And though he’s smiling again, it turns with a degree of sadness. Like when Delan watched her and Lailan lumber down the hall on her last day in Kurdistan, that look of having glimpsed a place he could never go. A look that makes sense when her father speaks again. “Man,” he says, as he takes a seat. “She’d have loved this.”
Her mother. And yet in Olivia’s mind, she sees Lailan on Soran’s hip, the two of them in the garden, with him pointing out the magic. The plant is just outside the door, red flowers drenched in what’s left of the sun, a plant that never should’ve been here to begin with. Looking at it now, she feels her skin chill as if something’s been traced against her back. “He would’ve loved it too.”
Her father straightens in his chair. “You mean he will.”
With a deep breath, she explains that she means someone else. And her father sits back in his chair and asks her to tell him. And she does.
CHAPTER 14
May 7, 1979
What if you wake up only to die that day?
Back in Los Angeles, these words come to her as the recollections have started to do. Insistent. Flashes mostly, but sometimes entire sequences descend upon her, and it feels as though she’s somehow walking in her mind. No longer a part of this world but a part of that world. Smelling tea and spices. Feeling Delan’s hand in hers. Hearing the cries. When she realizes where she is, it’s as if she’s woken, confused. A sleepwalker caught midstroll.
And Delan called. Just once, when Olivia was in Washington. Rebecca told him where she was, was even about to recite the phone number until Delan cut her off. “I just needed to know she made it okay. That she’s with her dad—that’s good. Good. Okay, listen, I’ll call another day. It’s expensive, so tell her everything’s fine unless she hears from me.”
There was guilt in Rebecca’s voice as she relayed the message. That she’d been the one to talk to him. That she’d forgotten to ask how to reach him, just in case. Everything’s fine, she repeated to Olivia, and Olivia held those words within her and then took them apart and searched for alternate meanings, ultimately whittling the statement down to the point where it could mean nothing or everything.
Today will be her first day back at work. The freeway she takes is packed, the windows of almost every car rolled down. Smoke drifting. A jumble of music from car radios. Los Angeles in May means ripening peaches and wilting lettuce, bougainvillea that’s blinding fuchsia in the sun.
At least she still has a job; she called on Friday to be sure. “Your roommate Rebecca has kept us in the loop,” the office manager said. “About the flight, and . . .” But her words trailed and ended. She was new, and Olivia couldn’t remember her name, just the shade of her hair, which was file-cabinet beige. Shellacked to the same shine. “Don’t you worry,” she continued. “You haven’t taken time off in years and with what you went through, well, you’re just fine. We’ve got Helen Fisher on your desk, though I know Mr. Hensley is desperate to get you back. Big bark but soft heart, right? He’s been telling everyone he needs his girl back.”
The steps are wider, and there seem to be more people on them. The building’s glass doors are taller, reflecting clouds and other places she’d rather be. When she steps into the bullpen, everyone turns, and she realizes that Rebecca must have said a lot, because people are searching her for scars. They’re looking for a limp, a darkness in her eyes. She pulls down her sleeves—there are no scars, but she doesn’t like them looking—and refuses to give them anything.
Phones ring. Someone tips a Styrofoam cup, and water rushes over a desk. People follow her with their eyes, and suddenly she remembers her daydream of walking in just like this, though covered in soot, a physical manifestation of disaster versus the internal mess she suffers. The thought of that fantasy, that disgusting, horrible fantasy where she was excited to tell of something dramatic, where in her mind she’d been brave and thought an audience would be reward for that bravery, shames her.
The second she sits, Helen Fisher rushes over. “You’re back. You don’t have to talk about it. I hope the wedding was at least nice?”
Olivia’s eyes narrow and her voice falters and she forces herself to ask questions about dry cleaning and files and did he remember that his wife’s birthday is coming up? The day continues as days tend to do, if you’re lucky. At one point, she’s typing when she sees a hand on a folder on her desk and looks up to find Ben.
“Lunch?” he asks. Behind him, people watch, and she understands he’s asking her not because he wants to but because he thinks he can. Because he has an audience. Because he senses he’s the one to get the scoop. Perhaps he even told them what happened, an achievement to have once bagged the damaged girl, and she recalls not that long ago when she thought this would’ve been the worst thing that could happen to her. For too long, she stares at his polyester shirt that’s divided into diamonds, red and black. The colors of a darkroom. A cloud goes over the moon, it’s darkroom black, Delan said, and for a moment she is back in his town and everything is still yet to occur.
“Lunch?” Ben says again, as if maybe she just needed another prompt.
“I’ll be working. But thank you.” She stretches a smile across her face, and he flinches, actually flinches, which makes her laugh. There are lines on his shirt from having been folded. Fresh from the
