There was something special in the air; surely there was?

As I stepped off the private jet, holding a hand up to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun, tears trickled down my cheeks. My hands shook so hard it was difficult keeping a grip on my suitcase. There was a strange hollowness in my chest, as if I had left my insides two thousand feet above the ground.

“You doing good?”

I twisted my head slightly to acknowledge Alexander’s question, not in a mood to answer and knowing he would respect my silence. I felt him come up beside me. He adjusted his sunglasses, then extended a hand to take my case. I let him.

With our luggage now bunched in one hand, Alex offered me his arm. “You look like you need help.”

I blinked. Heat rose off the tarmac in sluggish waves. I placed a hand on his proffered elbow.

Together we got off the stairs. The moment my feet touched the ground, my legs wobbled. If not for the firm muscles my fingers instinctively latched onto, the first contact I had with the surface of my motherland would have been to face-plant on the asphalt at Illama Iqbal International Airport.

“We are here,” I whispered. It felt like a dream. The other planes, lined up like obedient children, wavered at the end of my vision. “We are really here.” I took a deep breath. “Can you smell that?”

Alexander took an experimental sniff. “Yes, I can. Smells like refuse.”

I curled my lip and turn to fix him with a murderous glare. “So did your city. Did I complain?”

“Well,” he scratched his chin, “you did when you thought someone would listen—”

“What are you doing?” I was not impressed.

He lifted his glasses so his eyes could sparkle down at me. “I am just trying to make you relax.” He rubbed my arm. “Everything is going to be alright. We are here now; that’s already huge. You will be fine.”

I sighed; then set my jaw. “I will be fine.”

“I told you we shouldn’t have come now. You are getting snippy already.” He ran a hand over my rounding abdomen, a smile on his lips.

I slapped the hand away. “Fingers off, champ. Besides,” I winked at him, “it was probably these same hormones that made me so desperate. I couldn’t wait. Also,” I pointed at my middle, “I told you we should be more careful. This is your fault.”

He grabbed my hand and kissed my fingers. “This was bound to happen. It’s a beautiful mistake.”

I snorted. Who would have thought from initial impressions that the thought of a child of his own blood would have Alexander Rodwell over the moon?

We left a harassed Conrad—our unwilling companion—with the plane. It took an hour for us to navigate the airport terminal and finally reach baggage claim. Not having any more bags than what we had in our hands, we stalked past the revolving belts and, following the directions, made our way to the bathrooms. I waved my hand at the doors. “Go on then,” I said to the now unhappy looking Alexander. “Get ready. The men’s is over there.”

“This is so absolutely unnecessary,” he muttered.

After the discussions already discussed, I couldn’t believe he still wanted to complain. “I told you, you are too conspicuous. Dressing in a shalwar-kameez will help hide you.”

“And you are still not going to agree with Conrad getting us private transport?”

I scowled. “I already agreed to leave the girls out for now. That’s about all I want to give ground on. And,” I shrugged a shoulder, “I want to arrive there like a normal person; not some foreign princess too precious to get dirty with the rest of the public. Not with an entourage. I can’t go to my parents’ door like that.”

“And you won’t let me be this foreign princess either?” It seemed that now the moment was here, Alexander was getting more and more desperate. Too many to count practice sessions had still not succeeded in making him love loose pants.

I shrugged. “I told you to come with the girls. I can do this on my own.”

“You are pregnant!”

“And we have already established that that’s your fault. Now, get in there!”

He got in there. I waited patiently on an uncomfortable steel chair, fiddling with my fingers and trying to think of anything but what was to come. It had been a difficult couple of days deciding if the girls could come. On the one hand, two little girls, besides the older strange-looking man, would make my parents less likely to completely freak out on seeing me after so long; on the other hand the same girls would raise too many questions that would take too long to answer. On the one hand I wanted the girls to meet my parents; on the other hand Alexander thought it was too soon. In the end his logic had prevailed and I gave in, but not before getting the concession I wanted, which was the choice of public transport rather than a helicopter to reach my village.

“I do not like you at all.”

