A Sister to Honor (21 page)

Afia's voice was small and tight. “Yes?”

“I'm making sure you're all right.”

“I am all right.”

“You can't keep staying there. I shouldn't have brought you there.”

“I do not think . . . no. I will go from here soon, Coach. But not to the police. How is Gus? You have seen Gus?”

“Not yet. They found his cat.”

“Oh, I am so glad. So glad.” She was crying. “Facebook and Ebay.”

What was the point of telling her: just the one cat? “Afia, I'm going to drive up there tomorrow morning. You need to think seriously. The police will be looking for you. They are your safest alternative. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Coach.”

“I'll be by, I don't know, sometime after nine. We said one day, remember?”

“I know, Coach, but my brother—”

A knock on Lissy's door. “I'll see you tomorrow, Afia.”

She checked her watch: 4:25. Practice in five minutes.

“Come in,” she called when the knock repeated. She knew from the way the door opened who it would be. She had to lie to him, and this time it wasn't like snow melting but like the twist of a knife. “Shahid,” she said—as calmly as she could, but her voice rose like a hiccup on the second syllable—“I thought you'd gone to take your sister to JFK.”

“She is not there. She was not in her classes. She does not answer her mobile.” He strode into the room, dropped his squash bag, and began pacing, to Lissy's desk and back to the door, to Lissy's desk again. He looked more like the American players, baggy-eyed and unkempt, than like the pro athlete he used to be. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. His winter jacket hung loose over warm-up pants and squash shoes. “I have this plan,” he said. “Anywhere a family member has a phone turned on, yes? I can find her. Only she does not show up, on this plan. She is not anywhere.”

“Shahid, settle down.” Lissy came out from behind her desk. She stood firm, her arms crossed over her chest. She noted he wasn't asking about the black eye, the bandages. But his overlooking her injuries didn't mean anything—the other guys on the team had probably shared the story of the fall on the ice, and Shahid was distracted. “I don't know your sister that well,” she said, watching his pacing slow, like a tired lion, “but she didn't seem eager to give up college and fly back home.”

“She's never lied to me. Almost never. Actually, I don't know.” He scratched the back of his head. His unwashed hair stuck out. Instinctively Lissy touched the back of her own head, where the lump was slowly shrinking. “But she has to be there. She has to be somewhere. Coach, if I cannot find her, you don't know—” His face twisted as if in grief. If this was acting—if he thought a bomb he had set had killed, or missed killing, his sister—he had a greater talent for acting than for squash. He dropped into a chair and rested his eyes on the heels of his palms. When he looked up, he asked the question Lissy had been dreading. “Did you take her directly to Northampton, yesterday?”

Sharply she recalled Shahid's plea, yesterday, to drive Afia to Northampton himself. Gus's snake; Shahid never saw the cage, couldn't know they were taking it back to the garage. “She wanted to see her professors,” she said. “Maybe you need to give her a few more days, Shahid. You can change the ticket. She loves you, she respects you, I didn't get the sense that she would put your family at risk—”

“Damn it, Coach! You don't understand anything!”

Lissy pulled a chair up to face him. Her left side pulled painfully as she sat. She put her hands on Shahid's knees. The right one drummed against the floor. “I understand,” she said, “that you are under a lot of pressure. Have you gone for counseling?”

“Once, yes.”

“Was that helpful?”

“No. He wants to talk about my sister, about—about—about Gus Schneider, about what's happened to him, I don't know anything about this awful thing with Gus, it's nothing to do with me, only he keeps his hands away from my sister, that's all. Same thing I said to the police.”

“The police spoke with you?”

“What do you think? At lunchtime, they find me in the dining hall, they put me to shame in front of everyone. They ask me did I fight with Gus, was Gus dating my sister, where was I yesterday, where is my sister.”

“And where,” Lissy asked cautiously, “do you think your sister is?”

Dead
, he might say. Or
hiding from me
. His brows drew together, hawklike, the way they did on the court. Finally he said, “I am afraid, Coach.”

“Of what, Shahid?”
Of yourself?
she wanted to ask. But such questions were Ethan's department. To her, Shahid simply looked the way you look when something out there terrifies you. “Did you give the police,” she asked carefully, “all your whereabouts yesterday?”

“Of course I do. Hitting with Afran, then lunch at the dining hall, then the library, and a girl I know saw me. Then your house.”

“So you have nothing to fear.”

“From the police? No.” He shook his head, as if he were talking to a simpleton. “It's for her I'm afraid.”

