32
TWO MONTHS IN THE WOODS
“Are you certain of it?” the Sheikh asked, although the moment he looked into her eyes he himself was certain of it.
She was radiant and glowing, her skin bright and supple, her eyes wide and sincere, everything about her saying she was full of life. New life. The new life of their union, of their re-union.
The Sheikh felt a joy that made him reel when he allowed the realization to sink in, and he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up off the wooden floorboards, making her squeal. Sage squealed too, waving his arms from his high chair, like he wanted to be part of whatever was happening with Mama and Papa.
“God has blessed us again! And it is perfect timing as well. Nine months from now we will make our return, just in time for you to deliver our child. Ya Allah, it is perfect! You are perfect, Irene! Ya Allah, I cannot contain my joy! Where is my son?! Come here, my son,” bellowed the Sheikh, putting Irene back down but keeping his arm circled tight around her waist, palm on her belly, pulling her close as he reached for Sage. “You are a part of this too, Sage. A part of this family.” He lifted his son into his arms, kissed him on the forehead, and then pulled both of them close. “A part of my family.”
The Sheikh fought back tears as those memories of his first family came beating their way to the front of his mind, bringing waves of guilt that threatened to taint the pure joy he felt. But it did not last. Not with his son in his arms, his woman by his side, his child in her womb.
“Life is for the living,” he muttered as he swallowed the lump in his throat.
“What’s wrong?” Irene asked, pulling away and looking at his twisted face. “Did you not want this? Is it too—”
“Of course I want it. I have never wanted anything more than I want this. I just . . . it is simply . . . ya Allah, I . . . I . . .”
“You need to tell me,” she said, her voice soft and hesitant at first but quickly growing firm with resolve. “I know you lost your wife in an accident years ago. I read about it when I looked you up a year ago. But there’s more to it. Blackbeard mentioned it. And I see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice, feel it in . . . in the way you . . . the way we . . .” She swallowed hard and went on. “I didn’t ask because the past two months have been so disconnected from the real world, and I didn’t want to go back to the real world. I figured you’d tell me when it was time. And now it’s time.”
The Sheikh took a breath and nodded. He smiled at Sage, who was puzzled by the strange mix of joy and melancholy in the air. “Very little was allowed to make it to the news when it happened. Just the fact that it was an accident.”
“Was it an accident?” Irene asked softly.
The Sheikh closed his eyes tight, staying silent for a long moment before looking at her again. “Yes and no. We had been on holiday, scuba diving off the coast of New Zealand. Both my wife and I were certified for open water, and we had dived all over the world.” He took a long breath before continuing. “That day we were exploring the base of a reef, deep down. Two of us with a guide. I had gone ahead to get a closer look at an octopus camouflaged against the coral. Minutes later I sensed something and turned just in time to see my wife inexplicably remove her mouthpiece and begin to swallow water like she had gone mad. The guide panicked, and he tried to force the mouthpiece back in. That was a huge mistake, because she’d already swallowed so much water the only chance we had was to get her to the surface. So now my drowning wife was struggling with this guide who was frantically trying to shove her mouthpiece back in. We lost precious seconds as I tried to disentangle the guide from my wife, and although I dropped all our weights and got her up so fast that I got a case of the bends, it was too late for her.”
“Oh, God, Bilaal,” Irene whispered, her face falling as she touched his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
The Sheikh gritted his teeth as he tried to pull back the anger, the guilt, tried to remind himself that it was over, that life was for the living. Especially now. But first he had to tell her everything. Things that only he knew. Things that would make it clear that he was not a good man, that he’d never been a good man, that he could never be a good man.
“What I never told anyone,” the Sheikh said, his voice shaking, “is that when I couldn’t pull the guide away from my wife in the chaos, I grabbed his breathing apparatus and yanked out his oxygen tube. He let go immediately and I finally managed to push him away. I grabbed my wife and took her up to the surface.” He paused and took a breath. “But the guide never made it back up. Irene, he died down there too. It was open water, and they never found his body. I never spoke of it.”
Irene’s eyes narrowed, and the Sheikh’s heart went cold. Ya Allah, her opinion of me matters, he realized. It matters more than I want it to matter. Bloody hell, she has gotten to me, has she not?
“Speak,” said Bilaal. “Tell me I am a murderer. A man who does not deserve to be a father to one child, let alone two.”
Irene was quiet. “You valued your wife’s life over everything else, including your own sense of right and wrong. Your love for her was absolute. There can’t be any shame or regret in that,” she finally said. “Bilaal, I’ve heard so many stories about survival that I know that nobody knows what they’re willing to do when an emergency arises. You’re operating on pure instinct in those few seconds, and your instinct was to save your wife any way you could. No one can judge you for that. I certainly won’t. And you shouldn’t either.”
The Sheikh blinked hard as he met Irene’s unwavering gaze. She is strong, unflappable, he thought. She is fit to be the mother of kings and queens. The only question remains is whether I am fit to be her king, her man, her husband.
“There is more,” he said hoarsely, handing Sage to Irene and stepping away. He began to pace, clenching and releasing his fists as he walked the open living room of their cabin in the woods. They’d kept the real world away for two months, but now it was time. Time for her to know everything. Even if it meant she could never look him in the eye again, never see him as anything other than a man of violence and the basest emotions, a primitive creature, nothing more than a beast in fine clothes. “Much more.”