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His frown is a flicker of his lips.
I put my hand over dad’s. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Without this, I wouldn’t have been able to come back.”
“I know. But is it worth it?”
He stares at me, scanning my face.
“I’ve married the enemy.”
“Whose enemy?”
“Ours.”
“Not yours.”
“But daddy, after what he did to you…I’ve seen you broken by him, by his decisions. I don’t know what I was thinking, to come here and agree to this.”
“You wanted me to be able to come back,” he says gently. “The past is a very long way in the past. It’s over.”
“Is it?” I push, shaking my head with frustration. “I’ve seen it reach through your entire life. He might have made the decision to exile you sixteen years ago but you’ve carried that burden every day since.”
He’s quiet, sipping his coffee.
“Do you regret marrying him?” He asks gently, and I’m reminded for a moment of my mother, and the way she had of tiptoeing around a conversation to get at the heart of what she wanted to know.
“It’s hard to explain,” I answer, finally.
“No, it’s easy.” He gestures to the table and then takes a seat. I choose the one to his right. “You haven’t done anything that can’t be undone,” he says quietly.
I shake my head, knowing that’s not true. Oh, the contract could be set aside. There’s a chance Zahir would send my father back to the States, but I’m not completely sure of that. He’s not the monster I believed him to be, nowhere near it. Look at what he did to dad’s house! Getting it cleaned, repaired, stocking the pantry, so it would be ready for habitation?
But it’s so much more complicated. How do you stop loving someone? Leaving him wouldn’t do it. The contract is a redundancy in my considerations, my original motivations seeming foolish now.
“How can you be so calm about this?” I shake my head. “I’ve married the man who ruined your life. How can you sit there and talk to me about it as though it means nothing?”
There is only the clicking and ticking of the ancient hall clock.
“He didn’t ruin my life, shaba, I did.”
I blink at my father. “How can you say that?”
“I’m not meant to say anything, actually. Your husband swore me to secrecy.”
I lean forward, all the breath rushing out of my lungs. “About what? When?”
“When he came to me.”
“He came to you?”
He nods slowly. “The night I landed. I take it you didn’t know?”
“No. I had no idea.” I’m numb to my core. “What did he say? Did he apologise?”
My father’s eyes sweep shut. “Darling girl, you can’t –,” he cuts himself off, then fixes me with an urgent stare. “You’re misunderstanding everything.”
“What do you mean?” Nothing makes sense.
