An Illusion of Trust (Sequel to The Brevity of Roses) Read online

  “Nicole is dead.” I throw the file folder at Jalal, scattering papers on the grass. He’s standing in the back yard in the area marked off for the construction of his writing studio. It took the investigator less than a week to send that report to Jalal, but he kept it from me. This morning, I don’t know why, I thought I might have told Jalal the wrong birth date for Amber. If I hadn’t opened the files to check, I still wouldn’t know about Nicole.

  He doesn’t look at me as he picks up the scattered papers and stacks them in the folder, squaring the edges. “Nathan’s report came the day before your birthday,” he says. “I wanted to find a better time to tell you.”

  “That was two weeks ago.”

  “Yes, but I was hoping for some good news before I had to tell you the bad.”

  Nicole never went to live with her father as I’d thought. In the statement CPS took from Becky, she refused to identify Nicole’s father, even though she had a man living with us at the time she got pregnant. Larry moved in and out several times over two years, so I assumed he fathered both my sisters, but Becky didn’t name him on Nicole’s birth certificate. She was fostered out numerous times, flagged as a discipline problem, labeled a runaway by the time she was ten, and recorded as “missing” at twelve. She died of a meth overdose two weeks after her fourteenth birthday, a date I can never forget. “She died the day after our wedding.”

  Jalal grasps my shoulders. “You are not responsible for Nicole’s life,” he says.

  I’m not responsible for her death is what he really means. “I know. She was just more of Becky’s collateral damage. But if I’d looked for her sooner—”

  “Stop.” He cups my face in his hands. “You cannot change the past. You can worry, regret, and what if for the rest of your life, but you will never change a second of the past. I am sorry that Nicole had a horrible life, but not one bit of that is your fault.”

  I clasp my hands over his and turn my face to kiss his palm. I don’t want to think of the Nicole I never knew, but it hurts too much to think of the one I did. He pulls me into his arms. I hold him as tightly as I can, wishing I could press all his love into the hole in me I thought I’d already filled. After several minutes, he tilts my head back, looks into my eyes and then further, into my broken heart. “Let yourself mourn, sweet love. Go. Be alone with your memories for a while.”

  I leave him in the yard and go up to our room. I’m too numb to cry. The fuchsia metal box under my bedside table, so out of place in this elegant room, draws my eye. I open it on the bed and take out the photos I’ve viewed more in these last three weeks than I had in the eleven years since I left Indianapolis. After we got them back from Bahía, Jalal scanned them all into his computer and then framed the one of me at two, his favorite. He keeps it on his desk, still trying to decide whether Adam or Mia Grace resembles me more.

  Looking at these photos with Jalal and Aza that night was a trip. The first one he pulled out of the pile was of me at sixteen, in heavy makeup. He couldn’t hide his shock. Aza laughed and called me Goth Girl, but Jalal only mumbled something about liking my natural look better.

  Aza held up one photo of Brandon, looking from it to me. “Your brother resembles you.”

  “You think? Well, we had different fathers, so it must be something we both got from Becky.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Only Nicole and Amber were full siblings.”

  “Both brown-eyed blondes,” Jalal said.

  I couldn’t bear the images from my past any longer, the reminders of things I’d rather forget, so I gathered and locked them in the box. “Aza,” I said, “let’s look at your old family photos.”

  “Oh no,” Jalal groaned.

  “I’ll go get them,” she said.

  For the next two hours, I perused the entire Vaziri pictorial history and enjoyed every minute of it.

  Now, I pull the only two photos of Nicole from the pile on the bed. Both show her round-faced, eyes defiant. This is how I remember her. The only way I want to remember her. Finally, the tears come, blurring her face like a symbolic erasure from my life. “Goodbye, Nikki.”

  The scent of Jalal’s spiced tea wakes me. He’s standing by the bed with a tray. “I hate to disturb you,” he says, “but the kids will be up from their naps soon, and they already missed seeing you when they came home from the zoo.”