“She's fine, Shahid.” Which was, of course, the truth. But she knew he heard empty reassurance. If she could only be sure of him! Could she tell him what she'd told Ethan, everything except Afia's location? She opened her mouth to try.

Then he said, “You talk honor, Coach. But you don't know honor. If I could just—” Plucking one of the hard blue balls from the bin in her office, he squeezed it as if he would crush the pulp out of it. Lissy's impulse shrank, at the fury of his gaze.

“Come on,” she said weakly. “Let's work it out at practice.”

•   •   •

B
y the next day she couldn't stand it. Ethan had avoided all discussion of the bomb. On the surface, nothing had changed. When she told Chloe she'd slipped on the ice, he added for Chloe to be careful about Mommy's boo-boos. Leaving for his office, he'd kissed her on the lips with what seemed like more than the usual warmth. But she sensed him watching her. She felt his disappointment like a bad taste. Canceling her morning appointments, she headed out of town. She had told Afia one day; one day it would be. Shahid had an alibi. Whatever Afia was frightened of could not possibly derail his concentration on the Harvard match. The police would clear them both. He could send her home to Pakistan next week, if he was so determined to send her home.

Then she spotted the blue Hyundai sliding onto the road behind her.
A
blue Hyundai, anyway. No telling if it was the same one she'd seen at the hospital. Its windows were tinted, the sun bouncing off the windshield; she couldn't tell what sort of person was driving. When it followed her off the main road and onto the shortcut around town, her blood froze. Not the driver but the machine itself seemed to follow her. This wasn't any car she knew. Carefully she wound her way south from Devon ten miles to the Mass Pike and headed east instead of west. At the first exit she lined up third at the toll booth. The Hyundai pulled into line behind her. Only when an opening presented itself did she turn the wheel and gun the car over to the next lane. Sailing through with her EZ Pass, she checked the rearview. The Hyundai had lost a spot to a pickup. Off the ramp, Lissy turned left at an amber arrow and wheeled around to reenter the Pike heading west. The blue car, thank God, was nowhere to be seen.

Breathe
, she ordered herself. Her hands gripped the steering wheel like a life raft. She had no idea what she was frightened of. She checked the rearview along the rest of the interstate and after she pulled off, but no blue Hyundai. Few cars generally, though the roads were dry and the sky bright blue.

When she unlocked the hasp at the camp, she found the place cold. “Afia?” she called. No answer came. The back door was shut but unbolted. Panic caught at her breath. Carefully she stepped out the back. From the door of the shed, she saw the girl's eyes peek out, then her body wrapped in her wool coat, an improvised hijab outlining her pale face. “What are you doing out there?” she called.

In her shearling boots Afia stepped gingerly over the snow. “I thought police had come.”

Lissy looked her up and down. Afia was shivering. “So you figured you'd escape them? In my shed?”

Afia's arms squeezed against her sides. “There is a closet, in there.”

“And you thought I would turn you in. Just like that. Trusting, aren't you?”

“I'm sorry, Coach.”

Afia followed her in. Bending to inspect the woodstove, Lissy found the fire died down to embers. “We'll have to clean this out,” she said.

“Coach, please. No. I cannot go back.”

“Afia, our deal was one night, to get yourself calmed down. You've had two.”

“Yes. I know.” The girl was hugging herself. Lissy returned to the kitchen, started putting the Pop-Tarts into a grocery bag. “If I could,” Afia said from behind her, “if you would be able . . . you have been so kind . . . but I have no one else to ask . . . Gus would do anything, but then he would be of danger again—”

Lissy turned. Afia's blue eyes were twin pools of fear. She placed both her hands on the girl's thin shoulders. “What are you trying to say?”

“I am thinking two hundred dollars would be enough.” Afia bit her lip. She looked down at the stove, crackling into life. “I take a bus. Disappear. When they come to ask you, you say you do not know me, you never saw me.”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“I will repay you. Only if Shahid asks, you do not tell him. And if they come for Shahid, you say he was not at the garage, he could not have done anything.”

“I don't have to vouch for Shahid, Afia. He's accounted for his whereabouts. I don't think he's a suspect in whatever happened at Gus's.”

“You are sure?”

“It's what he told me. He has an alibi.”

