Chapter 46
CHAPTER 46
AZARA
THREE MONTHS LATER
Michael lived up to his word of showing up every single day.
I had no idea how he’d managed to get ahold of my schedule, or how he even balanced it with his own hectic one. But no matter the weather or the hour I finished work, he was always there—sitting on the same bench, waiting for me with a new, dated white envelope much like the first one he’d given me.
The very one I’d kept tucked away in my bedside drawer, unopened.
Just like all of his other letters.
At first, I pretended he wasn’t there, walking past him without accepting the envelopes he extended. But every time, the letter I’d refused would find its way under my front door the next time I woke up.
I’d given him a week, two at most, and I was certain he’d grow tired of whatever he was trying to achieve.
Spoiler alert: he didn’t.
Even when it rained for an entire week, he was at his post, umbrella in hand and waiting for me. Each day, he had a new letter, and each day, he silently walked me from the hospital to the metro station I took home.
He was there, but he never pressed for conversation, which, as much as I hated to admit, I appreciated.
By the end of the first month, I caved and started accepting the letters because the thought of having him so close to my home—the last place where we’d been together—became too overwhelming to ignore.
Nothing was forcing me to keep them, and I could easily have thrown them away. Or even burned them. But there was a small, perverse part of my heart that clung to each handwritten note, as if they were the final thread connecting me to him—one I apparently couldn’t bring myself to sever.
It made no sense. I’d told myself I’d let him go, just as I’d asked him to let me go, but I felt him everywhere.
Even when I couldn’t see him.
It stirred a maddening dichotomy within me, one that made me equally want to scream at him, and open the door to let him back in.
By the end of the second month, my resolve began to waver, and I came dangerously close to reading his letters. But I held back. Because, despite the fact that he’d kept his promise, and showed up every day, I wasn’t sure if I could trust him.
More importantly, I wasn’t sure if I could trust myself.
I’d always prided myself on my intuition, on my ability to know who to trust and what to do in any given situation. But Michael’s betrayal, coupled with my father's secrets, had cut so deep, and while I’d tried to heal, in my own ways, doubt still lingered in the recesses of my mind.
Because if two people that I’d entrusted with my heart could hurt me the way they did, how could I ever trust myself with anything?
Yet, by the end of the third month, the reasons I’d held on to for not forgiving him, for not being with him, were becoming harder and harder to justify. They were being slowly overpowered by the feelings I still harbored for him, feelings that, instead of fading, grew stronger with each passing day from his consistent efforts in showing me that I could count on him.
Even on my days off, he left me a letter, slipped carefully under my door. Today’s was sitting on my coffee table. I had been in the midst of preparing dinner— rfissa , Nakia’s favorite, as the girls were coming over for a Sunday girl’s night—when it had arrived.
I finished tearing the msemen into smaller pieces when a knock echoed at the door. I glanced at the time, my brows pulling together since it was only 4:00 p.m. and I wasn’t expecting them for another hour.
Perhaps one of them was early.
I grabbed the tea towel from the counter and headed for the front door. Peering through the spyhole, my heart skipped when I saw my father standing on the other side.
“ Baba ?” I said, anxiety swarming inside my chest as I opened the door. “Is everything okay? Has something happened to Zayd?” My pulse quickened as I fired off each question.
Sensing my rising panic, he placed a reassuring hand on shoulder and squeezed it. “Hey, benti , everything’s fine. Zayd is at Nabil’s house to study—though I doubt they'll do much of that.”
I let out a long, relieved sigh. “God, baba , you scared me.” Shaking my head, my heartbeat simmered down from the previous rush of anxiety, but then I realized I had no idea why he was here. I frowned. “Wait, then what are you doing here?”
My father never dropped by unannounced. If this wasn’t an emergency…
He dropped his hand and stuffed it into his pockets. “Can’t I visit my daughter?” he teased, but despite the lightheartedness he tried to convey in his tone, his throat flexed with a hard swallow and his eyes flickered with uncertainty.
I knew my father well enough to know something was off. Our relationship wasn’t like it used to be, but I’d never seen him this nervous.
“Of course you can,” I scrambled to say. “I just—” I hesitated before stepping aside to let him in. “Come in.”
He entered, bending down to remove his shoes and place them neatly by the door, beside mine. Since it was early June, and the weather had been fairly decent recently, he only wore a light cashmere jumper and dark jeans.
