AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you have any pain the way Laila does?” I ask when it becomes clear Marie isn’t going to fill the silence.
“None at all. My scars are purely cosmetic. And I’ve learned to love them.” She touches her left cheek. “Of course, that’s easy to do, considering my scars don’t hinder my day-to-day life. But Laila… Her pain never really went away. She can’t run or be on her feet too long. I suppose that’s how she found yoga.”
“How did it happen—the accident?”
“Maybe you should ask Laila about this.”
“I’m asking you.”
Our eyes meet. If she’s surprised by my bluntness, she doesn’t show it. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was driving us home in the rain. It was coming down in sheets. Dogs and cats, as they say. I could barely see two feet in front of the car. Laila was begging me to pull over, and I tried to soothe her, but I was distracted. The car hydroplaned.” I tense, waiting for Marie’s eyes to clear, waiting for the memory to stop playing out in her mind. “We skidded right into an embankment and hit a tree at the bottom.”
I wince like it’s playing out in front of me. I’ve stood in torture chambers and watched men scream as they died without so much as blinking… but this? This hurts in a way I can’t quite understand.
“We woke up in the hospital in separate rooms. I couldn’t see out of one eye, and I didn’t know where Laila was. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.”
Charles’s name is on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t want to talk about the man who abandoned Laila. I’d rather learn about the mother who is still trying to take care of her. Until the bitter end.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“It was a test we had to go through as a family. The first of many,” she murmurs.
“Am I another test?”
She doesn’t shy away from my gaze. “I don’t know yet, Arsen. But don’t be too offended either way. Some tests are meant to break us; others can make us. You may be a blessing in disguise.”
“I don’t know what I am to Laila. But I can tell you this: I’ll make sure she’s comfortable and safe. And I’ll do the same for the baby she’s carrying.”
“I suppose that’s all I can ask for.” She finishes off the last of her milk and gets to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to sleep.”
“It was nice to meet you at last, Marie.”
She offers me a smile. Whether it’s genuine or pained, suspicious or grateful, I can’t decide. Neither, it seems, can she.
The second Marie is gone, I turn to the dark doorway that leads to the living room. “You can come out now, Laila. I know you’re there.”
30
LAILA
I could run.
If I’m quick, I could make it back to the couch and pretend to be asleep before Arsen can walk into the living room.
The problem is that I’m not quick. Even before the accident, I was the slowest kid in gym class. There’s a reason people like me call stretching and deep breathing “exercise.”
The other problem is, I’mpissed.
I round the corner with a nasty limp. “I had no idea you and my mom were such good friends.”
“I like your mother,” he says simply.
My chest swells like a balloon. I feel lighter somehow, as if it matters what Arsen thinks of my mother. Which it doesn’t. At all. Why should I care whether my husband likes the most important woman in my life?
“You asked her about the accident. That’s sneaky, even for you.”
“No sneakier than you speaking to Polina about my mother.”
Dammit.I hate when actions have consequences. I try to find the words to apologize for digging around in his past, but that would be another lie. I’m not sorry.