  “I’m glad you woke me. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” I sit up. Jalal joins me on the bed, setting the tray between us. He pours and hands me a cup. Tea is his magic elixir, good for any occasion. Right now, it does taste like magic.

  “You were looking at your photos again,” he says.

  I pick up one of me at fifteen. “Why did this upset you?”

  “It just surprised me. You looked so different.”

  “You were more than surprised.”

  He sets down his cup and slowly traces his mustache with a thumb and forefinger, ending with a tug on the soul patch below his bottom lip. “This will sound—” He shakes his head and sighs. “I guess, I never think of you as ever being different than you are now. Almost as though life for both of us began when we met.” He questions me with raised brows.

  Really? He’s asking if I feel that way too? “Your past is what I knew most about you, Jalal. Your life with Meredith …”

  He looks away. “You are right. I apologize. We have been married for almost three years, and I am just realizing how much I have left to learn about you. You rarely talk about your past, and I think I understand why you find that difficult. I think we both prefer to live in the present—our present. Still, my narcissism is inexcusable. If I had tried to understand sooner, I would have realized the cause of your separation anxiety with Adam and Mia Grace.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I say. I’m sorry I opened this door again. I want him to stop thinking before he realizes his self-centeredness is the only thing that allowed our marriage. It’s dishonest, but I want him to go back to feeling that I didn’t exist before he met me. I want to be only Renee Vaziri.

  He picks up a photo of Becky. “You look nothing like her,” he says.

  That’s far from true, but he’s only trying to reassure me that I’m not like her. And in the way that really matters, he’s right. I got the genes that shaped her chin and nose, not the one that made her an addict. The therapist said I don’t really hate Becky, I hate the person drugs and alcohol turned her into. It’s almost impossible to separate the two, but sometimes when I’m with Adam and Mia Grace, I think I remember my real mother a little bit. That’s what I need to hold on to.

  “Jalal, I think we should call off the search for Brandon and Amber.”

  “I disagree. You need to know what happened to them, so you can move past the trauma of losing them.”

  “I don’t really see how knowing that Nicole turned out to be a junkie—”

  “They might need to know how your life turned out too.”

  That never occurred to me. “I’m sure Amber doesn’t remember me.”

  “But your brother does.”

  “Maybe, but I …” I stop before I say that I think it’s best for me to cut all ties to my past. I want Jalal to forget I was ever Renee Marshall because that’s what I’ve been trying to do since the day I met him. I gulp the last of my tea and pick up a cookie. “You think Adam will mind if I wake him up with this?”

  He glares at me, and I assume it’s because I’ve changed the subject, but then he says, “You never wake me up with cookies.”

  “But aren’t you happy with the way I put you to sleep, Mr. Vaziri?”

  “Indeed, Mrs. Vaziri, indeed. Shall we meet back here tonight?”

  I smile and leave him to his tea. Men are far too easy to distract.

  Ten

  Jalal and I put the kids to bed early so we can have a quiet dinner alone. As we take our places at the table, my future flashes before me. In a few years, I’ll be just another rich, suburban mom, shopping
in my designer jeans, classic pumps, and diamonds, chauffeuring my kids to soccer practice and ballet lessons in a huge, black SUV, scheduling hair, spa, and Botox appointments between luncheons and teas, and attending endless cocktail and dinner parties. In other words, my future sucks.

  What’s wrong with me? Aza has bloomed since she met Paul, joyfully gliding into the same society I resist. I have a closet full of expensive clothes I don’t even like but wear to places I don’t want to go, to spend time with people I’d rather not see. Why can’t I love all this crap like Aza does?

  “Renee?” When I look up at Jalal, he says, “What were you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.” I pick up my fork.

  “I said your name three times before you heard me. Something must be on your mind.”

  Isn’t he the mind reader? I blurt the first thing that comes to me. “I was trying to remember the dates of that next conference you’re going to.” His eyebrows shoot up at the same instant I realize what a dumb thing I just said.

  “You mean the one in San Luis Obispo?” he says. “The one two days from now?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Is something wrong? Let me rephrase that. Something is wrong. Please, tell me what.”