He straightened up, inhaled deeply, and asked, “ Kataybi rfissa? ”
I glanced back at the kitchen where the large pot was cooking, then returned my attention to him. “Yes, Nakia and Hazel are coming over in a bit. I’ll make a plate for you and Zayd to take home.”
“Thank you and I won’t be long, then,” he said, before walking with me to my living room.
We sat next to each other on the sofa. A long silence lapsed in the space between us, and I wrung my fingers together, my nerves building again as I watched him, his eyes fixed on the floor. After what seemed an eternity, he took a deep breath, pushed his glasses up his nose, and turned to face me.
“I’m not very good at this,” he said, his gaze shrouded with vulnerability. “So, please be patient with me while I try my best to say what I came here to say.”
My dad wasn’t an emotional person. I’d inherited that from him. So seeing him like this was unsettling. But I wanted to give him space to say whatever it was he came here for.
“Okay,” I said, gentle and quiet, hoping my nerves wouldn’t bleed through.
“Your mum…” His voice faltered, thick with emotion. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat before continuing. “She was the best thing in my life. I fell in love with her when we were kids. I knew I was hers the moment she cursed at me for not letting her play football with us on the streets.”
He smiled, a wistful laugh escaping him, as if he was transported back to that exact moment. I’d heard the story many times when I was younger, but I hadn’t heard it in years.
Not since she’d passed.
“Mamak, she was so headstrong, you know,” my dad added, looking at me.
I swallowed against the growing clog of emotions stuck in my throat. “She was,” I managed to say. Mum had the biggest heart, but if she set her mind to something, nothing could change it.
A tear silently slipped down his cheek, and the sight was like a blow to my heart. The last time my father cried was the day we found out about the accident. After I’d found him on the bathroom floor, tears streaming down his face, I’d taken Zayd from him and had gotten us to the hospital to see her.
He’d cried so much when the doctors had taken us back to see her that I thought he’d never stop. But after I’d made the arrangements, and we’d gotten home that night, it was as if he’d depleted his capacity to cry.
He hadn’t shed a tear at her funeral or any time after that.
I gently placed my hand on his, letting him know that it was okay to let it out. I knew better than anyone what it felt like to keep everything bottled up, and I didn’t want him to keep doing the same.
He gave me a sad smile and continued. “She was my person and losing her was unbelievably hard.”
“I know,” I whispered, feeling heat growing in the back of my eyes and my throat growing tighter with each passing second.
He nodded a few times, his gaze softening. “You do, benti . You do. Because you bore the brunt of my pain.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you after her death. I ran and let you shoulder the responsibility of taking care of yourself and Zayd. Of me. I saw how much it was weighing on you, but it just felt so much easier to let you handle it. You were doing such a better job than I thought I could. But I s-should’ve tried harder. I’m your father, and… I’m your father and it was my responsibility to take care of you.”
His free hand rested gently on my cheek, wiping away the tears I hadn’t realized had fallen. “You and your brother are the best thing your mother gave me, and I’m sorry I didn’t prioritize you.”
“Dad, you did your b?—”
“Azara,” he interrupted, his voice hoarse. “You don’t have to make excuses for me anymore. I wasn’t a good father for many years, and I made a lot of mistakes. Stupid mistakes. But I hope you’ll let me try to redeem myself.”
He looked at me earnestly, despite the redness rimming his eyes and his tear-stained cheeks that I was sure matched my own. “I know I haven’t said it enough, but I love you, benti . I hope you know that.”
I opened my mouth to respond and reassure him that of course I knew he did, that there was no redeeming needed, but the only thing that came out was a broken sound as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his embrace.
My dad and I weren’t affectionate people or really expressed our love like my Mum did so freely. So this, having him be so open, so vulnerable with me—the way she would have been—both broke my heart and soothed it at the same time.
“I love you, too, baba ,” I eventually murmured into his embrace, my breathing slowly steadying.
He pulled away, gently wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Your mum would be so proud of you,” he said with a small smile. “I am.”
I placed my hands over his. “I know,” I whispered through a sad smile.
I’d always known my dad was proud of me, but hearing him say it out loud felt… comforting. We still had so much to talk about, but for the first time in a long while, this felt like a step in the right direction and gave me hope for our relationship.
He looked at me for a moment longer, and I could tell he wanted to say more, but instead, he drew me close and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead, before letting me go.
