Chapter Nineteen
Now
My father-in-law’s birthday dinner was the usual boisterous affair with effusive greetings and too many people crowded about the table, the expected compliments to the chef, but also admonishments that my mother-in-law had worked too hard. In return, she insisted that everyone eat more.
Several cross conversations took place at the same time, siblings and in-laws talking over each other, some engaging in heated political discussions, others sharing the latest gossip or the most recent streaming series they’d binged.
There were few mentions of Ali, but we all felt his absence.
Talking about the dead makes almost everyone uncomfortable, so people rarely brought Ali up.
A normal widow might find that painful, but, given the circumstances, for me it was a reprieve.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to contain myself if the conversation turned to Ali and what a good person he was.
Ali’s three sisters and their families were there.
So was Nasser, who was always included in Ali’s family’s gatherings since his own parents and siblings lived in Ohio.
He said hello to me in his usual friendly manner before retreating to the opposite side of the table.
There was a new awkwardness between us now.
Ayla and Adam were at the far end of the table with the cousins their age.
Ayla didn’t seem to be talking much. My stomach knotted.
She was already struggling. What would happen when my kids learned about their dad’s old girlfriend and the house he bought for her?
The disillusionment would be devastating.
My mother-in-law cooked a huge spread including kousa mehshee, the stuffed squash that was Adam’s favorite, and malfoof, cabbage stuffed with rice and meat, which Ayla loved.
The menu selection felt very intentional, a way to entice the kids to keep coming over to their grandparents’ house now that Ali wasn’t here to compel them to visit.
“Wainick?” Um Ali had said to me when I helped put the food out on the table before the meal. “Where’ve you been?”
“I mostly stay home,” I answered. “I don’t like to go out.” I braced myself, expecting recriminations.
But all my mother-in-law said was, “I know it’s not easy.
But don’t forget us,” before moving away to flip the malfoof out of the pot.
My bond with Ali’s family seemed more tenuous now that the person who connected us was gone.
We were like opposite sides of a riverbank with a collapsed bridge between us.
I marveled at how easily connections forged over twenty-three years threatened to slip away.
As everyone ate and talked, my gaze traveled over each one of Ali’s family members.
Had any of them known about Ali’s secret?
Had they purposely kept the truth from me in order to preserve Ali’s facade of respectability?
The Arab community loved gossip, and news that Ali bought a house for a secret white girlfriend would easily fuel scandalous whispers for months.
I watched my mother-in-law fill another plate for someone. How far would she go to protect both her son and the family name?
When dinner finally ended, I escaped, excusing myself to go to the bathroom, but really just needing to sit quietly with myself for a few minutes. I ran into Nasser coming down the hall.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself.” I was determined to get past the discomfort between us. And to also keep Nasser firmly in the friend zone.
“You OK?” he asked.
“There’s something I can’t get out of my head.”
Interest lit his eyes. “What is it?”
“If Lizzie Martins got the house, then who the hell is Samantha Price?”
What looked like disappointment flitted across his face before he quickly wiped it away. “According to Perkins, Lizzie’s full name is Samantha Elizabeth Martins Price,” he said in his normal approachable manner. “Price is her married name.”
“She’s married?”
“Divorced.”
“How long has she been divorced?”
“I’m not sure, but I got the impression that it’s been several years.”
“I wonder if that’s when Ali reconnected with her,” I said more to myself than to Nasser. “Or maybe they had a thing this entire time, while both were married.”
Julia came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “What else have you two learned about the secret house?”
I briefly considered lying. My natural instinct was to protect my husband, even in death. Shielding Ali’s grieving family from the full extent of his duplicity was the noble thing to do. Unless they already knew everything. My bitterness overrode any fleeting notions of graciousness.
“He left it to Lizzie Martins, his old white girlfriend,” I told her. “Imagine robbing your own kids of their inheritance by leaving an entire house to your mistress.”
Julia paled. She looked to Nasser. “Is that true?”
“Do you think I’d lie about something like that?” I said too loudly.
Nasser dipped his chin. “He did leave the house to Lizzie Martins. We don’t know anything else about the nature of their relationship.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious, don’t you?” Hot tears pricked my eyes. “Ali wouldn’t leave a house to just anyone. You’d have to really care about a person to leave them a significant property like that. And who knows what else Ali gave her when he was alive.”
