in his arms through the snow...
