Change has a nasty habit of sneaking up on you. It can come right out of nowhere, blindsiding those who had not thought to brace for its arrival. Sweeping change, devastating change, loss and death. These events arrive unheralded, their very nature ensuring things will never again be as they once were.
As though a line had been marked in the desert sands of Ishala, change arrived unexpectedly, placing normality on one side and yawning grief on the other. The kingdom mourned for this change was as unwelcome as it was inevitable.
She was dead.
And now it was the small, mundane things that were the cruellest haunts. The way she’d flicked her fingers against her coltish knees when she’d been lost in thought. Her habit of singing nursery rhymes to herself even as a grown woman. The way she’d run as fast as the wind, so that her long, dark hair flowed behind her as a super-hero cape. Her love of books and ability to sleep through the loudest interruptions. The hatred of their desert heat that had led her to seek comfort in faraway climates.
He had only these simple memories. A collection of behaviours that would not mean a thing to anyone else. But to Sheikh Malakhi Siti-Omari they breathed life back into his sister – her memory, at least.
And with her body lifeless now for all eternity, memories were the only consolation he had.
* * *
She hadn’t spoken to him in almost a year.
In truth, if she’d known the strange cacophony of numbers that had displayed on her screen heralded his intrusion, rather than a welcome phone call from her brother or beloved sister-in-law, Evie might have avoided answering.
Might have? She caught herself on the errant thought. Definitely would have. Sheikh Malakhi Siti-Omari, with his brooding eyes, inherent cynicism and unmistakable arrogance, was a man she didn’t ever want to see again.
“What do you want?” The question was brusque, even for how their relationship stood.
“Where are you?” His voice. Oh, his voice. It was an invitation and it had the same effect on her now as it had then. Those spiced words with their exotic twists made her stomach roll uncomfortably; her insides clenched with longing.
“Why? Are you planning on coming over for tea?” Evie forced the words to sound scathing, though suspected he could see past it. Her bright green eyes fixed to the photograph of Dave and a heavily-pregnant Sabra that was stuck to her fridge. Taken about twelve months ago it showed clearly the strength of their relationship.
“No.” There was a pause and it crackled with poisonous tension. Evie squeezed her eyes shut. The less she had to do with this man the better – for her sanity’s sake.
“Look, Malakhi,” she muttered darkly. “I’m in the middle of something.” A guilty flush stole across her cheekbones as she thought of the romance novel she was halfway through reading. “Can you get to the point?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.” She straightened her shoulders. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“There is something --,”
A loud noise came from her front door. “Is that you?” She asked in disbelief, shaking her head as she crossed the room.
“Is what me?” He was impatient, a dark warning frayed the edges of the question.
“At the door?”
“Stop.” The word rang with the authority that was not just his birthright but also his bearing. “Do not answer it.”
Evie wasn’t usually so difficult and prickly, but something about Malakhi made her contrary to the extreme. Something? She knew exactly what it was. The night they’d made out and almost had sex.
Determined to push that memory into the recesses of her brain, she wrenched the door inwards. Her spirit of jubilant defiance gave way almost immediately to confusion as dozens of photographers, littering the narrow staircase to her home, began to clamour forward like a tidal wave of invasion.
Their voices rose as one and above the din she could discern only fragments of words. Crash. Brother. Ishala. Helicopter.
She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, her auburn hair a spectacular cloud of colour framing her now-pale face. “Malakhi?” Her heart was hammering in her chest but she didn’t feel it above the squirming ache in her gut.
“There’s been an accident.” Those simple words filled her with more pain than she had known possible. “It happened tonight. Hours ago.”
“What’s happened? Is Dave … okay?”
Another pause, this one radiating not with tension so much as grief. It throbbed with the stuff, strangling Evie around the throat.
“No.”
“What … Sabra?”
“They are dead, Evie.”
Her scream tore through the old house, high up on its hill in Brisbane. Her body slumped to the ground as reality began to shift strangely for her. A world without Sabra, Dave and their beautiful baby boy. “It can’t be true. What …”
“I’m sending a driver for you from the embassy. You will come here to Ishala.”
She sobbed but nodded. “Yes, yes. Of course. Thank you.” Her legs were shaking uncontrollably as she stood. Desperately she tried to marshal her thoughts into order but her brain was like uncooked fudge.
“And your husband?” He enquired and in that moment of their combined grief, for once Malakhi didn’t speak of Nick with distaste.
She shook her head, with no emotional room for the regrets she usually indulged when thinking of those two men. “No. I’ll come alone.”
Another silence.
“Evie? There is one other thing.”
She physically braced herself on the kitchen bench as she passed it. “What?”
“Our nephew was not in the helicopter.”
Tears were falling thick and fast, dropping to the floor. “Kalem? He’s… do you mean…?”
“Yes. The child lives.”