At that moment, like a perfect movie scene, the elevator dinged.

I lifted my head, then climbed to my feet. The elevator door was opening. Clara got up beside me, her face calm and tranquil and glowing with a smile—almost as if she hadn’t just told me her son was a murderer. She wrapped a hand around my arm, feeling me stagger.

Tasha stepped off the car first, already ripping off the scarf around her neck with one hand and wriggling out of her coat with the other. “What a time I had,” she declared, throwing her effects over the kitchen counter and working on her heals. “He cried twice.”

A grunt. I focused on the elevator again.

Ella was energetically employed in pushing Mr. Rodwell’s wheelchair over the threshold, Hannah’s tentative hand on the right handle to register her own feeble—unsolicited, as far as Ella was concerned—contribution. This surprised me since, I noticed, the chair had buttons on the arms and was obviously power propelled. Christopher walked behind them, keeping a restraining hand on each girl’s shoulder, probably fearing they were prone to indulge in a wild dash of Grand Theft Auto now that they had something with wheels.

Alexander Rodwell—the blanket of bruises on his face reduced to a mild discolouration on the edges, his broken foot bound up thick and secure and the edges of a bandage peeking from the open collar of his shirt—was glaring at Tasha as he bumped over the threshold. “I did not,” he said, digging his nails into the padded arms of the wheelchair as Ella saw it necessary to make a tight ninety degrees turn and park him in front of the kitchen counter.

Tasha, by now having discarded her shoes and moved on to ruffling her hair, gave him a mischievous smile. “I was there, love. I was right there.”

Clara had been silent from the moment Alex had entered the room—much like myself, I might add—but the moment he spoke, she let go of my arm and stepped forward. “My darling boy,” she whispered. She didn’t sound like she might cry anytime soon but something hitched in her throat, something that would have made the strongest person blink.

Alex turned his head to look at his mother. And me.

He might have looked tired and maybe a little too pale, but he made an effort to smile. Something took flight in my chest.

Clara rushed to him, side-stepping the couch and hopping over Tasha’s discarded shoes, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, mindful of the still healing wound as she dropped to her knees and buried her face in his chest. “Welcome home,” she said, her voice impregnated with barely controlled emotion.

He lifted a hand and placed it on her back. “Thank you, mother,” he said. He closed his eyes briefly, dark circles protruding, only to open them again and gaze at me once more. There was an expectant smile on his face. The bastard.

I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling that a welcome home party—the idea of which had been shot down by Alexander himself—would have been way better than this. At least then I would have had something to say, I imagined. One feels giddy during a party, what with everybody screaming and cheering, and can rattle off words of welcome as easily as breathing, perhaps since they lost weight with all that the others have to say.

But now everybody was watching me, Tasha going so far as to lean back on a stool and bat her eyelashes.

I swallowed, steeling myself with some effort. There is no need to feel uncomfortable. Everything is okay. Everything is normal.

I smiled, heartened to realise that it wasn’t forced. Even now, knowing something of his past that wasn’t exactly rainbows and cherries, I couldn’t bring myself to be repulsed by him, to be scared of him. Instead, I felt even more comfortable than I had before, now that the shock of the revelation had passed. I felt closer to understanding him, and perhaps could now reconcile myself to the feeling that he could understand me too. Perhaps.

He killed people. My inner voice, silent since Zayn and Frank went out of the picture, was acting up again. Never a good sign.

I would have killed them too. They deserved it.

He’s a murderer.

If everything was ideal in the world, I would be too.

“You cried?” I asked, struggling for a topic on neutral grounds. I followed Clara’s path and leaned against the back of the couch. “Man, am I intrigued. I wish I had come too. That must have been some sight.”

He gazed at me in silence for a moment, allowing his eyes to sweep over my face, taking in the roughly bound up hair, old too-long and too-wrinkly shirt, and the flimsy head scarf I wove over half my head and shoulders. Then he smiled and cocked his eyebrows, letting his arms fall from around his mother’s back to allow her to stand up. “I might have groaned at bit,” he admitted. “As far from crying as anything can ever be.”

