“It must be a mistake,” Fareeda said, refusing to look at the clipping. “Sarah is in Palestine. Someone must be playing a trick on you.”
“Why do you keep lying? The truth is right here!” Deya waved the clipping in front of her. “You can’t hide it anymore.”
Fareeda knew Deya was right. Nothing she said could cover up the truth this time. Yet still, she found herself searching for a way to dispel it. She reached out and took the newspaper clipping, her fingers trembling as she scanned it. It seemed like only yesterday that Sarah had run away, leaving Fareeda in a panic. If anyone found out that Sarah had left, disappeared into the streets of America, their family’s honor would have been ruined. And so Fareeda had done what she’d always done: she’d fixed it. It hadn’t taken her long to convince her friends that Sarah had married a man in Palestine. She’d been so pleased with herself. But murder, suicide—these public shames had been impossible to hide. And for that, her granddaughters would forever pay a price.
“Why did you lie to us all these years?” Deya said. “Why didn’t you tell us the truth about our parents?”
Fareeda began to sweat. There was no escape. As with everything else she had done in her life, she didn’t have much choice.
She drew a slow, long breath, feeling a weight about to come undone. Then she told Deya everything—that Adam had been drunk, that he hadn’t realized how hard he was hitting Isra, that he hadn’t meant to kill her. This last part she said again and again. He didn’t mean to kill her.
“I was only trying to protect you,” Fareeda said. “I had to tell you something that wouldn’t traumatize you for the rest of your life.”
“But why did you make up the car accident? Why didn’t you tell us—at least later?”
“Should I have gone around advertising it? Tell me, what good would it have done? The news had already disgraced our family name, but I tried to shelter you! I didn’t stand by and do nothing. I tried to stop it from ruining your lives! Don’t you understand?”
“No, I don’t!” Deya shouted. “How can you expect me to understand something like this? None of it makes any sense. Why would he kill her—murder the mother of his children, his wife?”
“He just—he just . . . he lost control.”
“Oh, so you thought it was okay that he beat her? Why didn’t you do something?”
“What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could’ve stopped him!”
“You could’ve stopped him if you wanted to!” Fareeda opened her mouth, but Deya cut her off. “Why did he kill her? Tell me what happened!”
“Nothing happened,” Fareeda lied. “He was drunk, completely out of his mind. That night, I heard him screaming from upstairs. I found him on the floor, shaking beside your mother’s body. I was terrified. I begged him to leave before the police came. I told him to pack his bags and run, that I would take care of you all. But he just looked at me. I don’t even know that he could hear me. And the next thing I knew, the police were at my door, saying they’d found my son’s body in the river.”
“You tried to cover for him?” Deya said in disbelief. “How could you cover for him? What’s wrong with you?”
Fareeda chided herself—she had said too much. Deya was staring at her in horror. She could see pain in her granddaughter’s eyes.
“How could you cover for him after he killed our mother?” Deya said. “How could you take his side?”
“I did what any mother would’ve done.”
Deya shook her head in disgust.
“Your father was possessed,” Fareeda said. “He had to be. No man in his right mind would kill the mother of his children and then kill himself.”
Adam was out of his mind. She had no doubt about this. After the police had come and told her what Adam had done, Fareeda had sat on the porch, dumbfounded, staring out into the sky, feeling as though it had collapsed on her. She thought back on all her years with Adam, from his birth one hot summer day as she squatted in the back of their shelter to years later, when they’d made it to America and Adam had helped them run the deli, working day and night without end. Not once would she have suspected this from her son. Not Adam, who had