A Sister to Honor (35 page)

Once—in what felt like another life—she had explained to Sara Desfani that by her people's law Gus was
makhtoray
, that Shahid had had the right to kill him. But Shahid was gone, and Gus was not subject to this law. She was ready to sacrifice herself to Khalid. She wasn't ready to sacrifice Gus to Khalid's honor.

Like he's being followed everywhere.
In hundreds of places Gus could be alone, unprotected. How could she stop Khalid from killing him, if that was Khalid's intent?
Think
, she told herself as she lay awake at night, her books untouched.
Think.

Khalid would not walk proud to the gallows, as in that old saying. He wanted to live; to bring Afia home with him. He would wait his chance to kill Gus in a place where he wouldn't be caught; or he would kidnap Gus, drive him into the mountains, destroy him there and bury the body. Alone in the dorm room that Thursday night, Afia pulled out the gun she'd taken from Khalid's glove compartment. She checked the chamber and found it loaded. Holding the handle out from her chest with both hands, the way Thalia had shown her in prison, she tried to sight down the barrel, to imagine her stepbrother in the crosshairs. Then she remembered how the other gun had gone off, at the edge of the wintry woods, how it had kicked hotly back at her and she had dropped it. She would be useless, trying to fend off Khalid. Nor could she predict when he might move against Gus, or where.

The next morning, trembling, she found the last missed call from Gus on her mobile and pressed the green button.

“Afia,” came his familiar voice, smooth and boyish. “I've been worried about you.”

“I need to see you.”

She heard him sigh. “Look, Afia,” he said—not
M'Afia
, no more nicknames, sweet words—“Afran told me. You're going back to Pakistan. This whole thing . . . well, it's awful. I'm going to blame myself the rest of my life.”

“It's not for that I call, Gus—”

“So I don't think I should see you, Afia. Not that I don't love you. I really do. But it's not going to work if—”

“I have something to give you, Gus. We must meet somewhere . . . somewhere safe.” She waited through a long silence. “Gus?”

“I don't like,” he said, “where this is going.”

“Not I neither. Tell me a safe place.”

“On one condition. When we meet you'll tell me”—she caught the hard edge of his voice, same as when she'd rung him up from the store in Hadley—“what the hell is going on.”

They agreed on the squash center, where he'd started trying to hit the ball again. It was off season, no one else would be there. She would text him about the time; she had to beg Esmerelda for a ride. She checked her watch. She had Sue Glasgow's final biology class this morning. No matter. She would fail the class, anyway. Wrapping the gun in a scarf, she thrust it deep into her backpack and set off across campus, to the road that led out of Northampton Center to the Price Chopper.

The day was warm, true spring at last. Tulips clustered in front of the businesses on State Street. Clouds scudded across the sky, and she felt almost cheered, walking her old route to work. At the Price Chopper, Esmerelda fretted about stretching her break too far. Was it important? she wanted to know, and Afia said yes, very important, and Esmerelda's dimples showed as she asked if this was about Afia's fella. And Afia reminded her that she was engaged, but Esmerelda laughed and said she'd give that four Pinocchios, and if Afia could wait in the sun for an hour, she'd scoot her over to Devon, only she'd have to get a lift back or take the bus through Springfield.

Afia sat weary but with a bubble of hope in her chest. Maybe there was no danger. But at least she would be giving Gus two weapons—the gun, and the truth. Part of the truth, at least. As much as he needed to know. After that, Allah would have to protect him. Flipping open her mobile, she sent the text.
Squash centre 2:00.
A breeze blew across her face. When the door opened from the Price Chopper, the sweet smell of their bakery drifted out.

Car doors slammed every few minutes, in the parking lot. Why she bolted awake when Khalid's slammed, she didn't know. But she was upright as he came at her, his face unshaven and his eyes like nail heads.

“Khalid lala!” she said. She moved away from her backpack. “Why are you here?”

“You think I don't watch your classes?” He took hold of her arm at the elbow. “You go to classes so that I know you are safe! Are you playing truant, now? Must I fetch you back each time you wander away?”

“Khalid lala, please.” She made her voice soft, tried to press the panic out of it. “You don't care about my education. Why does it matter—”

“I am not such a fool. You have no strength. This place has corrupted you through and through. In class, in your room, you stay safe. You stay mindful. But this place!” He flung an arm out at the Price Chopper. “I knew when I saw those women, they were dangerous for you. Now get in the car. We'll go back to your school. You wander off again, I can't answer for what I'll do.”