“Oh, please,” Tasha scoffed, now rummaging through the refrigerator. She emerged out of its belly with a small can of strawberry yoghurt and a challenging smile. “Your macho title has been revoked for life. Aah, Chris,” she mimicked, swirling her spoon in the air, “Careful, Chris. Christopher, you damned fool, not like that!” She tore open the top of her yoghurt and scooped out a healthy dollop. “I could go on,” she said to him, “or you could surrender.”

“Blatant fabrication,” Alexander returned, running a tired hand through his hair. “I did no such thing. I grow tired of this talk already.”

“Chris, tell them,” Tasha ordered, turning to her boyfriend.

Christopher, who had been listening to this piece of conversation with only one ear open, busy as he was with typing away on his phone, looked up with a frown. “What?”

Tasha narrowed her eyes. “Tell them he cried.”

Chris looked around the room, at the faces now watching him expectantly, and then shook his head, grinning. It might have been my imagination, but for a moment I thought he was avoiding meeting any eyes. “I can’t believe you two are still going on with that. Let it rest already.”

Tasha flipped her cutlery at him. “Now, that’s ju—“

“Ella, what are you doing?” I said suddenly, cutting her short.

My daughter, as my eyes were struggling to tell me, had apparently found some reason to wrestle one of the ottomans laying before the sofa and, with the help of her little minion, was busy pulling and pushing it out of place, in the general direction of the now appropriately warned Alexander—who was sitting up straighter, as if fearing some on-coming doom. I narrowed my eyes.

“We are getting him comfortable,” Ella informed me, motioning Hannah into a better position. “Chris said we had to. Otherwise he wouldn’t let us push him.”

I sighed. “And what are you doing with that?” I motioned at the piece of furniture on the move.

“He can put his leg on it,” Hannah answered, giving an almighty push which, to no one’s surprise, moved the heavy black cube no more than a half a foot.

“Er…” Alexander said, shifting his weight. “Thanks, I guess. I don’t thi—“

I sprang to action before they could get any nearer. It was a lovely gesture, true, but I had a feeling this act was one of those that played better in the head than in reality. Holding up a hand to stop them, I plucked Christopher’s phone out of his hands and slapped it on the counter. Riding over his protests, I said, “I think it better if he gets to bed now. He needs proper rest.” I raised an eyebrow at Chris. “Don’t you need to help him?”

It took a moment for him to get into the moment. He glanced at his phone, looked at my firm expression, and steeled himself with a nod. Swiping a hand over the counter to collect the device back, he said, “Yes, you are right. You need your rest, baby boy.” He grinned at his brother. “Let me just tuck you in.”

Alex swallowed and cocked his head in acknowledgement. He didn’t say anything back. His face had been going progressively paler as the talk continued. It wasn’t with much surprise that I noticed sweat pooling on his brow.

I let brother and mother take him to his room, pretending to be too busy ordering the girls to put the ottoman back. Tasha had already devoured one can of yoghurt and was now hard at work on a shepherd’s pie Clara had brought along for her son.

When they were out of sight, I turned to my friend, pulling out a kitchen stool to sit on. Ella and Hannah, on noticing my divided attention, made a mad dash for freedom.

“What’s with Chris and the phone?” I asked, pretending not to notice the fleeing girls.

Tasha lifted her head and took a healthy swallow. “The phone?” She shrugged and shoved another spoon in. “He’s been on it since yesterday.”

“Why?” I asked. “Do you know?”

Her rapid shoving stopped for just a moment, during which I noticed her eyes skitter towards Alex’s room—where Christopher was. She swallowed. “They are still searching for Frank, that’s all.” Her voice was soft and filled with false ease.

“And is there a lead?”

“Well…” my friend said, this once putting the spoon down and giving me her full attention. There was a white spot on the corner of her lips. I ignored it. “Nobody can seem to confirm that he left the country.” I must have shown some movement, for she continued hurriedly: “Which is not to say that he absolutely didn’t. It’s just”—she shrugged—“nobody knows.”

