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“Your husband thinks that if you know the truth, it will destroy you. He believes you cannot handle hearing an honest account of my actions, and so he’s protected you from it. He asked me to do the same, but I can’t. Not seeing how you are blaming him even now.”
I feel like the floor is cracking apart and I’m slipping through it.
“You’re lying to defend him? Is this what he asked you to do? Did he put you up to this?”
“He asked me one thing and one thing only: to do the right thing by you.”
“As if you need to be asked,” I snap, standing jerkily, moving to the sink. I brace my hands on the edges of it, staring out of the window, down into the town.
“I was part of a group here, shaba. A small yet powerful, politically-motivated group. I was not the leader, but I was prominent and I was liked. The group formed because of me,” his voice is cracked. “My family’s claim to the throne…”
My spine tingles. Blood is rushing through me hard and fast. There is no way he is connected to the ruling line. Zahir’s words from long ago come back to me, reminding me of how adamant he’d been on that score.
“There were twelve of us in total, though beyond that, we had a network of sympathetic friends, people who would pass us information and help us with our…plans.”
“What plans?” My eyes are shut, as though I can blot out reality this way.
“What do you think?” For a moment there is anger in his voice, and then weariness.
“I think you’re innocent,” I say in a rush.
“In that I didn’t carry out the plans? Perhaps.”
“Oh, daddy.” I can’t look at him. “You planned to kill him? Tell me that’s not true.”
His eyes are defensive. “To depose him, ideally,” he says eventually, choosing his words carefully. “Though I knew about other plans, plans that would kill him, yes.”
Pain slashes through me. “You’d never let that happen. You’d never let anyone do that to another person, just for the sake of the throne?”
His silence withers something inside of me. “Daddy?”
I revert to the childish name because I need reassurance now more than ever.
“I don’t know,” he says eventually. “It never came to that. I hated him, Amy. I hated him with all that I was, back then.”
I bite my tongue to stop from sobbing.
“The group was motivated. Determined. They felt victory was within sight.” He hesitates. “They’d already had success, you see, and with that came confidence that they could achieve anything.”
I suck in a deep breath. “What success?”
“His father.”
“Oh my God.” I press my hand to my mouth. “No.” I need this not to be true. It’s the most awful thing I can learn. My knees tremble. “You must be mistaken.”
“He was poisoned by a member of our group over the course of several months.”
“Dad. No.” It’s all I’m capable of saying.
“I didn’t know about it at the time. Not for certain.”
“But you suspected?”
I face him just in time to see his eyes squeeze shut. “I don’t know. No. Not that. I knew they wanted to act, but I had no idea they were already moving the pieces. It was all…theoretical.”
I take him at his word because I have to. I’m not ready to believe my father is a murderer. “Would you have stopped it if you’d known?”
At least he doesn’t lie to me. “I don’t know. You have to believe this, Amy. I was a different man then. My time in the States, my exile, has made me look at everything differently. I am grateful, so grateful, that I never had the chance to do more than plot.”