A smile spread over my lips. Ecstatic, I got up and turned around. There Alexander stood, in a navy blue shalwar-kameez suit and a grey turban. The dark colour complimented his skin into further paleness. It had been hard figuring out what colours he should wear. After long deliberation I had decided on the dark colour, figuring it was better than blinding white in keeping attention off him, while still looking dignified enough to assure he wasn’t just anybody. The turban was a wide and heavy business, pre-wound in the style prevalent in the northern regions of the country. It had been an obvious choice to make him look like one of my pashtun brothers, for his pale skin and high cheekbones couldn’t have passed off as anything else.

I had to say, he did look the part.

This thought, though, was severely challenged when he started to walk toward me.

I waited till he put the bags down. Then I switched on my glare.

“What?”

“You are not walking the walk,” I stated.

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes I am.” He fiddled with the balloon legs of his shalwar. “This is so disconcerting,” he mumbled.

“No, you aren’t walking it!” I flicked his hand away and straightened the costume. “Alex, will you pay attention? I told you, the gait was loose and wide. Your legs mustn’t be so close together.”

He leaned forward and hissed: “I feel like a creep.”

“And the way you walk would get you beaten up the first day of school.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if praying for patience. “How about you indulge me here? I am trying. Take it the way it comes.”

“If you slip character we will have too many eyes on us. Even now people are looking,” I whispered, throwing a surreptitious glance around to prove my point.

He didn’t look convinced. “We will be fine. I can take care of us.”

“We will be robbed blind. The criminal classes here are some of the best in the world. We feel proud of the fact.”

“They can’t be better than us.”

I scoffed. “Just because your thieves speak English it somehow makes them better? We have thieves who could steal from you and convince you that you never had any money in the first place. All in the same breath.” I felt stupid all of a sudden. It wasn’t only that I wanted to avoid untoward notice. It was harder to explain the real reason, though. I wanted to show him what my country was, how its people were—and what better way to do that than to drag him through the crowds of ever-moving humanity. People would act the way they were if he didn’t look like a rich white brat, hence the dress. I grimanced, thinking what he would say if he knew.

Alexander sighed. “What are we doing?” He rubbed his brow, then bent down to grab the bags again. “Can we please move on? This conversation is getting more nonsensical by the minute.”

I thought about arguing further, then gave up. “Fine.” I snatched one of the bags from him. “Let’s go.”

Together we made our way out of the airport building. The guard by the final gate, a rotund officer with a foot-long beard and shaved head, smiled kindly as he looked at my papers. As Alexander placed a guiding hand on my lower back, though, his expression soured. He raised an inquiring eyebrow but, on my placating nod, passed our documents back and waved us along.

The shade in the waiting area—a long space with no wall toward the outside—did nothing to alleviate the stifling heat. One would have thought I would know better than to come to Pakistan in the middle of June, but one would have been wrong. I hadn’t even given the seasons a seconds thought—nor the little individual growing in my belly—too busy being overly clever in clothing and transport.

“Now what?” Alexander asked. He had already put his dark shades back on, helpful in hiding the telltale eyes.

“Now we find a taxi to the bus station, get on a bus to Okara, from where we can easily take another bus to my village.”

“That is a lot of switching. Is there no way to take one directly?” Alexander was already sweating.

I laughed. “I live quite out of the way. There isn’t one direct.”

It didn’t take long to find a taxi. I looked for one where the man looked a little religious, but not over much. Too much show of religion was a proven trap of false-faces, and so was the other—as everyone knows. Our driver was a middle-aged man with a clear face and a horseshoe of white tinged hair. He greeted us with a smile, to which I replied accordingly as I slid in. Alexander just nodded, staying silent just as we had planned. For the duration of the journey, he was a mute.

The ride was pleasant enough, though the air conditioning didn’t work. The radio was on, turned to the ubiquitous recitation and translation of the Quran, to which our driver was listening attentively.

The station was a chaos of running people, heavy luggage being pulled this way and that, with beautifully decorated buses spewing black smoke. As we got out of the taxi and I paid the driver, Alex stumbled to the side and wiped his brow. He looked around with interest.

The taxi drove off and I sidled to my husband’s side. “Are you okay?”

