The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) (22 page)

She unlatched its buckles one by one and when she placed the key inside the lock she looked up.

“Ready?”

Euly took a deep breath in and opened her eyes. “I don’t know. Wait.
Wait
. I’m not sure we should do this.”

“You’re getting cold feet now?”

“Just… wait a sec. I can barely breathe.”

“That’s because you keep holding your breath. Breathe.”

Euly took in two deep breaths and looked at her sister. Her sister raised one eyebrow.

“I can’t help it. I’m nervous.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

“Dad used to say that.”

“I can see why.”

For Euly, the click sounded like a small bomb exploding and when the lock dropped open, she felt herself jerk. Enaya didn’t ask if she could remove the lock off nor if she could lift the lid of the satchel.

But, she did. Inside was filled with stacks of paper each held neatly together like a present with jute twine wrapped around crossways then lengthways and finished off with a small bowtie. The stacks were made up of letters inside envelopes, folded drawings and photos.

“I wonder who they’re from.”

“Let’s look.” The finding emboldened Enaya but made Euly shrink. “Over here. I’m tired of kneeling. Let’s move onto the couch.” They pressed up from kneeling on the hard floor and stood, offering up grunts of exertion.

“I remember a time we didn’t make as much noise doing the same thing.”

“Yeah. We also had about a hundred and thirty less pounds on us. Come on.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Shut up. I meant on us, together.” Enaya elbowed her sister. “I was only kidding.” She hoisted the satchel and walking it over to the couch placed it in the middle. Euly sat on the opposite side. “You first.” Enaya smirked at Euly.

“You stinker.” She studied the contents. “Most of these are to mom.” She picked the pile closest to her and held it up to her sister.

“Go on.”

She pulled the string to the bow that held her pile together while balancing it carefully in her hand as she unraveled. Enaya grabbed a stack but raced through the string. Some of the letters fell onto her lap. Euly’s were still neat and orderly and she opened the topmost torn envelope and pulled out a letter. “Whose handwriting is this? It’s not dad’s, is it?” Euly held it up in front of her sister’s face. She backed up Euly’s arm so she could read.

“Doesn’t look like dad’s,” Enaya examined the outside.

“Oh no.”

“What?” Enaya rushed to open her letter. “These are from Sandy.”

Her sister hurried to get the letter out that she was holding. A thin strip of silk periwinkle cloth dropped out, fluttering onto Enaya’s lap.

“What’s this?”

“It looks like mom’s scarf.”

Both read quietly. When they were done, they swapped.

The photos were of Sandy and Belle together in most cases but she had contained in the trove a few pictures of the girls when they were babies, toddlers, adolescents and teenagers. The drawings were of Sandy of her face and of her nude.

“This makes it real, doesn’t it?”

Enaya breathed out a sigh but didn’t speak. Her lips pressed together and tipped up on one side in a sort of disapproving look.

“They loved each other. I mean, these letters, they’re pure love.”

“It’s too weird.”

“Maybe. She was scared. She lived a lie and for how long? Could you do that?”

“To the very end? I don’t know.”

“She was brave. She didn’t have to tell us at all. We would’ve always wondered if Clive was lying. The truth would’ve died with her.”

“I kind of wish it had.”

“Come on, Enaya. She’s trusting us, with one of the most important stories of her life. And, you know what?”

“What?” She rolled her eyes.

“Listen now. Don’t be like that. I know it’s a little freaky but that’s for two reasons – one, we’re straight and, two – she’s our mom. It wouldn’t be weird if she weren’t. But, this is the thing here, the way I see it is that we have a choice.”

“A choice.”

“Yeah. A choice. We can either tell people or…”

“We can keep her secret.”

“That’s right.”

She gauged the changes in her sister’s face. It transformed in steps. Her eyebrows lowered in a squint. She tilted her head to the side. Her eyes softened and she smiled. Not a wide smile a knowing smile like how you feel when your head breaks through from under water and you get that first breath of air.

Euly wondered if she’d ever seen her sister look as lovely with her hair still tumbled from sleep and in her lazy flannel pajamas. It came back to her, a long ago memory of her tearing through presents under the Christmas tree. When Euly held her hand open to her, Enaya grabbed it and squeezed.

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. [Turkish proverb]

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

With Geoff still sleeping, Euly snuck outside onto the balcony. Leaning her elbows on a blue plastered balustrade, she cupped her
kahweh baida
in both hands warming them against the thick bone ceramic of the mug. She waved her nose above the brew taking in hints of cardamom and goat milk cream amid the strong coffee scent.

When she looked into the mug, cream spun and fused into a silky bronze homogenate after stirring in the honey. She left the spoon sitting lazy inside the cup. It seemed to be waiting for her, like a cocky boy at the prom.

