Page 14 of Rescuing You

“Tell me what?” Leila’s stomach, already churning from fear and surprise, clenched at the look in her sister’s face.

“Mama is gone.”

“Is she in the city? Why isn’t Baba with her? Why aren’t you?”

But Yasamin shook her head. “I’m sorry, Nawra.”

“Leila,” she corrected automatically. She didn’t answer to Nawra anymore.

“I like that name.” Yasamin leaned closer. “Leila.” She seemed to taste it on her tongue. “Mama passed away the year after you left.” She delivered the words with little emotion, as one who’d come to grips with the news. “Cancer. By the time they discovered it, it had spread from her stomach to her bones. She died a few months after she was diagnosed.”

What?

No.

Mama was gone? Dead?

Leila bent at the waist and covered her head with her hands. Tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her lap, turning to sobs.

All the years since she’d left, she’d longed for her mother. All those years, Mama had been gone. Lost to her. Lost forever.

How could Leila have not known? How could she have not been here?

When she escaped, she’d known Mama would grieve her loss. Had the grief contributed to her death? Would she have survived if Leila hadn’t broken her heart?

Yasamin wrapped Leila close and rocked her. “She forgave you. She understood.”

Had she, really? Or was Yasamin trying to make her feel better, saying what she wanted to hear?

Leila would never really know how Mama had felt.

Not that anything had changed, not really. She hadn’t thought she’d ever see her mother or her sister again, and yet here Yasamin was.

Yasamin, who’d stayed behind because she thought Mama needed her.

As if her sister read her thoughts, she said, “I should have gone with you.” She leaned away, her face harder than Leila had ever seen it. “After you disappeared, Mama said as much to me, that I should have run when I had the chance.”

“I shouldn’t have…” But she couldn’t say the words because they’d be a lie, and her sister wouldn’t be fooled. She changed direction. “I should have insisted you come.”

“I didn’t want to leave her. And I was afraid.”

By her twin’s tone, her fear of running had waned.

“You can help me, help us,” Leila said. “You can…call someone or…”

She expected Yasamin to refuse. Yasamin had always been the cautious one, so of course she’d be afraid to step out of line. But her twin surprised her.

“Who should I call?” She stood and looked down at Leila. “Tell me, now. I’ll do it as soon as I can.”

“You’ll come with me?”

“Yes, yes. But we must leave soon. As soon as possible. And when we do, I will be Jasmine again.” Jasmine, the name their English-speaking friends had called her at school when they were girls.

“That is a good name,” Leila said.

“Give me a number. Hurry. I have to get back before Baba looks for me.”

Leila didn’t have time to think about why her sister looked sick or why she was so eager to leave when she’d flat-out refused a decade earlier.