He twisted his lips in thought. “This is very different.”

I rubbed his arm in sympathy. “You will get used to it.”

Finding out which bus travelled to Okara was a little hard, owing to the fact that the timetable tacked to the station master’s office looked at least a decade old. But finally, after much running around and stopping people, I managed to find my intent from a kindly old woman balancing a heavy bag over her head. She had a sweet brown face awash with wrinkles. A prominent jaw and a straight, long nose put me in mind of an inquisitive hawk. I thanked her heartily.

As we headed for the bus though, I noticed the woman still walked with us. A tentative question later I was offering to carry her luggage, for she was headed where we were. She looked a little unsure but, in the face of my sincerity, agreed to let me help. As she put the bag down, I motioned for Alexander to pick it up. He didn’t look very happy with the turn of events but, because he couldn’t speak—and perhaps on seeing the relief on the woman’s face—forestalled his protests and picked the bag up with its broken handle.

Together we traipsed toward the bus halfway down the station, shoving our way through the heaving throng. It was a gaily festive vehicle, our bus, with an elaborate cover of truck art top to bottom. Sparkly tassels hug from the side mirrors and over the top of the windscreen; the faces of Abdul Sattar Edhi and Quid-e-Azam were painting on the sides, with funky poetry—actual Urdu poets don’t appreciate the appropriation—painted in sweeping words underneath.

We got in through the narrow door and, after stowing away our bags, settled on the bright red and cracked leather benches. I let Alexander take the window seat, not sure how he would fair in the about to develop crowd, and allowed our old companion to be near the aisle. This left me squashed in the middle, but I didn’t mind. When the conductor came to ask for tickets, I offered to buy hers—Naseen Bibi’s—and after some initial protest, she let me.

The bus would start in half an hour. We spend the waiting time with the window cranked open and getting broiled alive. The rest of the benches were filling up by the second. Alexander had his face almost out of the glass, as if he feared suffocating in the horde. Waiting for the journey to start, I answered Naseen’s inquisitive questions with as much sincerity as I was able, not wanting to lie to but not sure how the original version would be taken.

The journey out of Lahore was spent in answering questions too—questions that had gotten progressively personal. The definition of a casual acquaintance, to a Pakistani woman, is to find the name of the other person’s grandfathers and grandmothers and any such ancestor as the person remembers, along with their occupations, if they were immigrants or not, and their national racial status—this I was remembering at quite the wrong end of our conversation.

The woman spoke in fluent Panjabi and, though my tongue was a little rusty, it didn’t take me long to match her word for word. I found out about her two sons—one in the army and the other an electrician—about her seven grandchildren in various age groups, and about her dead husband who had been a fierce lover of Sarson-ka-Saag—mustard leaves cooked to a mush and served with unleavened corn bread. She had been in Lahore to visit her second son and to get her monthly medical check up; apparently she had something growing near her rectum that the doctors didn’t like.

Finally, two hours into the journey, Nasreen lay her head back on the head rest and, with the promptness of an expert in mature years, opened her mouth and went to sleep.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

“She seems interesting,” Alexander said.

“You can’t talk, remember?”

“I am getting bored.” He scratched his cheek. “And also slightly interested in what you were talking about.”

So I let him have a brief version of the tale that was Nasreen Bibi. It surprised me, but my mouth did hurt a little. Apparently Punjabi wasn’t the only thing I was getting rusty in. If there was one thing we Pakistanis could do all day, it was talk.

“How,” Alexander started, looking perplexed, “if you care to explain, did you get from some mustard dish to her mysterious internal organ?”

I laughed softly. “I would explain, but I have no idea.”

It was another couple of hours before we got to Okara. The roads had been getting progressively more broken and muddier as we travelled into rural Punjab, and the bus hit more potholes than was polite or could be explained away. I ignored Alexander’s pronounced grimace. Passing under the dappled shade of Changa Manga forest, I closed my eyes and imagined myself outside and with the very trees I remembered laughing and playing under on Eid holidays.

Nasreen left us in Okara, riding off in a rickshaw to her older son’s house, and Alex and I found a seat on a small white van travelling to my village. There were only ten more people with us, allowing for more space to breath, and this time I commandeered the window seat. There was no way I wasn’t going to see the road as we got near home.