After a brief but hard morning rain, a bed of creamy apricot blossoms had fallen and blanketed the lane that ran below their hotel room in the quaint village. Geoff’s plan to come to Lebanon in April had been thought out to its most finite detail.

He wanted everything to be perfect and it was. Euly knew how hard he'd been working to fix whatever had gone missing between them. There, in JBail she felt an unfolding of love, resurrected again, light and glowing as if from a renovated ancient papyrus, somewhat discolored but completely legible. It felt for her like the first moments when she and Geoff had met--real, pure, and true.

The cobbled road below their room drifted off somewhere close to the coastline and reminded Euly of a long bride’s path. The image took her back to their wedding six years earlier back home, under a 60-foot tall noble fir in their yard. A brisk wind scudded up and lifted with it a scent of ocean, the smell of salt and kelp hung there with her in the balcony before filtering away.

This place--so different in culture and atmosphere--felt natural, felt homey.

A lone church bell knelled off in the distance across the small village, distracting her. She lifted her head in the direction of its tolling. As the clapper swung and see-sawed clanging a message through the air, it made the moment crystallize, and stop in time--a snapshot in her mind.

The tinkling of an unseen chime startled Euly, drawing her attention across the other way. When she turned her head in the sound's direction, a young teenaged girl appeared wearing earphones and low-slung jeans peddling her bicycle from around a bend of the village's main road.

The relic of a bike she wheeled toward the hotel down the narrow strip of cobbled brick, set off how out of place the girl looked, alien with spears of bread poking out of the canvas sack in her basket.

It brought the twenty-first century into diametric view. This place still reminiscent of a war torn country from the 1970s, was expending great efforts in order to come of age in the twenty-first century.

The ivory-colored blossoms, confused by the intruder, swirled in circles behind her and settled to watch her as she rode away.

Up there on the balcony, a person could see so much more. From up high the theatre below, with its actors playing out a farce or comedy (whatever the mood du jour), captivated the audience in its acts and scenes wrought with magical anticipation.

The days, so near a new month, it was tough to call it April anymore. Euly’s breath reminded her of the garlicky hummus from dinner the night before. Geoff loved lots of garlic in his food. He would say time and again, “The only way to fix a dish with too much garlic is to add more, that’s what I always say.” That and, “Garlic is its own food group.”

Euly turned from the scene below and watched Geoff flipping through pages of Beirut's leading newspaper, The Daily Star. Steadying her spoon between a finger and the mug, she sipped from her cup and smiled. Walking back through the open set of sliding glass doors she placed her coffee on the table next to an oversized chair.

“What’s happening in Lebanon today?” He didn't understand one iota of Lebanese but had learned enough to order wine and food, find a bathroom, and to get a taxi but other than that his grasp of the language was far from fluent. After arriving, they both realized the classes they'd taken and the cryptic knowledge of Arabic they had learned, was time spent in vain. Most people spoke English there. The Daily Star had been, for years, published in English.

“LaHara Com Sar eet, honey." He smiled up at me. "I am so thrilled this paper is in English.”

Geoff folded the newspaper and lay it on the cocktail table. “Pretty too. Just look at all those colors.” He took a slug of coffee, slid his rump deep into the wide chair and kicked up his feet onto the ottoman.

“Ahh, this is the life.”

He closed his eyes and acted as if he was going to sleep again.

“Are you going back to sleep?”

“Uh-uh. Just closing my eyes.”

“You’re going back to sleep.”

“I’m going back to sleep.” A grin snuck across his face and trickled off through his shut eyes.

“When do you want me to wake you?” She understood their trip was meant for relaxation and fun.

“In an hour?” He asked.

“Okay. I’m going to take a walk and find a place to sit. I'm going to try and find someone to speak Arabic with.” She grabbed the newspaper off the table. "I'm taking this too."

“Yeah, yeah, my little Lebanese terrorist.”

“Geoff!" She made a tsk at him.

He popped one I open to look at her. "I love you."

"I’ll be back in about an hour, okay?”

“Yep.”

She started out the door and then called back before she closed it, “Love you too.”

He smiled without opening his eyes.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

A mourning dove perched next to its mate and cooed as they watched passers-by below them. They hid amongst the vivid jade leaves and within what was left of any blossoms in the pear tree. She took in a deep breath taking in the perfume of the blossoms and the freshly mown grass along a meandering path on her way to the resort’s swimming pool. An echo of birds answered each other and conversed in soulful and lonely calls pitching up and down in an echo across the resort property.

She heard a jogger approaching from behind and expected the person to pass on her right so she edged closer to the fringy grass along the path. But, the footsteps slowed into a fast walk.

“Hey lady, wait up.” Geoff panted and bent over to grab his knees.

She beamed out a smile and then turned to welcome him.

“I thought you were napping.”