“Hmm…” I said, letting the single syllable expand till I had to come up for breath. “Where do you thi—“

“No, mom, I am pretty sure he will be fine.” Christopher’s exasperated voice stopped me mid-sentence. I swivelled in my chair to find him leading Clara out with a restraining hand on her arm—a scenario she did not seem entirely happy about.

“I only want to see if he’s cared for, that’s all,” Clara said, impatient, endeavouring to open his fingers with her nails. She shook her shoulders in disdain. “That’s all I wanted.”

“You don’t need to smother him for that, mother,” Chris said, rubbing a hand across his eyes.

“And you don’t need to be such a prick.” Clara was in no mood for talk.

“I am fed up of the two of you.” He let go of her and pulled out his phone again. “Ever think how nice it would be if I could put them up for sale on E-bay?” he asked the room at large.

Tasha and I exchange a glance.

“What happened, now?” Tasha asked, sliding the half-empty dish of pie away from her as she went to Chris’ side.

“Mom is worried that something’s going to happen to Alex if someone doesn’t stay to take care of him,” Chris explained, throwing himself on the couch as he earned a glare from his mother. “Alex doesn’t want to be babied. It’s complete mayhem.” He shrugged.

“You can’t blame me,” Clara said, crossing her arms over her chest and starting to tap an angry foot on the ground. “I am only looking out for him. And it’s my job to worry.”

“You are making him feel five again, mom!” Chris said in exasperation. “You seriously think he’s going to let you do that?”

“I don’t thin—“

“Hey!”

Two incensed heads whipped towards me, eyes blazing.

“Okay.” I said, taking a deep breath and lifting my hands as, suddenly, I was in the spotlight. “There’s no need to act so childish. I mean, he just got home. Clara,” I turned to face her, “Alex won’t be alone. I am hogging his hospitality here, so the least I can do is look after him. And Chris,” I twisted my head to glare at him, “this is your mother here, who almost lost her son. If she wants to suckle him at her breast, nobody can stop her.” I ended on a relatively higher note than the start.

Everybody was staring at me. Chris cleared her throat. “Zar—“

“The only people in this room who have children are Clara and me, Chris,” I said. Children that are not our own. I  swallowed. “If Ella had gotten hurt like this, I would want to look after her twenty-four-seven too. And it would hurt me if she refused.” It sounded lame, but there it was. Besides, suddenly I was thinking how it would have been if my own mother had been there to fawn over me when I had gotten hurt—repeatedly, over and over.

I took a deep breath.

“Ella is four, Zara,” Tasha just had to put in.

I turned to look at her. “And does it matter?” I asked. “She’s still my little girl, as she will be when she is fifty and I am not dead!” I gulped a lungful of air to calm my heated nerves. “Just like he is to her,” I added.

Clara looked up to smile at me. She gave a weak chuckle. “Oh, Zara,” she said. “You don’t hear stuff like that here anymore.”

“You need to,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I rubbed the back of my neck. “People need to.”

“I feel like a douche, if anybody cares,” Chris said, causing tentative laughter to spread through the room. The tension evaporated. I felt the cloud in my chest subside.

Clara unwrapped her arms from across her chest, stood undecided for a moment, and then picked up her coat from the back of the couch. “After your vehement defence, Zara,” she said, zipping up her bag, “I feel like I really could stay but,“ she shrugged, “I might as well go. The—“

I was quick to protest. “Clara, no—“

“Zara, sweetheart, it’s alright,” she said, dropping her things to come towards me and clasp my hands in hers. “It’s not because I am not welcome. I just…” she smiled brightly, “my son is in good hands. Maybe it’s about time I give him space to breath. And,” she smiled, “I do have appointments to maintain and other stuff to attend to.” She placed a hand on my cheek briefly, before turning to collect her things again.

Christopher grunted as he got up from the couch. “Want me to drop you off?” he asked, clicking the phone closed and putting it in his pocket.

“I am sure Conrad will oblige me with a ride,” Clara said, shrugging her coat on. “He’s such a nice little lad, if a little unsure.”

I smiled, thinking of how he was around Mr. Rodwell. Clara had that understood only halfway through.