A half hour from my village the sights started to make sense. I saw the samosa shop where Aisha and I had spent lazy afternoons charming the shopkeeper into giving us free delicacies. Afzal still sat at the helm of the small establishment, his wide bulk settled into an ornate chair I didn’t remember. There was the house Faisal had lived in before his father lost money in a risky business investment. We had played in his veranda, the one with the potted plants along the walls. And there, behind a newly built platform, sat Razia Begam, still the mistress of her sweetshop come hell or heaven.

I noticed my flowing tears only when Alexander wiped one off my cheek. I leaned against him, needing the support.

The village roads were in tatters. At one point the van hitched alarmingly to the right, causing us all to lean with it. Alexander cursed, squashing me to his side as he braced against the front seat. It was a long moment before he realised not one of the other passengers, not even I, had so much as flinched. His frown was not a happy one.

“This van will be the death of us.”

I huffed. “Of course not. As you can see, everyone is fine.”

“I don’t get it. Why isn’t there more alarm? We almost died!” He looked at the other people in the van with narrowed eyes, probably waiting for a mass expression of delayed shock.

I shook off his hands. “About two hundred million people live in Pakistan. If so many died in road accidents, there would have been a definite dent in that number.” I pointed to the head of the van, where our two drivers lounged in comfort. “Those men know what they are doing. There is a certain skill to driving on these roads.”

He didn’t look convinced. “I have read Pakistani news these couple of weeks. Road accidents are notorious here.”

“And yet not everyone dies in them.” I gave him a radiant smile. “Look at the silver lining.”

As we disembarked at my village station though, even this stimulating conversation on road infrastructure and death didn’t help my nerves. I felt vaguely sick, that being the reason Alex had to drag me to a corner and offer me a water bottle.

“Zara, you have gone pale,” he noted, rubbing my arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I looked at him in surprise. “We came all this way. It’s a little late to ask that, I think.”

“If you change your mind we can get back on that bus right now, Zara.” He pointed at said bus with a vehement finger. I didn’t bother pointing out that that bus wasn’t moving from its place for the night. The driver had opened the engine hatch and was tinkering with the smoking thing inside. “We can go back to the airport and get on the plane and go back. You just have to say the word.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I brought you here to support me, not make me even more terrified and offer escape routes. And I am not a quiter—” My eyes widened. I had to smile. “Ooh. I see what you are doing.” Grabbing the bottle out of his hand, I took a long chug. “Fine. You succeeded in riling me. Let’s go.”

I pulled on my naqab. Normally, hiding my face wasn’t my preferred attire, since it made me feel faintly breathless, but right now it was the one thing I wanted to do most. I couldn’t let anyone recognise me. The news could not, no matter what, reach my parents before I did.

As I led the way out of the station and through the twists and turns of the adjoining market, I wondered how five years could have been so long for me and seem no time at all for my village. It seemed the ground I walked on and the shops I passed were the same as they had been that fateful day. Aside from faint shifts only a trained eye could notice, nothing had changed.

There was Chacha Younis, sitting at the corner on a wicker stool, conversing with his friends and smoking his hookah. There was little Talha, looking much taller and broader now, leading a gang of attentive boys carrying bats and balls, obviously headed to the municipal grounds for a match of cricket. And there was Zaynab Tai, leaning dangerously low over her balcony as she talked a mile a minute with Noufal Khala in the flat below.

There were some changes too. A new house was being built at the corner of the street, on an empty plot I remember playing marbles on. Babu Darzi’s shop had been taken over by his fifth son, the one with the curiously short left leg. Gulfam Khala—an old woman with a penchant for dressing in men’s clothes and smoking a cigar—was no longer on her front steps, though I knew her to never miss a day sitting out there, puffing away.

A familiar green sign with red writing, one I knew read ‘Mahalon ka Furniture’—furniture of palaces—made me duck my head and shift deeper into Alex’s side. My movement made him look around, alert. “What is it?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s my father’s shop.”

“Where?” His head was spinning like a top.