“Do you mean”—she edged back toward the backpack now, ready to obey him—“you've been checking on my class attendance? But Khalid lala, you need to earn money, you said so.”

“And how can I,” he said, pulling her toward the blue car, “when you have no self-control?”

“I am sorry. So sorry. I didn't think. I wanted only to see my aunties here—”

“You'll see them when I say you can see them.”

“Of course. You're right. Now let me just—”

“I'll get it.” He pushed her into the car and went for the backpack, still on the bench.
No
, she thought.
Please, no.
But as soon as he lifted the handle, he seemed to know. He loosened the cord at the top. He pulled out the scarf. His face, as he flung the empty bag into the car, was a raging storm. In the driver's seat, he removed the gun from its wrapping and tucked it into his waistband. For a full minute he sat staring straight ahead. Afia heard his breath going in and out of his nostrils. She heard her own breath, the battering of her heart. “Give me your mobile,” he said at last.

“Khalid lala, I don't think I have it with me, I—”

He twisted in the seat and wrenched the backpack up from the floor behind him. Rifling through its outer pockets, he found the little flip phone. Afia looked out the window. She willed Esmerelda to come out. She would run to Esmerelda. Khalid wouldn't dare fire on an innocent woman in a crowded parking lot. But shoppers went in and out of the automatic doors, and no Esmerelda.

Khalid scrolled through the phone's numbers; through the messages. When he turned to Afia his voice was calm and flat, like a computer voice. “Where is he.”

“Who?”

He held the phone up. Though she couldn't make out the number on the screen, she knew it was Gus's. “Tell me or you die.”

“I die, then.” She said the words easily. A decision she should have made weeks ago. She met his eyes without flinching.

He put the car in gear. “I will find him first,” he said, “and then we will talk about living or dying.”

The car spun around and down the aisle of the lot; a women with a baby perched on a shopping cart yanked the cart back in alarm. “Where are we going?” Afia asked when she had her breath.

“Somewhere,” Khalid said in that same flat voice, “from which you cannot wander off.”

L
issy's temporary office was built originally as a storeroom, off the corridor by the squash center where she'd once seen Gus and Afia kissing. It had a desk, a set of shelves, a box of weights in the corner. Already she'd hauled up her squash equipment and bins of balls. She would rather be here, she'd told Ernesto, than haunting the central office on the main floor, with its reception area and administrative assistant. If he was taking charge, however briefly, he needed to sit in the director's chair.

She'd attended her last meeting about the capital campaign, along with Ernesto, who kept squinting at the rows of figures; he was too vain for reading glasses. Charlie Horton, Don Shears had reported, was making good on his pledge. They would break ground on the fitness center in the fall. “Congratulations,” she'd said to Shears as she made her swift exit.

He'd caught her arm. “You might call Horton,” he said. “Thank him. Say good things about football.”

“Don, when I got here—”

“Just call him, okay?” He'd placed his hand, a little too heavily, on her shoulder. “Keep the lines open.”

She turned this advice over in her head as she began unpacking boxes. It felt good to pack, to unpack, to arrange. Grief was like any season, forced eventually to give way. The terrible choices she had made in February, and their terrible consequences, felt like a great glob of cold earth that she had swallowed and planted inside her, to grow however it must.

She pulled her clock out of the first box and set it. One fifty-five. In a couple of hours she'd fetch Chloe. Ethan had expanded his practice in the past month, saying little about it, but Lissy knew he was preparing in case they were reduced to one income. And what if she had to go on the market, apply for a coaching spot in Nebraska or South Carolina? No, she couldn't. Ethan loved their house even more than she did. Loved getting down to professional meetings in New York, loved seeing his sisters there. He'd talked—angrily—about selling the family camp in Hadley, now that death had spoiled the place. But Chloe was getting bigger. He'd want to take her fishing on the Hudson.

Three taps, at her door. She looked up at the grinning, freckled face of Gus Schneider. “Look, Mom,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “No crutches.”

“Good job.” She smiled at him. “I thought you dropped out of school.”

“Just for spring. I'll be back in the fall. Thought I could practice with the team, you know, till I graduate in December.” He picked up a plaque from an open box, an award she'd gotten for assistant coaching, her last year at Indiana. “If you're coaching, I mean.”

She snorted lightly. “I thought you considered me unqualified. After what happened.”