“Right,” he said, rubbing his temples. “We need to stop this. My therapist says crying isn’t a bad thing, but it’s giving me a bloody headache.”
I frowned. “Your therapist?”
He shrugged casually. “Yeah, he’s a bit stubborn and grumpy, but he does make some good points,” he explained, like him being in therapy was nothing out of the ordinary.
I let out a burst of shocked laughter. “I can’t believe you’re in therapy.”
“Neither can I,” he muttered, waving it off. “But someone made the suggestion, and, well, the bastard was unfortunately right,” he grumbled, more to himself, just as my timer went off.
“I’ll need to hear more about this therapist,” I said with a small laugh as I stood up from the sofa. I didn't know who'd encouraged him to seek therapy, but I’d like to personally thank them. “Would you like one large plate, or shall I plate one for each of you?” I asked, heading into the kitchen.
Luckily, I’d made extra. My dad wasn’t exactly a culinary expert when it came to Moroccan food. He only knew how to make two things, so whenever I cooked traditional dishes, I always made sure to have enough for them as well.
“Two plates,” he said quickly, followed by a laugh. “Your brother will eat half of it before I even say ‘ bismillah .’”
While I waited for the shredded msemen to steam in the couscoussier, I stirred the stew and checked it was done before grabbing two shallow plates. I was in the middle of assembling my brother’s plate when my dad suddenly said, “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” I glanced over my shoulder, my heart leaping into my throat as I watched him pick up the letter I’d left on the table.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Probably just some junk mail,” I said, attempting to sound nonchalant, despite the rising panic in my chest. I hastily finished plating the food, wrapping it in foil, desperate to divert his attention elsewhere.
Logically, I knew he wouldn’t open it, but right now, all I could focus on was that my father was holding whatever it was Michael had written for me today. He didn’t know about us, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. He hadn’t mentioned it, and I didn’t want to bring it up—not after the fresh progress we’d just made.
And especially with how much of a tangled mess everything still was.
He stood from his seat, that damn envelope still in his hand. “Is it from him?”
I packed the hot plates in one of the grocery bags I kept under my sink and made my way back to him. “What?” I replied, confusion mixing with my anxiety as I handed him the bag.
Thankfully, he placed the letter back on the table to grab the bag from my hands. I let out a faint sigh of relief, but it was quickly snuffed out by his next question.
“Is it from Dr. Young?”
I froze, my heart hammering in my chest. I’d never told my father about Michael so how on earth did he suspect it was from him?
“I…” How was I supposed to respond to that?
Yes, father. The man who blackmailed you out of a job was the same man I fell in love with while you were at home, completely miserable.
I still had a hard time looking my father in the eye every time I saw him after the masquerade ball, where everyone had learned what he’d done.
My father pushed his glasses up his nose—his tell when something made him uncomfortable—and looked away for a moment before meeting my gaze again.
“I know about you and Michael.”
My heart sank the moment the words left his mouth as my mind spiralled, bombarded by a thousand questions.
What? How? Since when?
“I… I don’t understand,” I stammered, struggling to wrap my head around what he’d just revealed.
“Young came to see me four months ago, and as you can probably imagine, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him. But I’m glad he did.”
None of this made sense. Why would Michael go see my father?
He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts before continuing. “When you asked me last year why I resigned from Amanar, I wasn’t entirely honest with you. Well, I didn’t give you a reason, really.” He gave me a rueful smile. “Though leaving wasn’t entirely on my terms, I only have myself to blame for it.”
“What happened?” I asked, wary.
I remembered that day as though it had happened yesterday, even if it felt like a lifetime ago. At the time, I’d desperately wished for him to talk to me, but the grim look now taking over his face made me question whether I still wanted to know the truth.
Not when I knew it had something to do with Arthur Nyx.
I had thought about broaching the subject countless times over the past few months, but our last serious conversation had ended horribly, and I didn’t think I could handle another rejection from him.
He sighed heavily. “After Mum died, I was in a really bad headspace. Did a few things I’m not proud of… and I needed money. Arthur and I went to uni together, and what I thought was a helping hand from a friend at the time, turned into something much bigger. Something I couldn’t stop, no matter how hard I tried to.”
“I… I don’t understand.” My mind was trying to connect the dots, but all I had to go on with was the remnant of what I remembered from The Gilded Truth issue at the masquerade ball. I’d been too stunned that night to absorb much of the column, and after we left Anzar, there had been no copies to be found.
