9
THREE YEARS LATER
MATERNITY WARD AT UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
“What’re you going to name him?” Carmen asked as she pulled a chair up to the bed and leaned in close.
Lora took a breath and looked down at her newborn son, freshly bathed and swathed in a blue blanket, his face still puckered, eyes still unfocused. He doesn’t look like Mark at all, she thought. Thank God.
“Damascus,” Lora replied without hesitating. “My prince Damascus.”
Carmen raised a thin, perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Um . . . OK. That’s a bit . . . Middle Eastern, don’t you think?” She glanced at the baby and then up at Lora, smirking a little before whispering: “He is Mark’s, isn’t he?”
“Carmen!” Lora said, eyes going wide, her milk-laden breasts bouncing as she sat up in bed. “What’re you implying?”
Carmen shrugged. “Well, you did spend an hour with Sheikh Amir.”
“Yes, that was three years ago! And he didn’t touch me! And I resent the implication that I would even think about—”
“Whoa, girl,” Carmen said, raising her hands and laughing. “I’m kidding, you moron! Just wishful thinking! Things would be so much better right now if this were the Sheikh’s baby and not that asshole Mark’s.”
Lora closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She didn’t want to upset little Damascus on his second day on Earth. Things were going to be hard enough for him growing up without a father. Well, not really without a father—more like with a lying, cheating, asshole for a father.
“Where is Mark, anyway?” Carmen said. “Was he here yesterday for the birth?”
“You think I’d let him into the room? Not that he showed up, anyway. Which is a good sign. I don’t want him anywhere near Damascus. Better for a boy to have no father than someone like Mark. God, Carmen. Why didn’t I listen to you? How stupid could I be?! The signs were there, right in front of my face!”
And so were my instincts, Lora thought as the memories of that surreal week in Johaar came rushing back to her. For a moment she felt a sudden yearning for Carmen’s joke to be true: What if this were the Sheikh’s child? But then she shook her head and smiled down at Damascus. This wasn’t going to be a fairytale, she reminded herself. This is reality. The Sheikh would probably have been a cheating dirtbag as well. Nope, no fairytale, hon. That’s why those stories where the king swoops in for the rescue are called fairytales: because they’re make believe. That stuff doesn’t happen.
The pre-nup had pretty much nixed any chance of Lora getting more than just the minimum child-support from Mark. She’d get nothing in the divorce. Truth was, she didn’t want anything in the damned divorce. The man had cheated on her while she was pregnant—not once, not twice, but three times! She wanted him out of her life. Out of her child’s life. Any money she got from him would be tainted, as far as she was concerned—hell, she wouldn’t even take child support if she thought she could make ends meet without it. Mark was toxic, a symbol of her own naïveté, stupidity, and arrogance. Yes, arrogance. After all, she’d fallen into that trap so many women before her had: Where you believe you can turn a cheater into a good husband and a good father.
A good father . . . a good husband . . . a good . . . king? The thought came drifting out of the ether, and Lora was taken back to what she’d read about Sheikh’s Privilege three years earlier: That if a Sheikh allowed a wedding to proceed in his kingdom, he was committing himself to the marriage in a way too.
Stop it, she told herself as she touched the wisps of brown hair on Damascus’s head. You’re just feeling scared and alone and you want some security. It’s a natural feeling and you’ll have to fight it until you beat it back.
“How long do you get for maternity leave?” Carmen asked, breaking her from the daydream.
“Five weeks. Then we’ll see.”
“What do you mean by we’ll see?”
“I mean we’ll see. Things at the University have been a bit . . . unstable.”
“Unstable like how?” Carmen said, frowning and pulling her chair closer.
Lora sighed. “Enrollment has been down this year. Alumni donations have been down. The university endowment fund isn’t doing as well as it needs.” She forced a weak smile. “Maybe your prediction about the library becoming just a room with couches and phone-chargers is going to come true. Problem is, it might happen this year.”
“Layoffs? You’re kidding me, right?” Carmen snorted and swiped the air. “They’re not going to fire a librarian who’s a new single mom. Nobody does that. Besides, don’t you have tenure or something?”
“You know that tenure is only for professors with PhDs. Librarian isn’t a tenure track position. I’m probably OK, but who knows. There are eight assistant librarians, and honestly, most of our jobs could be done by part-time graduate student workers. In fact, they’ve been bumping up the work-study hours, since there’s some kind of tax deduction for that. And after taking time off for the pregnancy . . .”
“You can’t be penalized for taking maternity leave!” Carmen shouted. “That’s illegal discrimination!”
Lora smiled and pulled her newborn son close. “I’m not being penalized for anything except marrying Mark.” Then she glanced down at Damascus. “Though there was something good that came out of that too.”
Carmen went silent and then nodded. “You can sue Mark for more than just child-support. To hell with the pre-nup. We’ll find a good lawyer, and you can get a judge to throw out the pre-nup and take him for everything he’s got. You deserve it, Lora.”
Do I, Lora thought as she gazed dreamily at the pink hospital walls. I married Mark for all the wrong reasons. Hell, part of the reason I signed those papers and took those vows was because I was so turned around after what happened with Sheikh Amir!
And what did happen with the Sheikh three years ago, she wondered. Almost nothing, really. He kissed you before you’d even said two sentences to each other. Then you spent less than an hour with him before storming out of his chambers and marrying Mark. Everything else is just your imagination, just the fantasy of a bookish girl who read too many fairytales of princes and princesses.
They talked for a while and then Carmen left. She’d be back in three hours to take Lora home from the hospital. Lora sat up in bed and turned on her phone for the first time in what seemed like days. She smiled as she scrolled through the “Congratulations!” and “OMG YOU’RE A MOMMY!” messages. Then she lost the smile when she saw the email from work.
“Human resources,” she said, panic ripping through her as she read the brief letter informing her of a meeting with the university’s HR staff the day after she was released from the hospital. “No way. Not like this. They can’t. They won’t.”
But they did, and two days later, Lora Langhorne was walking out of the university’s ugly administrative building with a severance package and a handshake from the HR lady who couldn’t even look her in the damned eye.
“They can’t cut the academic positions,” the HR person had explained, lowering her voice as if she was risking her life by revealing state secrets. “And they won’t cut the athletic coaches and staff, because good sports teams sell tickets and bring in alumni donations.”
What about cutting you? Lora had wanted to ask, blinking in disbelief both at what was happening and at the sudden burst of anger and indignation whipping through her. At some level she’d seen this coming for almost a year: Librarians were not a growth industry—hell, even the head librarian had been restless for months. But to get the message three days after giving birth . . . it just seemed like a joke. A scene from a cheesy daytime soap.
Or perhaps the beginning to a fairytale, Lora thought as she glided out of the HR building, barely conscious of her own footsteps on the stone pathway. She glanced down as she walked, and for a moment the gray stone looked like the colorful cobblestones of a street she’d walked three years ago, back when all of this had begun.
She glanced at the letter in her hand, flicking open to the severance package. It was a tidy sum: Not retirement level income, but a good lumpsum payment even after taxes. It included health insurance for another six months, and she also had some savings. She wasn’t going to contest the pre-nup, and so the divorce was going to be quick and painless, which meant Mark would start paying child support almost immediately.
What the hell, she thought as she walked that cobblestone path toward where Carmen was waiting in the car with little Damascus. It was a teenage girl’s fantasy that led me to Johaar three years ago. Maybe it’s that same fantasy that’s leading me back there. And perhaps it’s fitting: I was there for my wedding. Why not be there for my divorce.