Eventually, Aksel’s hand settles on my knee. His touch sends a voltage down my leg and up my spine.
I twist my fingers through his. “I get it, Aksel. My life hasn’t been normal. I’m not normal—”
He pushes his lips firmly against mine. “You don’t want normal,” he says in a sultry murmur, “and neither do I.”
An hour later, I am back in my living room.
I sit down at the piano, determined to suffocate the questions billowing inside me.
I recall the memories: tulle and chiffon gathered around my feet, my mother worrying I would get stage fright, a bodice so tight around my waist I could hardly breathe, but a dress I insisted on wearing because of the way the lustrous fabric shimmered on the stage.
The french doors swing open. My father comes in and sits beside me on the bench. “We need to talk.”
Ignoring him, I trace each polished key.
“I began tracking the Chechen Nationalist Front when you were twelve,” he says in a steady voice.
I play one note. Two. Don’t talk about this.
“Within a few years, CNF had evolved from naive Chechens posting stupid extremist stuff online and mixing Molotov cocktails in their kitchens to executing poorly coordinated attacks. They’d grown, and I had to pay attention.”
Tulle and chiffon … Tulle and chiffon … If I concentrate on that evening, that memory, I don’t have to think about the others.
“I’d been tracking their leadership for months. CNF was quickly becoming an effective terrorist network. I had foiled an attack in Albania when I left a man for dead, who, it turns out, wasn’t.” My father closes his eyes. “That man was Izam Bekami.”
Instantly, I stop gliding my fingers along the keys.
“Darling, whoever you thought was following you, whoever you think you may have seen …” My father’s voice is so low I can barely hear him. “It wasn’t Bekami.”
Eighteen months later, his name still sends chills across my fingertips.
Izam Bekami.
Bekami.
I lay my hands in my lap. My throat swells shut. Fear shrouds my vision.
I partition my life into two spheres: before Bekami, and after.
My father continues, “Please trust me, Sophia. Live your life here in Waterford. Izam Bekami remains imprisoned in North Africa. Every other member of that Chechen cell from Istanbul is dead. Farhad was the last one, and you saw me kill him in Tunis.”
I turn to my father. My fingers seal to my palm.
“Dad, I know. I never once thought it was”—I struggle to say Bekami’s name aloud—“him.”
My father drums middle C with his crooked forefinger. He takes my hand and squeezes it reassuringly. Standing, he heads back to the den.
He pauses at the door. “It’s over, Sophia. You have to believe me.”
It’s over.
CHAPTER 30
“How romantic!” Charlotte swirls a piece of hair around her finger and sighs.
I unload my lunch bag onto the table and look at Charlotte. “Romantic?”
Earlier this morning as we pulled up to Waterford High, Aksel had turned to me, saying, “I suppose I kind of like you, Sophia.”
“Kind of?” I repeated, threading my hand into his.
Grinning, Aksel had opened the glove compartment, retrieved a thick envelope, and handed it to me.
Confused, I tore the seal and reached inside. Two glossy slips of paper met my fingertips, embossed with cursive script: The Kirov Ballet.
“… he must really like you,” Charlotte continues matter-of-factly, “because ballet is boring.”
“Degas didn’t think so,” Emma comments, half listening. Her art history book is open, spread flat on the lunch table; she is murmuring at a flash card of Manet’s Olympia.
“Weren’t you a ballerina?” I ask Charlotte.
She groans. “I told you that? I usually keep it secret.”
“No. It’s obvious: you point your toes even while relaxing, and your posture …”
She tosses a bread crumb at me, laughing. “You are so weird.”
Dipping her roast beef sandwich into a steaming container of au jus sauce, Emma asks, “So what are you going to wear?”
“A dress.”
“Which dress?”
Beside us, a soda drops to the ground, splashing droplets onto Olympia.
“Any dress.” I pass Emma a napkin.
“When do you want to go shopping?” Charlotte asks. “We’ll go into the city—”
“No, it’s okay. We don’t have to go shopping.”
“Sophia, you have to look phenomenal.” Charlotte runs a finger through a curl of glossy hair.
I screw the lid onto my thermos. “I’ll try.”
“Good. Pick you up at four?” Charlotte glances at her watch.
“Can’t. I have practice,” Emma murmurs, flipping over another flash card.