“Don’t look!” I hissed. For some reason I was terrified of being seen by Abu. I didn’t know what he would think, what he would feel. And I knew the moment my eyes settled on him, on my beloved father, he would know me for my gaze. There was no way I could steal a peek. He would know.

“Zara, are you sure you don’t want to see him?” We were still walking, though Alexander’s feet were definitely stalling.

I quickened my own pace. “Yes. I don’t want to make a scene. We will go directly home.”

And directly home we did go. A right at Shoukat Tarkhan’s house, a left at the government girls’ school, and straight through that street till we reached a dirt road. Across the road, at the corner on the other side, stood a rust coloured gate about three yards wide. The sight made me stop for a whole minute as a tidal wave of nausea shook my insides.

At the steps of the gate we paused. I didn’t want to ring the bell; and yet at the same time I wanted to ring it so loud the neighbours would come out to complain. All I could do was stare at the wide knob. It was bigger than my palm. I had always had trouble holding the whole of it, from childhood through adulthood. That knob had provided material for many jokes my brother thought were funny—I myself was of a contrary opinion.

On noticing I had no plans of making the next move, Alex placed a finger on the bell instead. He looked at me in question and, when I didn’t stop him, pressed the button.

I could hear the chiming of birds from inside. It was still the same. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. Alex knotted his fingers with mine and gave a strong squeeze. Even that didn’t make the chaos in my chest settle.

Footsteps slapping against tiles. A tired voice, soft and fluffy with age, called out to someone to leave the tea be. The bolt was shot back. The knob turned. I suddenly realised I had no idea if my parents still lived in this house.

And then the door opened.

Her hair was whiter now. She had always kept her dye schedule up to date but, apparently, hadn’t done so recently. An intricate printed salwar-kameez suit, with a plainer pink scarf, made her fair skin look even paler. The lines on her face were far more than before, yet her warm eyes—bagged with shadows—still crinkled at the corners when she smiled.

“Who is it?” she asked, looking from me to Alex.

A sob broke through my throat. I let my naqab drop. “Mama?”

Yasmin Mahal looked confused for a moment. Then she looked sad. And then, after blinking multiple times, as if to dispel ghosts, she looked surprised. Shocked. She stumbled and barely caught the door in time.

“Zara?”

And because I didn’t know what more to do or what more to say, because it had been too long since I felt the touch of my mother’s hand and the warmth of her chest, and because I knew I was going to spontaneously combust if my mother continued to look at me with that disbelief in her eyes, I threw my arms around her little body and burst into tears.

***

The darkness outside the plane window looked very deep, absolute. I could almost imagine stepping on it and sinking slowly and surely, like in quicksand, right down to oblivion.

“Hey.”

Alexander was coming out of the cabin, an ice pack pressed to his right eye and a glass of apple juice in his hand. He had discarded his salwar suit and now wore dress pants and an open-at-the-collar white shirt. He plopped down beside me and handed me the drink. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

I shrugged, taking a sip of the tart beverage. “Nothing.” I inclined my head at the glass in my hand. “And thanks for this.”

“No problem.”

Silence. I wondered where I would land if I did fall from the plane.

“We will come back soon, won’t we?” I asked suddenly. I linked my hand with his, feeling relieved to have come back home but a little lost on leaving so soon.

Alexander kissed my fingers. “I told you, we will figure it out. You will figure it out. There will be a way.”

I sighed in defeat. “I wonder what that way is.”

Swallowing the last of the juice, I placed the glass in a holder. A side glance at my husband made me notice the ice pack and remember the hullabaloo that had happened at my parents’ house shortly after the welcome. “How’s your eye?” I asked. I couldn’t keep an irrational grin off my face. Who cared if he would have a black eye and that my father and my husband had definitely started off on the wrong foot? It was still damned funny.

Alexander did not share my opinion. Pulling the pack off just a little, with a very pronounced grimace, he let me see the purple swelling underneath. He said, “Not that your father spared my feelings but…right now it’s just numb. It hurts when I blink.”

“Well,” I said, pulling the pack from his hand so I could examine the bruise myself. “What did you expect? You did show up at his doorstep with his daughter lost for five years, now pregnant.”

