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“Sure. I’ll nip out and get a glass of water.”
Lucy heard muffled conversations in the distance as she left her computer screen. She fetched a drink and sat back down at her desk.
“Anwar!”
“My bride,” Anwar said, barely suppressing the faint smile that fluttered to his lips.
“You’re in New Zealand?” Lucy exclaimed. “With Issy?”
“Yes, with Massimiliano and their children.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence followed.
“Issy said you wanted to tell me something.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
“My memories aren’t good ones,” Lucy said when Anwar returned to Avana several days later.
He stared at her, compassion in his eyes.
“All my life, the love I received was window dressing. A mirage in the desert. A family who smiled for the camera, disguising siblings at war, hatred for each other feeding on itself like a snake biting its tail.”
A puzzled line crested his brows as he waited patiently for her to elaborate.
“Things carry an energetic footprint,” Lucy continued. “Mediums and psychics can hold an object of a deceased person in their hands and channel them or at least communicate with them. I told the estate executor that I wanted nothing when my mother died. I wanted my family trauma to die with her. As far as I’m concerned, they are all dead.”
“You’re still angry,” he said softly.
“No. Years of therapy have given me tools to release the anger I felt toward my childhood. But the wound is still there like a scar. Instead of a knife wound on my skin, it’s in my heart. The lacerations of hurt and betrayal will never mend. I have to practice radical acceptance and make peace with my past.”
“You make it sound easy,” Anwar said.
“It is, and it isn’t. The thing is, there is a simple truth that I now feel in my heart.I’m doneliving in the past.” She turned to face Anwar. “I’d like to think the generational trauma ends with me.With us.”
Anwar suddenly saw the truth of what Lucy was saying. He suddenly felt the truth Lucy felt. He suddenly knew with definitive certainty there would be no happily ever after for their family as long as they lived in the past.
“Art has taught me again and again how to move on and begin anew. Sometimes, you’ve got to let everything go and purge yourself of the things, people, and circumstances weighing you down. Tina Turner once said, ‘If you are unhappy with anything, whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it.’ She said that’s where we’ll discover our freedom, our true creativity, our true self comes out.”
“Tina Turner?”
“The singer.”
“I know who she is.”
“You look surprised,” Lucy said.
“I didn’t think—” Anwar began.
“Didn’t think what? That a woman who survived the most horrific abuse by her husband, a woman who walked away with nothing but the name he gave her, a woman who was discriminated against for years, a woman, despite all the barriers she faced, became the world’s most beloved entertainment star. You didn’t think a woman like that could say something so profound?”
“I’m not the enemy, Lucy,” Anwar said, raising his hands in surrender. “Tina’s absolutely right,” Anwar spun around and pointed to the north. “We will begin again.”
She followed his gaze through the bedroom window, traveling the length of the desert stretching before them like a blank canvas, full of possibility.
“After we have finished our other projects, I will build you a new home—a sandcastle of dreams. No matter how expensive the materials are, I want us to have a new future untainted by the past. Home,” Anwar said. “What is that thing you Westerners say?”