Julia looked pained. “I don’t believe it.”
“Did you know anything about Ali’s involvement with the woman?” I asked. “Did you know that he was still seeing her?”
“You know I didn’t.” She looked hurt. “I would never hide something so duplicitous.”
In my experience, Julia wasn’t a liar, but I had no idea who or what to believe anymore.
Julia came over to embrace me. “Whatever the truth is, for sure Ali should have had zero contact with that woman after he married you. I’m so sorry. I just can’t believe it.”
I hugged her back, feeling for the first time that Julia might finally be on my side, at least a little.
“Yalla. Come on.” My mother-in-law poked her head out of the kitchen. “Julia. It’s time for the cake.”
We all gathered in the family room with my father-in-law comfortably centered in his old leather recliner. When Julia brought the cake out, we sang “Happy Birthday” in English and then in Arabic before my father-in-law blew out the candles with help from his youngest grandchildren.
“Happy birthday, Ummi.” I kissed him on each deeply grooved cheek and uttered the customary birthday greeting in Arabic. “Meet senna inshallah.” May you live a hundred years, God willing.
I felt a stab of anguish that Ali would never be an old man.
As disillusioned as I was with my husband, sorrow throbbed through me to know he wouldn’t celebrate a single birthday surrounded by his children’s offspring.
He would never know his future grandchildren.
And they wouldn’t know him. As monumental as Ali had been in our lives, to his grandchildren, he’d only ever be a smiling stranger in old pictures and videos, so distant and abstract that he might as well have lived in another century.
But then again, despite having lived with Ali for more than half my life, I now wondered if I ever knew who he really was.
Samantha Elizabeth Martins Price.
“Let’s find out who you are.” The following morning, I typed Lizzie’s full name into the search window, trying different variations of all her names until I found a Samantha Elizabeth Martins in an old obituary for her father.
Lawrence Robert Martins, age fifty-two, of Vienna, Virginia, died unexpectedly, leaving behind a wife, Martha Martins; a son, William Warren Martins; and a daughter, Samantha Elizabeth Martins.
I calculated the dates. Lizzie’s father died when she was in high school.
There was little else online about Lizzie or her family members.
I called Nasser. He answered immediately. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Did you know Lizzie Martins’s family?”
“No, I only met Lizzie a couple of times before college.”
“Wait. What?” Had I heard right? “You knew Lizzie before college? I thought she and Ali met in college.”
“No,” he said. “They went to high school together.”
“They were a thing in both high school and college?” The revelation shook me. Their relationship was even more long standing than I’d thought. Here was yet another thing that Ali had never disclosed to me. “Why did I not know this?”
“I thought you did.”
“They dated in high school and college?”
“I’m not sure they dated in high school. I had the impression that she had a crush on him and pursued him once they got to college. Ali was pretty sure she chose to attend JMU because that’s where he was going.”
“I guess she was determined to get her man.”
“It always looked to me like Lizzie was way more into Ali than he was into her.”
“If he wasn’t that into her, why did he date her for so long?” It didn’t add up. “He told me once that they went out for years.”
I heard the shrug in Nasser’s voice. “Ali was a nice guy. He didn’t want to hurt Lizzie’s feelings by dumping her. She was very dependent on him.”
“In what way?”
“She always seemed very fragile. Like she could break at any time. She had the wounded-bird thing going on.”
“Maybe because her father died when she was young, in high school?”
“Really?” I registered the surprise in his voice. “How’d he die?”
“I don’t know. I found the obituary online.
It just says that he died unexpectedly. Maybe it was super traumatic and that’s why she was clingy?
” I thought of the woman I’d encountered at the lawyer’s office.
She’d struck me as a fearful person. “Is there a way to get more information about how the dad died?”
“If the death was suspicious in any way, there might be a police report.”
“Are those public?”
“Not generally,” he answered. “By law, police are expected to provide information that the public has a right to know. But mostly only people directly impacted by an incident are allowed to see a police report.”
“You’re a lawyer. You must know some cops. Is there any way you can find out if there’s a police report and, if so, what’s in it?”
“I guess.” He paused. “Why are you so interested?”
“I want to learn everything there is to know about Ali’s relationship with that woman.”
“Even if what you discover hurts you more?”
“All I know is that I’m going to be obsessed with this until I have all the answers.”
Nasser paused. “OK,” he finally said. “Let me see what I can do.”