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?” He laid his head back and flopped against the seat. I pressed the pack back to his face. “You think this is so very funny, don’t you? It was your idea to come here now. I should have known.”

“Hey,” I protested. “I didn’t do it on purpose. Really, I never would have guessed he would act like that! Or that you would let him actually hit you. Why didn’t you stop him before he landed one?”

“Because I didn’t see it coming! I was too worried about you. Besides, you did nothing to stop him either.”

“Alex,” I said. “I really didn’t even see when it all happened. It was like I was just getting done hugging Mamma, and then there is this god-awful row from behind, and I turn around to find both of you tussling like animal. I did pull you apart after that, didn’t I?”

The left corner of his lip quirked. “It was a god-awful row, wasn’t it? I could have taken him, though. I just didn’t want to hurt your father after you were so anxious about your reunion.” He winked his good eye.

I grinned. Swinging a leg over both of his, I straddled his lap. I put the pack aside and leaned against his torso. “Sure you would have. The last thing I remember seeing my father punch was the table when I beat him at Ludo. He broke his middle finger.”

Alexander laughed. His chest vibrated under my cheek.

“But,” I put in, lifting my head and placing a finger on his cheek. He shut up. “I truly am glad you didn’t hurt him. I love him, but papa is the sweetest, softest man one could find.”

His hands were travelling up my arms. He cupped my shoulders and pulled me close. “You regret coming back with me.” It wasn’t a question.

I took a deep breath. There it was. “I don’t regret it, Alex. I would never regret it. I love you. But…” I bit my lip. “I did not feel right, leaving so soon after seeing them again.”

“You decided this. You can still change your decision.”

“No.” I ran a thumb over his chin. “I have a duty to the girls too. I can’t just leave them hanging. And if I had stayed a day longer, I would never have left. More to the point,” I said, “this is not the end. We will bring the girls to see them soon. We will visit more often. It will all be fine.”

“If you say so.”

I placed my lips at the corner of his mouth. “I say so.”

We were just getting into the moment when a clatter from the pilot’s cabin drew our heads up. There was Conrad, slipping through the open door and leaning against the wall, staring at us. He had grease on his hands from eating too many samosas. Pale green dip ran down the front of this shirt. It had been a surprise to find that not only had Conrad gotten into the city, but also that he had made himself quiet at home, buying delicacies and getting a henna tattoo of the moon and star on his throat.

“Sir…” he was now saying, his eyes on Alexander. He looked ready to be sick. His hair was standing on ends. His cherub eyes were wide. “Sir, I just…I hadn’t seen…I am so sorry, Sir! I swear I would have—”

I got off of Alexander and back to my seat. My husband levelled the shorter man with a firm stare. “Conrad, what is it? Please start making sense right now.”

But Conrad was still babbling. “He wasn’t in any of the other photos. Nobody had looked at the bad ones! I don’t know how he got in! The security was tight, Sir, I swear. The men had been checked and rechecked. They were trustworthy. I had seen to it myself. I had—”

“Conrad.”

“—talked to them and selected them myself. I even had some of my brothers and cousins pull shifts. I don’t know how—”

“Conrad!”

The poor man’s mouth flopped shut. His lips were quivering. I placed a hand on Alex’s arm.

“What has happened?” he asked. He was getting better at controlling his rude temper but, it seemed, some moments were better than others. This wasn’t one of the good ones. Note to self: remind Conrad not to interrupt Alex in the middle of a kiss.

Conrad didn’t answer the question. Biting his lip to stop from crying, he stepped forward and passed a tablet to his boss.

Alex accepted the device with a curious look. The screen was still turned a little away from me when he looked at it, so I didn’t see what made his shoulders tense and his head snap up.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, voice rough.

“Christopher sent it to me just now. He asked me to show it to you. Sir, I—”

He had finally settled in his seat, the tablet loose in his hands. I pulled the screen close to stare at the picture on it, feeling a thrill of apprehension. It was a picture of our wedding, but the quality of the turnout was very poor. Most of the figures were blurred in motion but, at the corner, by what I assumed was Hannah in her white tutu dress—recognisable only because of the wide area it consumed—was a stationary figure leaning on a cane. By virtue of being still, this figure was much clearer than the rest, and perhaps that was why my alarmed brain didn’t wait a second in assuming an eagle head onto the white tipped walking stick.