Afia chewed her bottom lip. She seemed to be making a calculation. Of how well her brother could lie to the police? Or of how well the police could protect her from whatever else lurked out there? “I cannot go with you, Coach. I am sorry. I am happy for Shahid. Tomorrow, I leave here. By myself. If you cannot loan money—”

“Afia, if you're in the danger you say you are in, leaving here with two hundred bucks won't get you to safety!”

God, the frustration of the girl. Lissy stopped loading the groceries. She'd never seen terror like this before. Would she wrestle Afia to the car? Have her open the door and tumble out on the road? If she reached for her phone and called the police, the girl would bolt; her whole body seemed poised, like a deer's when it senses the rifle. And that blue Hyundai—that hadn't been a coincidence. Someone had tried to track Lissy, someone suspected she would lead them to Afia.

“This is my husband's family home, all right?” she went on. “It's not fair to him. Not fair to me, or to Shahid.”

The girl stood mute, stubborn. Her glasses made her eyes look enormous.

“All right.” She was pissed at herself, for relenting. But already she was putting the groceries back on the counter. “You can stay another forty-eight hours. That's it. Maybe by then they'll have caught whoever set that bomb. That would make the world look different, wouldn't it?”

Afia fell to her knees, clasped her hands together. “Thank you, Coach.”

Lissy checked her watch. “I'll fetch you a few provisions from the local store, then I have to go. So listen up.” She took hold of the girl's hands, pulled her up from the floor. She spoke the way she would to a player losing a battle of nerves. “Don't go out except to pee or fetch wood. Use the back door. Bolt it when you're inside. I'll lock the hasp on the front. Tomorrow I'll call the landline. I expect you to pick up. If you have to call me—here's my number—use that line.” Tearing off a piece of the grocery bag, she scrawled her cell number. “No other calls except to the Devon police. And I'd appreciate your letting me know if you come to your senses and make that call.”

Afia was nodding, her lower lip caught in her teeth. “You are very kind,” she said. “I only wonder if . . . if word could get to Gus . . .”

“Oh, no. No no no. I am not contacting anyone until you're ready to make a statement.”

“But he will be so worried—”

“He'll have to stay that way.”

Impulsively, she drew the young woman's head toward her. She planted a kiss on her forehead, still smelling of ash. She exited from the front, locking the hasp behind her.

T
here were no body parts, Shahid kept telling himself. Even if Coach—who never lied—had lied about taking Afia to Northampton, and Afia, returning to Gus's garage, had set off that IED, there would have been body parts. He would have heard about it. The police would not have kept asking him where his sister was. So there were no body parts. She wasn't dead. Not necessarily dead. Right? Right?

Not right enough. He called, he texted. He drove to Northampton, collared her roommate. Nothing.
Nothing.
He sat in class, his right knee vibrating like a piston, a hollow core of panic in his chest. Afia hadn't come back to her dorm room Sunday night. Coach had dropped her by the walk and she'd vanished into thin air. Damn it! Only one person in the world wanted to do her harm. He was also the most likely to finish the job on Gus that Shahid had botched. Murderer—Khalid was a murderer. And Shahid had stood next to him on the sidewalk, taken a gun from him, and not shot him where he stood. What a
dawoos
, what an idiot he'd been!

But they had found no body parts, no hands or feet, no spleen, no rolling head. So he had to believe she was alive somewhere, and he could still save her.

Over and over he replayed that half hour at Coach's place. Afia had started out angry, sure. So had he. But when she learned about the third photo, something in her gave way. She had talked to Taylor, she said. She didn't know how the second photo got onto Taylor's page, but Taylor had taken it down. All her friends knew, she said, not to post photos of her, not to tweet about her and Gus, nothing. And now a third photo? The light went out of her eyes. If people were going to ruin her, she said, she was ruined. Then, in English:
Kill me if you must.
At that point Coach had interrupted, while Shahid felt the damning fact of the gun in its white bag back in his room, as if it were rising up, flying to the house on Winter Drive, taking aim at his sister's forehead and firing. No, not that, he'd wanted to yell out, anything but that.

He could have explained the third photo to her. He could have told her Khalid was in the States, here for jihad or honor, it hardly mattered. Khalid had surely taken that third photo from outside Gus's hospital room, while the door stood ajar. If Shahid had warned her, Afia might have been on the alert for Khalid. But he hadn't wanted to frighten her any more. And Khalid had always made Afia nervous, even when he delighted her as a little girl by letting her ride on the back of his motorbike. So Shahid had explained patiently that Afia's
namus
could still be restored, that there would be no more jeers at Sobia and Muska, that Baba's business would be fine, that Moray would forgive her, if only she went back. They could argue all night about whether this love thing was like breathing or like a virus. Nothing they said to each other here would change what was happening in Nasirabad.