“It’s alright, mom,” Chris insisted. “Besides, I am trying to be a good son here. Help me out, will you?”

Clara snorted. “Good son, indeed.” She slung the strap of her hand bag over her right shoulder and picked up the laptop bag with the left. Then she stood a moment to regard Christopher with a wry eye, sweeping him up and down in apparent thought. Finally, she gave a laugh and beckoned with her hand. “Fine, fine, you drive me. It’s not so bad to get babied now and then, as I so often say.” She gave me a wink.

“Alright then. Just give me a moment.” He turned to Tasha. Nuzzling his nose in her hair, he asked, “Anywhere I can drive you, my lady?”

Tasha giggled as she pretended to squirm away from his touch, somehow contriving to get all the more entwined with each wriggle. “The pleasure would have been all mine, my dear Lord. But,” she used one hand to push at his brow, bringing his head back into her field of vision, “all I have to do is meet with my agent later today, where I can easily get to. Besides, I still have that to finish.” She managed to untangle one finger out of the mess of arms and legs and point at the dish of pie.

“That,” Clara said, squinting at the half-empty dish in disapproval, “was for Alexander.”

“He didn’t want it, I am sure.” Tasha shrugged, dragging Christopher to the counter so she could guard her plunder, just in case. “If he wants it now, he is going to have to dissect me. By the way,” she added, “you are a great cook.”

Clara thought for a moment, alternating her gaze between the rapidly emptying dish—for Tasha had started at it again—and the thief’s face. Then she sighed. “Teaches me to make more the next time.” She adjusted the strap of her bag. “Chris, you ready to go, or are you going to drool over your girl a bit more? It’s nauseating.”

“Yeah, yeah, I am ready…” Chris answered. “Just give me a mom—“

“I am out of here.” Clara, clearing having had enough, adjusted her grip on her bags yet again, making for the elevator.

Chris groaned. Then, giving Tasha a quick peck on the lips, he pulled himself away from her and dashed after his mother. “Mom, I am coming.”

A moment of silence descended on the room when the doors shut. Tasha put her fork down with a gentle clatter. I could feel her eyes on me.

“You know,” I started after a moment, “maybe I sho—what is going on?”

I turned around, exasperated and incensed at being interrupted again, only to find Ella and Hannah frozen in the unholy act of slithering along the edges of the room, in the general direction of the master bedroom. I couldn’t have seen them from my earlier position. They had been cleverly using my back to stay out of Tasha’s eyesight.

Hannah withdrew her foot from where it had crashed against a table leg, having rattled the vase on top and drawn my wrath. Ella, crouching two steps ahead, twisted to glare at her with eyes narrowed into slits.

Then she turned towards me, face all kinds of innocent. “Mom, we were just—“ she started, widening her eyes as far as they would go to appeal to my better nature.

“No,” I cut her off, getting off the kitchen stool to stand with arms akimbo. “No, you cannot steal his wheelchair.”

The little tyke still had the gall to protest. “That’s not what we—“

“Tasha,” I said, rubbing a tired hand across my brow, “take them outside, will you? Please?”

“What?” She had not been expecting that. Her stool slid against the linoleum floor as she got up, the sound like the whine of a man on drugs. “Why me? I told you, I have a meeting.”

“A meeting,” I shot back, “that, in its entirety, is going to includ you letting Melinda yell at you in Spanish. I am sure the three of you will be fine. Besides, it’s still early.” Leaning close to her ear, I whispered, “All you have to do is tire them out so they get to sleep and not trouble him.”

Tasha still tried to rally, furiously thinking up something that might get her out of the situation. Finally, for lack of a better alternative, she had to settle with: “You take them.”

“I have their clothes to mend,” I said quickly. “Or would you rather do that?”

This round was mine, clearly.

“But—“

“Aunty, we could go to the candy store!” Ella yelled, jumping onto the couch to better be part of the action. Hannah followed much more slowly, looking up with eyes brimming with excitement.

“Now, kids, look here—“ Tasha held up her hands and stepped back.