  I move my zucchini away from my chicken breast, neither of which I’ve tasted. I lay down my fork and take a sip of wine. “Maybe Kristen and I will take the kids to Bahía for the weekend.”

  “All right, but … did you forget I plan to leave the conference Saturday afternoon? Though Aza and Diane are staying for the closing session, I have no reason to.”

  “Great, so you can join us at our house.” He says nothing. I can’t read his expression. “Jalal?”

  “Yes, fine. We can stay there until Sunday evening.”

  “Or longer—oh, right. Kristen has school.”

  “I could drive her back here and then rejoin you.”

  “Perfect.” I pick up my fork again. “So Aza and Diane are sharing a room at the conference, right?”

  “As far as I know.”

  We eat in silence for a minute, and then he says, “I could skip getting sloshed in the hotel bar and arguing the finer points of punctuation with a dozen other writers Friday night if you want me to drive to Bahía.”

  “Don’t you have a breakfast thing on Saturday?”

  “I can drive back.”

  “Don’t be silly. Besides, how can you pass up a great punctuation debate?”

  A couple of hours after we arrive in Bahía de Sueños, I answer a knock on the door. Seconds later, I’m standing in the doorway of the guest bathroom where Kristen and Brittany are finishing up an hour’s worth of primping. “There are two guys standing on the porch asking for you,” I say. In the mirror, Kristen exchanges a glance with Brittany before turning to me, wearing a look of total surprise. I’m not falling for it. First she begged to bring Brittany with us, and now a guy for each arrives. “Don’t insult me by pretending you had no idea they were coming.”

  “Okay,” she says, “I knew they might stop by, but—”

  “Driving a half hour from Coelho does not qualify as a ‘stop by.’” She and Brittany give themselves another once over in the mirror and then turn to leave. I’m still blocking the bathroom door. Kristen gets the message that the boys will be kept standing on the porch until she comes clean.

  “We invited them,” Kristen says, but when Brittany gasps, she amends that. “Okay, it was all my idea, but they’re nice guys. You know, Renee?”

  “I get it, Kristen. But your mother’s rules are still in effect here.” I step out of the way. The girls each pause to take a deep breath before they file nonchalantly down the hall toward the front door. They elect to sit on the porch with the boys.

  Even though Adam has started balking at morning naps, insisting they’re only for babies, he took one with Mia Grace today, so I’m free to search for a book to read. The shelves in the living room are half empty now. Jalal and I change our minds about books we left behind, taking a few at a time back with us after visits here, so the choices are getting slim. Most of the ones left here are duplicates of those on the shelves of the room in Coelho he calls the office, even though library is more fitting because there are a gazillion books in it.

  I take down several books and thumb through them, but I’m not really looking at the words. I’m restless. No. I’m searching for something. I’ve felt this way ever since we moved away from Bahía. Maybe we left something behind here—some essential ingredient, the emotional equivalent of salt. Our life is bland without it. If I can figure out what we lost, maybe I can get it back.

  When I pull out another book, the one next to it comes along and drops to the floor. A photo slips partway out. All that’s visible is part of a bare leg. I smile. This must be one of Jalal’s nude modeling shots. I pull it free.

  It’s his leg all right, but this is no modeling pose. I feel like someone just slapped me. Is this how Jalal felt when he saw the goth me? I look hard and then, unable to stand what I’m seeing, I lay it face down on the book. I gaze through the window at the sky and will my heartbeat to slow. I’m twenty-six years old and standing in my house in Bahía de Sueños. I’m a wife and a mother. That’s real. That photo is just a piece of paper and has nothing to do with me. When my breathing returns to normal, I turn the photo over and look again. It’s worse the second time. My nails dig into my palm.

  I grab the book and shake it to see if more photos will drop out. None does. How many could there be? How many books are there? Like a madwoman, I pull three more off the shelves and flip through them. This is ridiculous. That photo is old—more than a decade. Jalal had a life before me—before Meredith. I knew that. What does it matter?

  I make my way through two shelves of books before Kristen and Brittany walk in. “What are you looking for?” Kristen asks.