“He needed the numbers for his device's approval,” my father continued, his voice small. “So I gave them to him.”
I shrank back, the gravity of his confession becoming clearer.
“What about the patients?” I asked, incredulously. “The father I knew would’ve never done something like this.”
I waited for him to deny my conclusions, but instead, his face twisted with regret and my stomach lurched at his confirmation. “Nyx threatened to come after you and Zayd if I ever went public with what he was doing. I didn’t care about risking my job, but I couldn’t risk you both. Not when I was already miserably failing as a father.”
“We lost mum,” I whispered, the weight of the words heavy on my chest. “How could you possibly do that to another family?”
“I did what I had to do,” he said, his voice raw with guilt.
I struggled to process what he was telling me. To grasp that my father would put people’s lives in danger. Especially when one of those lives had been someone on my operating table—someone I’d almost lost if I hadn’t caught the bleed in time.
“No one actually used the device on patients,” he added quickly, as if somehow it would make this any better. “I just documented that they did.”
“But you couldn’t guarantee that, baba ,” I replied, my voice rising. Anger and fear swirled inside me. “ I almost lost a patient because of that bloody stapler.”
“Dr. Adams proceeded without my consent. He was let go after that incident.”
My mind reeled with the magnitude of the situation. We always heard that people would do anything to protect their loved ones, and although on one hand I could understand my father’s motive, on the other, this wasn’t just morally wrong, it was illegal.
“This is a lot, baba ,” I said, my voice strained.
“I know, benti ,” he replied, his voice low and filled with sorrow. “Like I said, I’m not proud of what I did and if I could go back and change things, I would.”
His words hung in the air, their reality of it all settling like a boulder in my gut.
“What will happen to you?”
“Nothing,” he replied quietly, shaking his head once. “Michael… he offered to take care of things.”
I blinked, unsure I’d heard him right. “Michael?” I echoed, disbelievingly. There were a hundred questions running through my mind about what ‘taking care of things’ meant, but only one slipped out. “Why would he do that?
There was a brief silence before my dad answered, “I think you know why.”
My heart squeezed painfully in my chest at the implication.
I love you, Azara Ziani.
The words echoed in my mind so vividly, it was almost as if I could hear him say them. His voice reverberated the words over and over in my head, until they bled into my chest, finding their match in the quiet ache I’d carried there.
There was no point in pretending my feelings for him didn’t reflect his.
I loved Michael.
I loved the way he showed up for me even when I didn’t ask.
Especially when I didn’t.
I loved the way he looked at me, like I was the only person in the room.
I loved the way he pushed me to be better.
But was that enough?
“You’re overwhelmed,” my father said when I didn’t answer. “I’ll go because I don’t want to make things worse. But I’ll just say this one last thing. You’re a lot like me, benti . You busy yourself to forget. When your mum died, I thought that if I worked more, if I kept busy, it would solve everything. That maybe, the more I worked, the more numb I’d become, and the pain of her absence wouldn’t hurt anymore. But we both know that never works. It’s only a temporary solution, because the pain… it always comes back.”
He came to my side and pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “Don’t make the same mistakes as me. Although Michael wouldn’t have been my first choice for a son-in-law… he’s not all bad. But most importantly, he wants to do right by you.”
My father lingered for a moment longer but I hardly registered his goodbyes or when he left, the heaviness of his words lingered in the room, suffocating.
Don’t make the same mistakes as me.
He wants to do right by you.
The ache in my chest deepened, and I didn’t know what to do with all of this new information. I couldn’t bring myself to move, or speak, as I stood in my living room.
My eyes eventually traveled to the letter sitting in front of me, today’s date staring right back at me.
Last time, you said you didn’t know who I was.
I hope that these letters help with that.
I’m not giving up on us, Azara.
The emotional rollercoaster I’d been on over the last months, coupled with my conversation with my father had taken its toll on me, and I had no clue what I wanted anymore. My resolve to let Michael go had already been waning, but my father’s words weakened it even further.
I swallowed past the knot of emotion in my throat and did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed the white envelope and headed downstairs to my bedroom. I still had a little bit of time before I was expecting Nakia and Hazel, so I opened the drawer I’d kept at bay over the last three months.
Ninety days.
Ninety letters.
One for every day since he’d told me he’d loved me.
Not that I’d counted.
After taking them out, I sat back in bed, picked up the first letter and started reading.