Baba,
she had said, in Pashto, weeping.
Baba will not forgive me.

Not so long as you claim this is not your duty
, Shahid had told her.
But keep those complaints to yourself and to me. Be meek with Baba. Marry Zardad, and when you have your first child he will love you like always.

Now she was somewhere out there, and Khalid with all his vengeance in his right hand was out there too, and he was here, a pretend student in a pretend university about to play a pretend squash match, a puppet.

Should he call his father? Should he lie in wait for Khalid, while each day made it more certain that his brother had already cleansed the family honor with Afia's blood? Why had he not asked Khalid for his mobile number? The questions battered him while he stumbled through squash practice, while the police asked him more dumb questions.

The police had been two square-set white men, not in uniform but looking as though they ought to be, who'd collared him as he entered the dining hall. When the taller of the two, McPherson, flashed a badge at him, the first thing he'd thought was,
The car, the brakes, they know about the brakes
. When McPherson explained there had been an explosion, the soft wind outside the dining hall had felt suddenly ice cold, Shahid's arms and legs sticks of ice. “Is she—” he had started. When he couldn't finish, the shorter detective—Barlow—asked where his sister was; they were trying to reach her. “At Smith,” he had said, and when they nodded he understood: There hadn't been body parts. Barlow asked if his sister had had a fight with Gus. He called Gus her boyfriend. Had she broken off with Gus over the weekend? Shahid must have looked confused because McPherson asked again. And Shahid saw they were asking not because they were worried but because they were suspicious. Of Afia! He'd strangled a laugh in his throat, a crazy laugh of farce and terror.

And where, McPherson wanted to know, had Shahid spent the day Sunday? “At my coach's house,” he'd said—should he mention Afia was there?—“and at the library. I'm behind in a couple of classes. Oh, this girl I know saw me.” Valerie, what an ironic joke. There he'd been, trying to block out thoughts of his family and write a paper about China's currency manipulation, and who should saunter into the study area but Valerie. She'd cut her hair and pierced one eyebrow—a little gold ring had glinted there, teasing for a tug. She'd leaned over Shahid's shoulder so he got a look at her cleavage in the V-neck of her cashmere sweater, and he'd smelled the same tempting perfume she'd worn last spring. She'd tried to talk to him like they were old pals. Then she'd made trip after trip through the room, carrying heavy art history books to the color photocopier. Each time he'd looked up, she'd either grinned or winked at him. She'd seen him, all right. She'd made his thing go hard, and he'd pushed his thoughts back to family just to quell it. A disease, Baba had called this love business, and how right he was.

“That'd help,” McPherson said. “You got her phone number?”

Before they left, as if it were an afterthought, Barlow turned and asked if he'd quarreled last week with Gus. “Yeah,” Shahid had said, not caring anymore what they thought. “He's dating my sister. That's not cool with us.”

“Muslims, you mean,” Barlow said with a little sneer, and Shahid said no, our family. But it's okay, he insisted, he and Gus were cool; and Barlow wrote that down.

•   •   •

M
aybe people disappeared in this country like cats, gone for days then surfacing, their tails twitching in the air. Afia's plump roommate, Patty, wasn't acting worried. Tuesday night she called Shahid, told him to check at the Northampton Price Chopper. “The supermarket?” Shahid had asked, his eyes widening.

“Yeah, it occurred to me. She works there evenings when she doesn't have lab. Bagging, I think.”

Bagging! His sister like a sweeper, cleaning up after people, her hands making straight their messes. What else had Afia hidden from him? He burst through the automatic doors and confronted the manager, a spindly man who brought over one of the yellow-haired checkout women. Maybe Afia was with her fella, the woman said pleasantly, poor fella had an accident, did Shahid know? They'd called her cell, the manager said, but she wasn't picking up. He'd give her a couple of days. Her next shift was Wednesday night.

Even Coach didn't seem all that worried about Afia, though she acted suspicious of him. Had he visited Gus? she wanted to know. And was his family really expecting Afia's return? Or had that been planned as a surprise?

By then he was beyond frantic. He moved his second appointment with Dr. Springer up to Wednesday. The therapist knew about Gus's garage; everyone knew. He seemed interested in Afia's disappearing. Wanted to know whether she might have been at the garage. Didn't seem to know his own wife had taken her back to Smith. Speculated on where she might have gone—to a friend's house? A professor's?