  “Nothing. A book.” They don’t move, so I glance at them. Kristen and Brittany are all eyes in chalky faces. “What’s going on, girls?”

  “Uh … is it okay if we take some Cokes and chips outside?” Kristen asks. It’s subtle, but she glances a second time at the shelves to my left. Without looking, I know what’s on her mind. I reach for the small ginger jar Jalal keeps there.

  “Oh, God,” Brittany moans.

  Before I even lift the lid, Kristen blurts, “It was Ryan and Jason and Chase.”

  “We didn’t smoke any, Mrs. Vaziri. I swear.” Tears rim Brittany’s lashes.

  “We really didn’t,” Kristen says.

  “And how much of our liquor will I find missing?”

  Kristen opens her mouth but then says nothing. I give her a look, shaking my head. “Get your Cokes. We’ll talk about this later.” They’re back out the door in a minute flat. So much for Jalal thinking he kept Kristen from illicit behavior that weekend. And now I have to figure out how to deal with it—or rather, how Azadeh would. But first I have another problem to deal with.

  I stand back and study the shelves. If the photos were stashed in books Jalal read recently, he would have found and gotten rid of them, so the books I’ve never seen him touch are my best bet. I pull an ottoman over to reach the top shelves and work methodically. Before the monitor picks up Mia Grace’s first stirring, I find four more photos. That hole inside me gapes wider. I’m furious with Jalal, though I know that makes no sense, but mostly I’m ashamed of myself for searching for these. I shove them in my purse as I pass it on my way to get Mia Grace.

  The kids are in a great mood, and I need to get those damned images of Jalal’s past out of my mind, so this is a perfect time to visit Jennie. “Adam, go to the door and call for Kristen. Tell her Mama wants her.” I’m brushing Mia Grace’s hair when they come back.

  “Adam said ‘Mama wants her.’ Does that mean me?” Kristen asks.

  “Good job, Adam.” I high-five him. “As soon as I get the kids ready, we’re going to Jennie’s for lunch,” I tell Kristen. “Invite your friends. My treat.”

  “What if they do
n’t want to go?”

  “You and Brittany have no choice.”

  She gives me that patented teen girl huff and looks at the ceiling like she’s deciding something. “Well, we’re tired of sitting on the porch, anyway. Can we ride with them?”

  “Only if you promise to go straight there.”

  I get an honest-to-god roll of her eyes on that one. Despite her protests, I know she appreciates our rules and boundaries. I would have too, when I was her age. Young girls need someone watching out for them.

  Jennie’s standing at the far end of the counter, facing away from us, rubbing her lower back. She turns as the bell signals our entry, automatically smiling, and then genuinely lights up when she sees us. Adam runs toward her and she steps out from behind the counter, arms held wide. I wait until she picks him up and then I stand Mia Grace on the floor. She takes two wobbly steps before she lists too far forward. I scoop her up just in time to prevent her from doing a face plant.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she’s walking?” Jennie says.

  “You can’t really call it walking, but she’s trying, and at eight months that’s even earlier than Adam did.”

  “Well, of course. She has to keep up with her big brother.” Jennie reaches for Mia Grace but winces when I hand her off and practically drops Adam onto the stool next to her.

  I grab Mia Grace. “Your back is acting up again.”

  “It’s nothing.” The bell tinkles again and she looks toward the door. “Hey there, Kristen. Who’s this crowd you brought with you?”

  I drag a high chair over to Eduardo and Don’s old table while Kristen makes introductions, and then she and her friends head for a booth. “Sit,” I tell Jennie. “We’ll switch jobs.” Her lack of protest proves how badly she’s hurting. Jennie’s first husband took pleasure in humiliating her until that emotional abuse failed to give him a big enough high and he progressed to beatings, which usually ended with her on the floor and her back taking the brunt of his kicks. I never knew him, but I despise him.

  One of the two girls Jennie hired to help during the summer and weekends is taking the teens’ orders, so there’s not much for me to do. “I’ll go give our order to Eduardo,” I say.