What The Greek's Wife Needs - Dani Collins Page 0,15
stay and teach. It would have worked out eventually, but the café bombing happened. All the teachers packed up and left on any flight they could get. I couldn’t leave Brahim and Illi. They were... I won’t say they were like my kids. They were mine. In my heart, they’re both mine.”
She was pale as bone china. Her eyes glistened, and her voice was husky with an emotion that dug like nails into him. She was calm in her conviction, though, not trying to persuade him. These were the facts as she knew them. It was eerie, making his scalp prickle.
“Where’s Brahim now?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke. She took a sip of coffee and her hand shook. “He disappeared a couple of times, came home with bruises. He didn’t want to talk about it, then he got the news his mother had passed. He was devastated. She didn’t even get a proper funeral because the military was cracking down. They closed the school. I kept thinking if I could just get them to Canada... But I couldn’t even go shopping by myself. All the flights were canceled. Kahina took us in, but Brahim refused to come to her cottage. I realize now he was being pressured to enlist and was afraid to put us in their crosshairs because he knew they’d use us against him.”
Leon swore and pinched the bridge of his nose. “He’s a soldier?”
“The last time I texted with him, he begged me to take Illi to Canada. I said I wanted both of them to come, but he said he would be okay as long as he knew she was safe.” Her breath hissed and she swiped at her cheek. “I saved those texts to my cloud account before I wiped my phone. As if anyone will give weight to a teenage boy’s texts when deciding the custody of his little sister. I can’t even prove she was his sister. Although they look alike. I have photos of him saved, too.”
“How far have you gotten with the paperwork in Canada?”
“Not far enough,” she said despairingly. “Kahina’s uncle, the man who came last night? He and his wife pressured me to give Illi to an agency. Istuval is her home, I get that, but I couldn’t—” Her voice broke again and she cleared her throat. “I kept asking him, ‘Who will love her?’ I really wanted an answer. Who would be her mother if her birth mother is dead? He tried to tell me she would be adopted, but we could hear gunshots the whole time we were talking. I finally said, ‘If I have to stay on Istuval to be her mother, then I’ll stay.’ He said I could continue to care for her as long as I didn’t draw attention to the family, so I never left the house.”
“You’ve been under house arrest?”
“Only for the last two months, but most women are living that way. Kahina has a garden and a few chickens. We grow lettuce and tomatoes and peppers. It’s been okay, but formula has been a killer to find. Lately I’ve been giving my share of our eggs to the mother down the street. She’s been nursing Illi a few times a day so I could conserve what formula Kahina managed to beg, borrow or steal.”
“That’s why you look like you haven’t eaten in weeks? Because you haven’t? Bloody hell, Tanja. You need to eat, too.” His alarm came out as fury, making her flinch.
“So does a woman nursing two babies,” she fired back. She added in a mutter, “And that’s how I knew I was Illi’s mother for real. I didn’t care what I had to do or whether I ever ate again so long as she wasn’t going hungry.”
He didn’t know whether to commend or berate her. He only knew it made him furious to think of her withering away even as he respected her level of devotion. The frustration of being sidelined and helpless to go back and fix any of that put an edge in his voice when he asked with exasperation, “Why didn’t Zach tell me all this?”
“I don’t know if he believed I was serious about adopting them until I refused to leave before it was finalized.” She heaved a sigh. “He’s had other worries. His wife was having complications with her pregnancy. He wasn’t in the mood to indulge what sounded like bleeding-heart antics on his sister’s part. The truth is, once the rebels took over,