“I don't think so, sir. She hasn't gone to her classes, nothing.”

“I imagine this is making you pretty jittery.”

Just be honest with the guy, Afran had told him, he doesn't bite. “Well, sir, I'm afraid,” he said.

“Because the police were questioning you?”

“No, sir. Because my sister could be dead.”

Springer frowned. He wrote on the yellow pad. “Did you mention that fear to the police?”

“I talked to campus security, at her school. They said give her a couple of days. But she had a flight to catch!”

“Back to Pakistan, you mean.”

“On Monday, yes, and now my father will be calling—”

“But it sounded as though she didn't want to go back. Couldn't she be . . . I don't know . . . hiding from you?”

“No, no. That is not it.” Savagely Shahid dug with his pinky at the wax of his right ear. What good would it do, to tell this guy about Khalid? Springer would just send him to the police. If American police started on Khalid's trail—and Shahid didn't even know where that trail started—Khalid would only hasten the business of killing Afia, if he hadn't killed her already. “I don't know how I'm going to play this match,” he said, “if I can't get my head straight about her.”

Springer told him to call the police if he was really worried about Afia. He gave him a sheet of breathing exercises, ways to get centered. When Afia surfaced, Shahid should talk with her calmly about the best solution. No point forcing her. Of course not, Shahid responded, but Springer's words were so much static to him. He folded the paper and threw it out when he got back to campus for practice.

•   •   •

H
itting the squash ball, he emptied his head. On and on about Gus the other guys went. String of bad luck, Jamil said. Uh-uh, said Chander. Dude is getting targeted. What for? Well, he's Jewish. He keeps weird animals. Who the hell knows?

Shahid just hit the balls.

“You were on fire out there, man,” Afran said when they'd showered.

“Yeah, well,” said Shahid, his back to his buddy, toweling off. “We got Harvard Friday.”

“Seriously. We talked to Coach, you know, we told her to let up on you. I think you'll have it easier now. She doesn't always get what's happening—”

“I don't care about Coach.”

“Is it Gus?” Towel cinched around his slender waist, Afran came around to face him. A deep line furrowed his forehead. “I know you guys were wrong-footing each other, but they found his cat, so—”

“I got nothing against Gus. I need to go see him, that's all.”

“Then it's your sister. Isn't it? Dude, talk to me.”

Shahid's eyes burned. He slumped against his locker. “Everything's wrong,” he said. “I should never have brought her here.”

“Let's get out of this stinkhole, man. Let's drive around a little.”

Sliding into Shahid's Civic, they made their way through town. Most of the story came out. Not draining Gus's brakes, not the sudden appearance of Khalid, but the final decision to send Afia back to Pakistan, to cut short her schooling, and then Afia's vanishing. “You did the right thing,” Afran said, nodding. “She'll surface. Later on she'll be grateful to you. You can't blame yourself, dude. Other circumstances, it might have worked. She'd get the degree, go home, tend to women—”

“You don't get it,” Shahid said. He stopped the car. They were across from the village green, where middle-aged ladies were taking down the Valentine's Day hearts. “Either someone is trying to hurt her,” he said, “or my sister's gone mad.”

“Who'd try to hurt her?”

Shahid scanned the green—scanning, he realized, for Khalid. Every thin dark man with a beard looked like Khalid to him, like Khalid had multiplied into a small stealth army. “Maybe there's someone else from my family here. I don't know.”

“Or maybe she's just lying low. You don't think she had anything to do with the garage thing? I mean like accidentally.”

“I don't think she even knows what happened. She hasn't called anyone.”

“How do you know?”

Shahid pulled out his phone and waved it. “I got a family plan,” he said. “I can see who she calls. I can track where she is if her phone's on. I never bothered till I found out, you know . . .”

“So where is she?”

Shahid pressed a series of buttons on the phone and showed it to Afran. “Nowhere. The phone's off or dead or she's in a dead zone.”

“Do not say
dead
, man. She is not, like, dead.” Afran pulled a pack of Twizzlers from his gym bag and handed Shahid one. He chewed thoughtfully on the other, watching the women lit by streetlights, on their ladders, the plastic hearts lifting and spinning in the breeze.

“She is not around.” Shahid looked at the Twizzler. He hadn't eaten since breakfast. His mouth felt coated in sawdust. “And I've got these fucking plane tickets. I was supposed to send her home. Two days ago.”