Hena liked it that way. Loved it, in fact. There was a reason parents urged their children to stick to the shallows—the surface was where it was safe. The last time she’d dove beneath the surface was with Nasir, and sure enough, she’d drowned, the pressure splintering her heart into a million pieces. Her walls were up for a reason.
Except here, her barricades didn’t feel quite so sturdy as they did in California. She’d told Reza things she’d never told a soul. With him it felt as though there were almost no barriers at all.
There was a knock on the door. Haris. Her mother brightened upon seeing him.
“We were just talking about you.”
Hena gave Ammi a warning look as he asked how she was doing before turning to Hena. “I was hoping you and I could talk.”
She excused herself, and they stepped into the sitting area.
“The police called,” he said, cutting straight to the chase. “Look, it’s bullshit what I’m about to tell you—but you need to be informed. They found fingerprints on Gita’s clothing.”
“Fingerprints…”
His expression was grim. “They were yours.”
The air left her lungs. “I never gave them my fingerprints. How would they even…”
“They had them from last time. The attack.”
“I did touch Gita. I—I checked for her pulse.”
“I told them that. I’m waiting to get more details. I’ll keep you posted as soon as I know.”
She was breathing fast. Too fast. “So now I go fromvictimtosuspect?”
“Let’s not jump to that yet. They didn’t say that.”
“What else could they mean? Are they coming to arrest me?”
“Hena, don’t panic. It’s okay,” Haris reassured her. “They just said they want you to stay in town. They may have further questions.”
“Stay in town. Lovely.”
The knives are out for you.
Those were the fortune teller’s words. Hena had dismissed them as absurd. But if everything was absurd right now, wasn’t anything possible?
“They want revenge,” Hena said slowly. “Whoever is doing this, that’s what they’re after. It must be tied to the past. To Nasir. To the attack on me that night.”
“Did Nasir ever mention anyone he was worried about, even in passing?” Haris fixed her with a worried look. “Anyone he was scared of?”
“Hewasscared, but he wouldn’t tell me who it was,” she said. “The week of the wedding, he was so jumpy. I didn’t push it. I didn’t get how bad things were until I got the notification about the empty bank account.”
“He must have used the money to pay off whoever was after him.”
Here it was. The parts she had not told anyone else. The parts Nasir had made her swear never to tell. It was time for Haris to know.
“He did give them the money,” she told him. “But it wasn’t enough. They said no dollar amount would do.”
He frowned. “It’s always money with these people.”
“Not this time. This time they said they wanted him dead. I begged him to go to the police. He said he couldn’t. He said it would make things worse.” Here it came. “Haris, I’m sorry, but…I knew he was leaving. I knew he wasn’t planning to come back. It’s why he came to the boathouse. It’s what he’d come to tell me the morning of our wedding.”
Haris’s jaw twitched. She studied the floor. He was angry. Of course he was. In his shoes, she certainly would have been. This was a big thing to conceal.
“I tried to stop him from leaving,” Hena said. “I begged him to think about what he was saying, what it would mean for everyone who loved him, but he was adamant. He mademe swear not to say a word. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. Said he didn’t want to take the risk of anyone harassing me or his family about his whereabouts.”
