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A month or two. Short as a breath, really.
Avao asked if he would go visit her.
Karim said he would.
Avao asked if he wanted to accompany him to the asylum tomorrow.
Karim said no.
Avao’s face fell, but he nodded understandingly.
Desfan watched the entire exchange, his heart aching for his friend.
Eventually, Avao left.
Desfan stayed beside Karim on the long settee, letting the silence stretch.
“I need to visit her,” Karim finally said. “But I’m not ready yet.”
“You have time.”
“Not much.”
Desfan touched Karim’s tense shoulder. “I’ll go with you, whenever you decide to go.”
Karim looked to him. “You knew. He told you first.”
There was no accusation—just a statement of fact.
Desfan still felt the need to explain. “He wanted me to be here for you.”
His lips pressed into a line. “I have to sort through some things before I go.”
“I know. Avao knows that, too. He’s not disappointed.”
“He looked disappointed.”
“He wasn’t.”
There was a long pause, then Karim said, “The last time I saw her was two years ago. We stopped in port, just overnight. Do you remember?”
Desfan remembered. He’d stayed on the ship rather than visit his father at the palace. Karim had gone ashore, though he hadn’t told Desfan where he’d gone.
“I took her flowers,” Karim said, his voice almost flat. “Pink ones, because that’s her favorite color. I was nervous. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I should. So I did. And as soon as I stepped into her room, she threw a lamp at my head.”
Desfan didn’t know what to say, so he only squeezed Karim’s shoulder.
“I thought maybe she was having one of her waking nightmares,” Karim said, his voice still horribly even. “That maybe she thought I was a demon or some other monster, and that’s why she was screaming at me. Then she called me Jahnu.”
Karim had never spoken the name, but Desfan knew it instinctively.Jahnu was Karim’s father. A man who had hit his wife and son before abandoning them.
“I suppose I look like him,” Karim said, and for the first time, Desfan detected pain in his voice.
“You’re not him.”
Karim’s breathing thinned. “I abandoned her, just like he did.”
“It’s not the same.”
