Chapter Forty
“OK, I’m here.” Ayla dropped her backpack by the front door and toed off her sneakers. “What is so important that I had to come home in the middle of the week?”
Binti trotted over to Ayla, waggling her body, her tail swiping left and right. Ayla crouched down to greet the dog. “How’s my good girl?” she crooned while rubbing the dog’s ears. Binti looked like she was in heaven.
I drank in the sight of my daughter, my tense muscles relaxing a fraction now that we were in the same room, even though she was far too thin, her face even more drawn than the last time I saw her.
I’d made Ayla drive back from college because this was a conversation that needed to be done in person, and in the comfort of the home she grew up in.
“I have something important to talk with you about,” I said softly.
She looked up, her gaze wary. “Don’t tell me there’s a new revelation about Dad.
Are you going to reveal that he had a second wife and a whole other set of children?
” Ayla’s uncharacteristically negative attitude toward her father now made sense.
She’d been furious with him on the surveillance tape.
I shook my head. “No, it’s nothing like that. Come and sit down.”
She grimaced as she stood up, forgetting all about Binti, who looked seriously disappointed. “OK, now you’re scaring me. Why are you so intense?”
“Come on.” I ushered her into the family room, where we sat on the sectional, her favorite place to hang out other than in her bedroom.
“So?” she said impatiently after we were settled. Binti nudged Ayla’s leg with her nose, still craving attention. But Ayla’s eyes were on me. “What is it?”
“First of all, I love you and your brother more than anything on the planet, including myself and even your dad.”
“Okaaay.” She waited for me to continue.
“And I’m not here to judge you or blame you for anything. I want to protect you and make sure you’re OK.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Binti gave up her quest for attention and settled at Ayla’s feet for a nap.
I took a breath, my heart throbbing. “I just saw a surveillance tape from the Parkview Hotel from the night Dad died.”
Ayla paled. “There’s surveillance tape?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” I took hold of her hand. “I just want to understand why you were there. Can you tell me why you were so mad at Dad?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She burst into tears. “Dad was cheating on you! I confronted him.”
“How did you know he’d be at the hotel that night?”
“Earlier that day, I was here at home using Dad’s tablet because mine wasn’t charged.” She gulped between sobs. “I saw the whole text exchange between him and that woman.”
Ali’s tablet was connected to his phone. “But I went through Dad’s tablet after he died. I didn’t see anything weird or suspicious.”
“I deleted the whole text exchange after I read it. I even deleted the app from the tablet. I didn’t want you to see it.”
My throat ached at the thought of Ayla trying to protect me from a devastating revelation. “What did the texts say?”
“That he needed to see her immediately.” She sniffled. “How gross is that?”
“I can see why that would be upsetting. How did the woman respond?”
“She asked if it could wait, that she was busy, but he texted back that he needed to see her right away.” Disgust waved over her face. “She answered that she was staying at the Parkview and he could come there. I wanted to gag.”
“Did they arrange a time to meet?”
“Dad told her that he had a work thing and could come over after, at around eleven o’clock. That he’d text her when he was on the way.”
“Did you recognize the woman? I couldn’t see her face on the surveillance tape.” I wasn’t worried about another potential affair now that my faith in Ali was completely restored.
She shook her head. “No, I’d never seen her before. But you’re way prettier than she is.”
I impulsively hugged her for her staunch defense of me. “What about on the text chain? What was her name on Dad’s tablet?”
“No name. Just initials.”
“What were they?”
She blinked, another tear falling down her cheek. “LM.”
Lizzie Martins. The last person to talk to Ali before he died. And she’d never mentioned seeing Ali that night. Fury flared in my belly. What was she still hiding?
I squeezed Ayla’s hand. “It might not feel like it now, but everything is going to be OK. I promise.”
“No, it’s not. It’ll never be OK.” She started to sob. “It’s my fault that Dad’s dead.”
“What?” I froze. “No, it’s not!”
“I said horrible things to him, Mom,” she cried, her face swollen and red, “really horrible things. And now that woman says they never had an affair. That makes everything worse.”
I gave her a side hug. “He would understand. You know Dad.”
“I asked him if you knew he was meeting another woman late at night at a hotel.”
“And what did he say?”
“That you didn’t know but that it wasn’t what it looked like.
He said he just needed to talk to the woman.
