38. NINEAH
NINEAH
IRECOILED.
Forcing down guilt, cursing myself for not calling her back sooner, pain layered on top of a complex history that now had a crater sized gap in it and I swallowed.
Zajre started toward me, perpetually elegant, wearing one of my dresses though I didn’t remember making it or gifting it to her.
She tugged at the Hermes scarf around her throat as she approached and I opened my mouth to speak, but I never got the chance.
My best friend pulled me into her arms, almost aggressively.
“Thank God. Thank you God.”
I couldn’t stop the crested tears from falling if I wanted to so I just held her, her custom perfume soaking into me as we embraced. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Shhh.” Squeezing me once, then pulling away, she politely dabbed at the corner of her eyes. “Is it true?” she whispered.
I didn’t have to ask what she meant. Abraham must’ve filled her in and I was suddenly grateful, because pretending for his mother was one thing. This was Zajre.
I nodded, wiping my own tears. “I wanted to call you, but I was so afraid. I didn’t know how we’d changed. If we were still close. I’m sorry.”
“Of course we’re still fucking close you hyperactive buffoon. Why do you think I’ve been cussing you out in your voicemail for two weeks?”
I laughed. “I’m sorry. I love you. And Eric. Is it still Eric?”
She nodded, smiling. “For now.”
“And I’m… an auntie?”
She nodded, rubbing her belly. “Times two. Ayala’s twenty seven months and this one is due in January.”
My heart swelling three sizes at the same time it fractured right up the middle, I resisted the urge to squeeze her and never let go. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.
Zajre smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her hurt eyes.
She’d always been sensitive. We’d bonded over it, even, having spent many nights crying over our neglectful parents.
But in that moment, I’d have suffered a public stoning if it meant I never saw that look on her face again.
“I’ve barely heard from you in months. Are you okay? ”
Just then, Abraham re-entered the living room with a mug and handed it to Zajre. “It’s peppermint.”
A look passed between them, but he returned the kitchen before I could catch his attention. Zajre moved to the sofa, clutching the tea and waited expectantly.
“I’m okay,” I answered, sitting beside her. “I mean, I think I am. Sort of. It’s a contingent situation.”
“Well, you definitely look better than the last time I saw you.” It wasn’t a compliment. It was an opening and I walked right into it.
I winced. “Yeah. I heard I was two wrong turns away from the grippy sock treatment.”
Zajre threw her arms around me and kissed my hair. “You can’t fucking do this to me. Never again, okay?” her voice broke. “You can’t.”
I frowned at the abject panic in her voice. How much had Abraham told her? “I know.”
“I mean it. Pregnancies are…” she cleared her throat, cutting herself off mid-sentence. “Just, please promise me if you’re gonna go MIA like that again, you’ll at least call first.”
“I promise.”
Abraham re-entered the living room, sitting on the other side of the sectional. His large body nearly took up the entire half of the sofa and remembering our conversation about office furniture, a flush of heat reached my cheeks.
I felt Zajre’s stare burning a hole into the side of my face and when I turned to look at her she wasn’t smiling.
“So…” she began, something firm tingeing her normally diplomatic tone. “You’ve been staying here?”
“Of course.”
“Mhm.”
Her dark gaze flicked over to Abraham and this time, I caught her visible irritation.
“Alright. Are you both gonna keep trading glares back and forth like I’m not here or should I leave the room?” I asked no one in particular.
Zajre opened her mouth, but it was Abraham who spoke first. “Whatever your issues with me, I’d have thought you’d have more consideration for the fact that your best friend has been through a traumatic ordeal.”
Zajre snorted. “I take it those marks on her neck are your consideration then?”
Abraham spoke so calmly, it sent a chill down my spine. “Thank you for your concern for my wife. Unnecessary, it may be.”
“Unnecessary?” Zajre leapt to her feet, all pretense disappearing. “It sounds like it’s more than necessary, seeing as you haven’t told her shit. Does she even know she moved out? Does she know anything?”
I froze.
Moved out?
