Chapter Sixteen
Bassam knew he did not have a great deal of time in which to act. He knew what he had to do, but there were vagaries, luck, fate, a dozen and one things that could get in the way. He was just getting ready to leap into action when his phone rang.
For a moment, he simply wanted to snarl at it and ignore it, but then he saw who it was from. There were two names that could have made him answer just then, and this was one of them. The phone rang again in his hand, and for a moment, he had a complete moment of bald panic. After all, what the hell could you say to a young boy whose mother had just abandoned him? What could possibly take the sting out of that, make it into something else?
Another ring, and Bassam had made his decision.
He picked up the phone, and though he was not quite so willing to put on a smile, his tone was determinedly light. "Ben! It's good to hear from you. How's your trip?"
"So awesome!" Ben said enthusiastically. "We're camping in the ruins right now, and it's so creepy. The teachers said we could all use the phones to make contact with our folks if we liked, but Mom wasn't answering, so I thought I'd try you."
Bassam hesitated for a moment, but then he shrugged. "Your mother's sleeping right now. Listen, Ben, I'm going to keep you on the phone for a few minutes, all right?"
"All right," Ben said, his tone still happy but slightly confused. "I was the last one anyway, and one boy went way longer."
"Ha good. Well, Ben, you know how tired your mom's been lately? I was thinking it would be a good idea to take her away for a day or so. I was just going to make it tonight, but I think maybe going for a few days would be easier on her?"
"She's been really tired, yeah," said Ben, and Bassam nodded with relief.
"Right. So I'm going to get a good friend of mine, Ranie al Haribe, to come by. She's like an aunt to me, and she'll look after you until your mom and I get back. I just wanted to make sure that you would be okay coming home to someone who isn't me or your mom."
"Totally cool," said Ben enthusiastically. "I hope Mom gets some good rest, she's been so quiet."
"She has been," said Bassam, wincing a little because he now knew why. "Thank you for being so understanding. I think you'll get along well with Ranie. She's got a half-dozen grandchildren of her own, and I'm certain that she's on the lookout for more."
Ben laughed, and he started to say goodbye, but then he paused.
Bassam tensed. Ben was a smart boy, and as Laurel would have agreed, sometimes he was just too damn smart for his own good.
"Bassam...you would tell me if there was something going on with my mom, right? Like...if she was sick or something?"
"I would," Bassam said, and he told himself that there were extenuating circumstances. "Remember, it is not your job to worry about adults, but yes, if something were the matter, you would be told."
"You know, she said something a lot like that. Thanks, Bassam. Tell my mom I hope she gets some good rest."
Bassam hung up the phone, realizing that he was trembling a little. He had never thought that lying to a child would be so difficult. He sighed, telling himself that it wouldn't be a lie. By the time Ben returned, everything would be all right. Bassam refused to look at a world where it wasn't.
***
Laurel had chosen Hungary because it was anonymous, and it was a place she had never been before. Budapest was in the grips of an unseasonably cold spring, the wind and slush whipping down to form a frigid mess on the ground. Laurel found that it suited her mood quite well as she slogged from the hostel to the small grocery store a mile away.
This was at least better than she had done the first day she had come there. She was alone in the room, and the moment the door had closed behind her, she had collapsed in the bed and started to cry. The sobs that welled up in her chest were nearly terrifying in their intensity. She had managed to hold them off for a good while, but now they came out.
Instead of living in a place where she had to think about what was coming next all the time, she had to deal with the present and what she had done. Ben was now realizing that his mother had abandoned him. Bassam was realizing that the woman he looked at as if she were the sun and the moon was little more than murderous trash. She didn't deserve to be with them. She didn't deserve the time that she had already spent with them.
That night, lying huddled underneath the thin blanket that was all the hostel would offer to keep its inhabitants warm, she felt as if she were being wracked by demons. There was one that told her they were better off without her, there was another that said she deserved everything that was happening right now.
The only bright thought she had was that with the information that Bassam had now, he could destroy the people who wanted to harm him. He could be safe, and he would be far safer than he would be with a liability like hers hanging on to him.
The next day, she had discovered she was pregnant, and she had no idea if it was a blessing or some kind of sick joke. She had felt so heavy and tired lately, it made sense that she had a child growing inside, but this felt far too early, far too heavy. The part of her that could still feel things shouted that this was wrong somehow, but it had to fight the rest of her.
The twenty-year-old from San Francisco had turned into a strange kind of nurse and cheerleader. Laurel got the idea that she was waiting for a friend or a lover to catch up, but the girl, who refused to give a name, was strangely casual about it.
"I might see them again, or I might get tired of Budapest and blow out before they catch up. You know, whatever."
Laurel wondered what it would be like to be that brilliantly unfettered, and then she shuddered. She would hate it after having known Bassam and the sweetness that love could bring.
Two days after she got to Budapest, she was lying in bed and deliberating another meal of greasy kebabs and limp lettuce when there was a commotion at the door. She just managed to sit up when the commotion came straight to her.
"Hey, you can't go in there, the lady's pregnant!" shrieked the girl from San Francisco, and then suddenly, somehow, as if magic had blown him there from the desert, Bassam stood in the doorway, a look of such confusion on his face that it would have been funny in other circumstances.
"You're...you're pregnant?" he got out, just as the girl bullied her way into the room with him.
"I told him not to bother you," she snapped. "I told him he couldn't come in..."
"He...he's fine," Laurel managed. "I want to talk with him, it's okay. He's not going to hurt me."