I told him it was gross, what he was doing, and that I hated him.
Then I ran out. He followed me into the lobby and told me that it wasn’t safe to drive when I was so upset.
When I got to my car, I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see anything.
I just sat there for a couple of minutes trying to calm down. ”
I felt a wave of gratitude that one of Ali’s last acts was an attempt to protect our daughter. “Thank goodness that you did.”
“But then I saw Dad run out of the hotel and get into that loaner he was driving. I started my car right away to get away from him. I knew he was coming after me because I was upset.” Tears streamed down Ayla’s face, grief contorting her features to the extent that she was almost unrecognizable.
“Dad died because of me. Because he was chasing after me. He was probably driving too fast and that’s what caused the accident. ”
“Oh, habibti, no, it’s not your fault.” I hugged her hard, my heart breaking for all the months she’d secretly lived with misplaced guilt about her father’s death.
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she said between hiccupy sobs. “I’m so messed up. I can’t sleep; I can’t study.”
“I am not just saying that to cheer you up.” My voice was firm. “The police did not say that speed was a factor in the accident. And remember that Dad had Xanax in his system that might have caused him to fall asleep at the wheel. You did not do this.”
“When I first heard that Dad had Xanax in his system, I was a little relieved. I thought maybe it wasn’t my fault that Dad crashed after all.”
“It wasn’t,” I reiterated.
“But then I thought about how he rushed out after me. Maybe the drug impaired his judgment and he was already worried and upset, and who knows—”
“Stop,” I said gently. “You’re spiraling. You are not responsible for the sequence of events that led to Dad’s death.”
“I wish I could believe that.” She looked at me with red, watery eyes. “But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”
I held my daughter while the tears flowed. My heart contracted painfully as I rocked her and hummed the old lullaby that I used to sing to Ayla when she was little and I could shield her from the world’s horrors.
“You’re a liar.” The words were out of my mouth before Lizzie shut her hotel room door behind me.
“It’s nice to see you too.” She faced me. “What’s going on?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you saw Ali the night he died?” My voice rose. “Aside from Ayla, you were very likely the last person to see him alive.” I’d left Ayla asleep on the couch and asked Lulu to come over and stay with her while I went to see Lizzie.
Her expression softened. “Your daughter finally told you.”
“I saw the surveillance tape.”
“What surveillance tape?”
“At the Parkview. There is tape of Ali looking very upset.”
She nodded. “He was upset. He went to see Mother that day because the guilt about what happened to Daddy was eating away at him. He wanted to make sure Mother forgave him.”
“And did she?”
“Of course. She never blamed Ali. You’ve seen for yourself how fond of him she still is. We all knew Daddy’s death was a terrible accident.”
“Why was Ali so desperate to see you on the night he died?”
“He’d had enough of the secrecy. He wanted to come clean with you, to tell you everything.”
Tears stung my eyes. If only he had confided in me earlier. I could have helped him through it. “And what did you say?”
“I told him it wasn’t my call. But I questioned whether it was fair to put his burden on you.”
“You didn’t want him to tell me.”
“Honestly? No, I didn’t. We’d kept everything quiet for so long that I didn’t see the point in telling anyone else.”
“How do I know that you’re not lying now? For all I know, you hate me. Or you’re still jealous that Ali broke up with you to marry me.”
“Because, if you think back, you’ll realize that I’ve never lied to you.
Yes, I avoided telling you the truth about how Daddy died—for obvious reasons.
” Her mouth twisted into a sad smile. “But if I hated you or were jealous, why wouldn’t I lie and say, ‘Yes, Ali did buy me a house. Yes, we were madly in love and had an affair for all of these years.’”
She had a point. As much as I hated to admit it.
Lizzie went on. “To be honest, seeing Ali wasn’t easy. It always took me back to that awful night. I didn’t blame Ali, but, in my mind, he was forever connected to the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Why would you hide the fact that you saw Ali the night he died?”
“Because of your daughter.”
I blinked. “What about her?”
“She arrived and immediately misinterpreted everything. She was upset, and he ran off after her. I was trying to protect her.”
“By withholding the truth?”
“I was trying to shield your daughter the way I think Ali would have wanted me to.” She paused. “I didn’t want you to blame Ayla for killing her father.”
“She didn’t kill him,” I snapped. “It was an accident.”