“Frank,” I whispered. His face was in shadows, his gait nothing special, but I was sure it was him.

I looked at Alexander. He was staring at the picture in silence. It was almost as if he had gone into shock.

“Conrad,” I said loudly, needing the hysterical man to hear. “This is not your fault. Now I need you to leave us alone. Please go drink a glass of cold water and lie down.”

The little man remained unsure for a moment, eyes flickering between Alexander’s face and mine. Then he turned on his heel and barged through the door to the front cabin in a stumbling daze. The door banged shut.

“Alex,” I said, touching his cheek and trying to turn his face to mine. “Alex, look at me.”

His eyes were blank. I grabbed his face in a firm grip. “We already knew he was alive,” I whispered. “This is nothing. Now we are just sure.”

“He was there,” he was saying. “He was right there. At our wedding.” He blinked. “They were both there and I couldn’t keep you safe.”

“Alexander,” I said, voice hard. “It was not your duty to keep me safe. I kept myself safe from Zayn. And Frank did nothing. Whatever he wanted, it didn’t harm us. Perhaps he just…wanted to see your mother?”

He had turned to look back at the picture, making my hands drop to his shoulder. “I don’t know what he wanted but…he was there!” And, in a sudden fit of rage, he threw the tablet at the closed cabin door. It shattered against the wood. Conrad yelped, apparently still scared on the other side.

I didn’t say anything, just waited for the anger to pass. His chest heaved up and down in wild gasps. His skin was hot under my hands.

Finally his breathing slowed. I still waited.

He grabbed my hand and interlocked our fingers. I stayed silent, watching our linked digits.

“I am sorry,” he said, softly.

“It’s alright.”

He picked up my hand and held it to his chest, turning to me fully. “No, I am really sorry. I shouldn’t have acted like that. I was just…surprised, I guess.”

I nodded, calm. “It doesn’t matter, Alex. Frank doesn’t matter.”

He looked very serious. “You do realise if he is still in the country, if he took the trouble and ran the risk of coming to our wedding, he isn’t going to leave us alone? We are still not safe.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgment of the danger. “Yes. But now we know him better. We will get through this together.”

“He’s going to try to hurt me. And through me, you. The girls, Zara. Even—” he stopped. His eyes were on my belly.

I pulled his hand close and put it over my abdomen. Then I leaned my head against his arm. “I didn’t marry you just for your good moments, Alexander Rodwell. I married you because I love you. All of you. And because it suited me at the time,” I added, wanting to lighten the mood. He didn’t appreciate the effort. Serious again, I said, “Alex, every problem you have is my problem now. Even Frank. If he comes as a package deal with you, I will take him.”

He closed his eyes, face twisted in a silent groan.

“He’s a part of you, Alex,” I said. “That’s why he’s not dead. Perhaps he’s a piece of your story. And we can deal with him. You can deal with him, and so can I. We will do it together.”

“He has hurt you already.”

“He hurt you more, if you remember. Besides, I was a different person before Zayn,” I pointed out. “Now I am much better. I am not as stupid anymore. He won’t be as successful this time.”

He had to laugh at that. “Not too different.”

“Different,” I said firmly. “I am. And you can trust me. We will be fine.”

He leaned his head against mine. The plane was so silent we seemed to be in suspension, a carrot in a wide cosmic soup. I looked into his eyes, wanting to be sure he saw my commitment. I was tired of running away, tired of being scared. Zayn had brought out enough of the meek in me. Now there was no more weakness, no more fear. I was not that girl anymore. My fear was dead. I had shot a bullet through its head with my own hands.  Frank was nothing compared to what I had already gone through. And he didn’t realise what happened when a woman stood tall to protect her family.

I was strong now. Nothing could harm us anymore. Nothing.

And no matter what sequel to our tale the fates had in store, no matter what silver threads they would now chose to weave, they would find us ready.

They would find me ready.

(End)