The snarky voice answered me. You knew that, though. Didn’t you, babe? There are photos all over this house and you're not in a single one of them.
If Zajre triggered a reaction, Abraham didn’t show it.
If it weren’t for the way his forearms flexed, I wouldn’t even know he was angry.
Too in control of himself to engage with a pregnant woman, he opted for de-escalation and the charm of a former interrogator came out.
“She knows we were having problems. I planned to have a more thorough discussion tonight at dinner. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like. ”
Embarrassment cooled her anger a fraction and she swallowed. “According to you she’s been home a week. It takes that long to have a discussion?”
“You’re welcome to do the honors yourself if that would right your sense of justice.”
“Don’t do you dare turn this around on me. She’s not my wife!”
“And yet here you are, telling me what I should and shouldn’t be saying and when.”
“That’s not fair. You know what she was like,” she rasped. “She wasn’t eating, or sleeping, she was barely talking. You should’ve been there! I was there!”
I glanced at Abraham but he didn’t make eye contact. “She never told me.”
“No, but you knew,” Zajre said. “You watch her, you study her—with anyone else, I might be able to suspend a fraction of belief, but you knew something was wrong and you still let her sit in that shit alone.”
“Enough!”
Both of them halted. Zajre turned to look at me. “Nineah, I’m sorry,” she said. “I—”
“Zajre, can I speak to my husband alone, please?”
She nodded. Tossing Abraham a look that was more disappointed than scathing, she bent, kissing me on the cheek before heading into the foyer where Abraham saw her out.
When he returned, the de-escalator was now the hardened Marine, bracing himself for impact and I was so goddamn lost, I didn’t know where to start.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
His eyes met mine. Guilt radiating from every part of him, he swallowed. “She’s telling you the truth.”
“I know.”
Zajre and I knew things about one another we’d take to the grave and for all of her faults, dishonesty was never one of them. Going to the kitchen, I retrieved a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. When I returned to Abraham with it, he accepted it but didn’t drink.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Abraham…”
He lowered himself to the sofa, his grip so tight around the glass I was afraid it might shatter. “I lied to you.”
“I know.”
He glanced up at me and I sat down beside him.
“In the study, there’s an entire row of photo albums filled with pictures of me.
And judging by the camera lenses and batteries in your office safe, I think it’s fair to assume those drives contain the digital copies.
The walls have been recently tacked and painted like there used to be frames there and half the closet is bare.
I didn’t lose my wedding ring in Europe because I never took it with me and I bet if I called back the only one of the three contacts I don’t recognize, sitting in my voicemail, I’d reach an attorney’s office. How am I doing?”
Abraham exhaled through his nose. “There’s more.”
“There always is.”
Reaching for his hand, I took it in mine, the voices growing louder with every second I allowed to pass without asking any of the questions that really mattered. But I was too much a coward for that, so I let him continue.
“When we got married, we agreed that it was just going to be us,” he said, hoarsely. “Our careers weren’t conducive to raising children and neither of us imagined a bigger family. But that night on the Ma Maison, the boat you bought, we um, we were reckless.”
I stiffened.
Blinking, waiting to reconnect to the network so I could continue processing, I didn’t move.
I didn’t react. I didn’t breathe. Of every worst case scenario I’d prepared for the day I woke up in that hospital, I’d never once considered this.
But of course, this was my life. Of course it was, because women like me didn’t have luck, we had moments.
“It was our anniversary,” he continued. “I hadn’t been sterilized a full week, but we’d never had a scare so I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking. One weekend, a few months later, I was away on assignment and when I came back, I knew. You barely spoke. You wouldn’t eat. You couldn’t even look at me.
“We didn’t talk about it. At first, I told myself it was because you would come to me if you wanted to, but the truth was, I didn’t want to have the conversation because I knew no matter what happened, we never going to be the same and I was right.
Over the next few months, I watched parts of you slip away, stupidly thinking I could bring you back.
That it was only temporary. It wasn’t until the day you moved out, that I learned you hadn’t voluntarily terminated the pregnancy, but that you’d lost the child. ”