“The carnival,” Hannah breathed.

“I—“

By this time I had already collected Tasha’s coat and bag. Pooling all her things on the counter so that they were in everybody’s sight, I said in a business-like tone, “Now come, Tasha. The carnival.”

She shot me a smouldering glare.

It took the girls only about five minutes to collect their things and drag their unwilling chaperon to the elevator, all of which time I stood by, content to watch the show as it progressed.

Finally, they were gone.

The smile fell off my lips.

Taking a big bout of cool air in, I turned to look toward his room. Did I dare? There was nobody around to see anymore. They wouldn’t know.

I took a step forward. I am escalating this on my own. I should let it rest, let whatever this strange feeling is die a silent death.

I should stop.

Reaching the edge of the corridor, I looked down it to where his door stood slightly ajar, the thin strip of white space inviting me in like a ‘Do not enter’ sign. I just had to enter.

When I pushed the door open, contrary to my hopes of finding a sleeping figure, Alex lay propped up on a mountain of pillows, with a sheaf of papers on one side and a laptop on his lap. His eyes were narrowed in concentration as he ran a finger over his lips, deep in thought.

Without looking up, the reluctant creak of the door having heralded my arrival, said lips stretched into a small smile. “I was waiting,” he said.

His presumptuous nature had always made me angry. I should have been angry now. Instead, I felt a warm glow in my chest. He was waiting.  “I just wanted to see if you were doing alright,” I said, fighting to sound unconcerned. “Your mother was pretty adamant that no harm come of her baby boy.”

He looked up from the screen then, a challenging glint in his eyes. “My mother is very considerate, I have noticed. I am so glad you obliged to be my nursemaid.”

I let myself lean against the doorjamb, looking into his intense eyes and wanted to regret coming here. I couldn’t. Smiling in my turn, I shrugged a shoulder. “How could I refuse? You will be needing help with a lot of stuff, now that you are going to have to play me.”

His brow creased a little. Leaning back on the pillows, he placed an arm behind his head, the picture of ease. My heart fluttered like a flock of birds ready to fly into the sunset—whatever that feeling was. “Play you?”

I cocked my head at his busted leg. “Looks like we switched places, doesn’t it?” I said. “Would you like me to get my crutches? I must have them stowed somewhere.”

He glanced at his leg too, the bump of it lying high on a pillow for comfort. “Ironic, isn’t it?” he said.

“Ironic,” I agreed with a chuckle.

A slow silence descended over the room, calming in its stillness. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, rather a moment for us to gather ourselves, to come back to the present and get our heads out of the clouds. My smile dropped, thoughts crashing into my head of what was and what I planned for the future. This is wrong, I thought. This is a problem. This is going to spoil all of my plans.

This felt so right.

He was looking up too, probably reading everything in my eyes. My uncertainties and doubts might seem foreign to him, something out of the ordinary that didn’t bear thinking about in his world, but he knew of their existence. The brightness in his eyes dimmed; the cocky curve of his lips, more intense on the right than left, flattened.

“Welcome home, Alexander,” I said softly.

He watched me, eyes sweeping over my face like beacons of light, as if searching for something. Then he tilted his head in answer, saying nothing.

We stayed like that, speaking with nothing being said, hearing with no words told.

***

It was quick after that.

Did I try to stop it? One could say that I did, while in the same breath call my attempts half-hearted and misleading. The tension in the house was high; I was delaying anything worthwhile from taking place.

I had to go home. I had no future here. The time I had spent in this country had been against my will, always afraid that if I took a single step out of the way Zayn would find me, and then there would be no going anywhere.

Now, I was free. I could make my decisions without any kind of outside pressure on my head. And I knew what I had chosen. My decision was made the moment I agreed to help Alex out, the moment I decided to face my past head-on—for better or for worse. I had to go home.

But when had I ever been asked what I wanted, what I had decided? Fate was a bloody, two-faced bitch, and she had a mind of her own, not to mention the power to spin my life faster than a top the moment she thought I wasn’t looking over my shoulder, the moment she thought I was at peace.

It was bound to happen.

It happened.