The girl glared, utterly fearless in the face of Bassam's size, and stalked out. "If he hurts you, yell and I'll call security."
The door closed behind her, leaving Laurel alone with Bassam.
"She's been looking out for me," Laurel felt the need to explain. "She's waiting on some friends and—"
"I don't care who she is," Bassam growled. "I care about you."
She could feel tears start up in her eyes, and that was before he fell on his knees and embraced her. She knew it would only make it harder to bear when he left again, but she couldn't stop herself from wrapping her arms around him, tight as a drowning woman who had found something that floated.
"Are you all right?" he murmured. "Please, tell me you have not been hurt?"
For a moment, she wondered why he would ask her such a thing, but then she shook her head.
"No, not at all," she promised. "Just...tired and heart sore and frightened that you and Ben would be."
He pulled away from her, searching her face for the truth of her words. He ran his fingertips over her features as if scarcely able to believe he had found her again, and she was shocked to her core at the real fear she could see in his eyes.
Then when Bassam had assured himself that she was all right, he stood back, rising up to his full height with his eyes as dark as hell itself.
"All right, now that's over with, we need to talk," he said.
"All...all right," she stammered out, and he nodded. She could imagine him taking this stance with recalcitrant parliamentarians and stubborn bureaucrats.
"First, to set your mind at ease, Ben and I were fine. We were never in any danger. We live in a full security penthouse in the heart of one of the richest cities in the world. Whereas you have decided to take up residence in a neighborhood where I saw a child hunting pigeons outside."
"It's not that bad," she started to say, but Bassam cut her off with a curt hand gesture.
"All this time, Laurel, all this time, you have been the one that is in danger. You were the one who was dealing with a group that likes to consider itself a revolutionary cell, you were the one who was currying information to them, and you were the one who was doing all of this while pregnant!"
By the last words, he was nearly shouting, and Laurel felt the need to defend herself.
"I was protecting you," she cried, lurching to her feet. "Do you know what they had? Did you even read the letter that I left you? Do you know what—"
Bassam's phone chirped, and then to her utter shock, he held up a finger for a pause and checked his text message.
You know, we really should work on his phone etiquette, she thought, a slightly hysterical note tinging the thought, but then she realized that it was presupposing a future that she definitely did not have.
"They have them," he said bluntly, putting his phone away. "The men who were tormenting you. They have them in custody, and believe me, Laurel, there is no piece of judicial trickery or sympathetic news coverage that can save them. They have used terror and pain to push their views of what my country should be like, they have harmed someone close to me, and there are repercussions for that."
She stared at him, shaking her head. The brief energy she had gotten from shouting at Bassam deserted her then, and she slumped back on the bed, hugging herself tightly.
"They know, and they are going to tell everyone. I didn't even care that much, but I didn't want you to look at me and to know...to know that I'm a—"
"A brave and desperate mother trying to defend her child?"
Laurel looked up at Bassam, confused and alarmed, but he only nodded grimly.
"I did my own investigations, Laurel. Do you think I wouldn't? I know about Owain, and I can guess at what you did. I am even fairly certain I was right."
"How could you possibly..."
He offered her a rather mirthless grin. "Money opens many doors, my dear. I took the coroner's report, and I sent a private investigator to speak with the people who were living next to your apartment and across from it. Mrs. Podolsky had quite a few things to say, for instance. She told me that sometimes when things were really bad, you'd come over with Ben in your arms and hide until Owain stopped raving, afraid that you would be injured. She wanted you to keep coming, but you refused because you were afraid that he would target her too."
It had been almost a decade, but the remembered fear and shame and pain came back. Suddenly, she was back in that awful little apartment, trying to protect Ben, trying to protect herself and the people around her from the man she should never have married, the man that she should have fled long before he even raised his voice to her, let alone his hand.
"I was so confused and lost after Ben was born," she whispered. "I didn't know what marriage or love was supposed to look like. Eventually I knew that it shouldn't look like that, but—"
Bassam made an anguished sound as he swept her into his arms. She knew she didn't deserve it, that she couldn't keep it, but she took refuge there anyway.
"Listen to me," he said, his voice intense. "Listen. It doesn't matter to me. None of it. Hell, I wish you had killed the bastard on purpose, but the coroner disagrees. Injuries consistent with falling, no foul play suspected. The man was a terror, and if he were in front of me today, I would kill him myself.
"But none of that matters. What matters is that I am here, and that I have found you. My god, Laurel, you took ten years off my life when you disappeared. Ben thinks we're at some kind of tropical retreat."
She blinked.
"Yes, I lied to our son. You need to come back so that I can stop being such a bad influence."
She laughed in surprise at that, suddenly feeling better than she had in days.
Bassam shook his head. "I don't care about what came before. I care about the brave, beautiful and amazing woman I have before me, the one I am trying to keep, the one I am desperate to keep. Laurel, I love you. I love you, and I want you to come back with me. Come back, bring my child that you are carrying in you home. Please."
Laurel froze for a moment, and then it was as if her body acted on its own. She threw herself into Bassam's arms, kissing him wildly.
"Yes, yes, yes," she murmured. "Yes, I love you. I want to come home, as long as you forgive me? As long as—"
Bassam looked at her fiercely. "No forgiveness necessary. No conditions. I love you, and if you will allow it, I will give that strange girl who tried to defend you several thousand dollars for looking after you, I will put you on my jet, we will return home to Shajae, and Heaven willing, you will never frighten me so badly again and you will marry me."
Laurel clung to him, nodding even as she laughed.
"Yes," she said. "I do. I will."