morning, they found themselves back in the kitchen, making out like a couple of teens. That’s certainly how her passion felt: fresh and alive—a great unknown all over again.
She was tempted to go further, but told him that she wanted them both to get tested. Her words sounded breathless; and she held his hips firmly against hers, savoring the sweet pressure. When he started to speak, she put her finger on his lips and said, “No arguments, Mr. Dafoe Tillian.”
“You worried?”
“About you or me?” she asked.
“Either.”
“I’m not worried about me but fair is fair.”
Still aroused, and still sorely tempted, she belted herself next to him in the pickup, feeling like a cowgirl as he drove her back to the train station with his arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“Look,” she said, once she’d unbuckled to face him, “I don’t have a lot of time for games. That’s why I don’t waste my time dating much. But I like you, Dafoe. If you’re serious about getting to know me, call me again, or e-mail me”—she pecked his lips impulsively—“whatever you want, but be in touch. I’m putting it to you straight: I like you a lot. It’s in your court.”
With that last word—verb as much as noun—she put her finger on his nose. For what reason, she had no earthly idea, but in the next instant he kissed it, and she was back in his arms till the train rolled in.
She watched him on the platform, waving until he passed from view. She leaned back in her seat, sighing with delight. Our first weekend together. She told herself to hold on to these memories. So I can tell our kids someday.
Aghast at what she’d thought—that sneaky unbidden words could arise from such an unknown place—she started leafing through a discarded section of the Sunday New York Times, finding little to engage her until she saw a story datelined “the Maldives,” covering the bombing two days earlier. When she skimmed down the column and spotted Rafan’s name, she almost cried out, but he was described as a survivor whose sister had been killed by the first blast.
Basheera. Jenna had known her as a shy girl of thirteen, smart and funny in her quiet, mischievous way.
Jenna thought of other terrorist attacks over the years, and all the times she’d sat in sad wonder, shaking her head over the enveloping tragedies; but this was unfathomable because the Maldives had always been so special. Not just to her. Not just because of the precious months she’d spent with Rafan ten years ago. The Maldives were special because the Maldives were paradise. And paradise had been brutally, ruthlessly bombed.
The Times quoted Rafan: “My little sister died in my arms on the way to hospital. I heard the second bomb and saw the others dying, too.”
Jenna pulled her BlackBerry from her bag. She’d kept it off all weekend, and now knew another regret.
Tons of calls, but there was the message she was hoping for: Rafan’s on Saturday morning. In a desperate voice, he’d pleaded with her to come, “Or send someone to do this story, or we’ll all drown in…” A pause, and she was sure he’d say “the sea,” that they’d all drown in the rising, frightening, murderous sea.
But when he regained his voice, it was so heartbroken that his words could have been pitted with shrapnel: “… in blood.”
We’ll all drown in blood. She said this to herself, head still shaking. And then her eyes pooled, salty and swelling like the waters of the world.
CHAPTER 4
Rafan turned from the row of fresh graves and the harsh glare of white headstones, and lowered his eyes to where Basheera lay buried. Yesterday, under the same strong sun, his little sister had been shrouded in a white cloth and placed on her right side to face Mecca. In accordance with Islamic practice, the other eleven victims of the bombing also rested with their eternal gaze on Islam’s holiest city, while their killers—men of renegade faith—took noisy credit for the carnage, promising more blood with every breath, and claiming that God Himself had anointed their mission.
Muslims murdering Muslims. Rafan shook a fist at the burning sky.
They would have murdered him, too, if he’d been seconds slower walking down that crowded street. If he hadn’t tried to carry his dying sister to hospital. If he hadn’t hurried.
If … if … if … An army of ifs had marched him to the borderlands of life and death, and spared him the miserable