“Hey, Coach, cut me a little slack, okay? This was the winter from hell for me. I wanted to blame someone.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah. Finally. Myself.” He put the plaque back. In his right hand he held a squash racquet. He picked one of the hard balls out of her yellow basket and bounced it on the strings. “If I'd talked to Shahid in the first place, none of this shit would've gone down.”

“Only if you'd stayed away from Afia. And you loved her.”

His eyes followed the blue ball, up, up, up. “I did, yeah. Maybe I still do a little, but . . . I don't know.” He caught the ball. “I think I'm ready to move on. She called me this morning.”

“Really.” She stuck the plaque in a drawer of the gray metal desk. Below it lay a pile of faded photos—her with the Rutgers team, her at eighteen with her hair in a dirty-blond ponytail, her dad at the one national tournament he attended. “She say anything about how she's . . . adjusting?”

“She's engaged again.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don't know.” He began tossing the ball up with his free hand. “There's something else going on,” he said. “My mom says it's my imagination. She wants me to see, you know, like your husband.”

“You've been pretty traumatized.”

“It's not that.” He dropped the ball back into the bin. “Look, she's coming up here,” he said. Now his eyes lit up, a vestige of the old Gus, the puppy in love.

“Afia? You mean like to the squash center?”

“She wanted somewhere private. You going to be around awhile?”

“An hour or so.”

“Maybe we can hit. You know, after I talk to her.”

“I'd like that.” Her lips curled. “I've been smacking the ball myself, a little. It's a great tension reliever.”

“I could use that.” He started out of the door, then turned back. “If things get weird, you know, between us? Me and Afia? Maybe we could stick our heads in here. Talk to you.”

“Sure,” Lissy said. Though as Gus went out, she considered what a lousy advisor she'd be—for a pair of star-crossed lovers, for a young man frightened of shadows, for a girl relieved to have the choice of a fixed marriage.

She'd have been happy to see Afia—to scold her, she supposed, for ingratitude, and to make one last vain attempt to learn the truth. But she shut her door to give them privacy. Reaching into the box, she pulled out another photo, framed: Shahid, three years ago. He'd just placed third in the nationwide individuals, and he showed his white teeth in a wide grin. Standing next to him, Lissy herself looked like the proverbial canary-fed cat, ready to burst.

You looked so fierce
, Ethan said once, when she asked him why he'd first started talking to her on that train.
And you looked so alone. It was a challenge.

Why had she cared so hugely, too hugely, about Shahid? Why was it her task to harbor Afia, or to save her now? Was it about honor? Or winning? Or pasting together a family? She ran her thumb over the glass protecting Shahid's face. More than anything else, his family had been Afia.

She checked the clock. Two twenty. She realized she'd been hearing Gus, out in the squash center, hitting balls while he waited for Afia. But the slap of ball on wood had stopped some minutes ago. Afia was late. Now came the hum of the elevator rising from the lobby. Steps through the atrium. She cracked her door, listened for Afia's voice. But what came was a man's voice, harsh and accented.

“Your name,” the man said, “is Gus Schneider?”

“Yeah, man,” Gus said, sounding very young. “Who're you?”

“I am Khalid. Brother to Afia. You destroy our family.”

“Now wait a second, dude. I don't even know your family, and Afia and I—”

“Shut up.”

“Whoa. Dude. Put those away, okay? I never touched her. Honest. This is all a mistake, this—”

Lissy shut off her light. Gingerly she stepped into the dark hallway. Directly in front of her, next to the bleachers, stood the tall man who had been in the top bleacher at the Harvard game. His long face the face at the wheel of the blue Hyundai. In both his hands, centered in front of his chest, a black handgun. From where she stood, she couldn't see Gus, but the light was shining from the third court. Her hand went to the cell phone in her pocket. But there was no time to call for help.

“You must know why you die. You must know”—the tall man's hands shook just a little, holding the gun—“what filth you do to her.”

Khalid
, she thought. On the top bleacher; driving the blue Hyundai. Ethan had encountered him at their front door. His name was Khalid.

“Don't shoot me, man. Please. This is like a misunderstanding. I'm my mom's only kid. Please.”

“Get your knees on.”

She needed a weapon, any weapon. Silently she stepped back into her office. In the blue glow of the computer she spotted her squash racquet, and the yellow bin of hard balls. She'd almost thrown them away when she packed her office. Now she reached and plucked three from the pile. Two she slipped into her pocket. The third she kept in her left hand. Silently she stepped back into the dark hallway. Gus was facing her, but she hoped he couldn't make her out, or at least that a flicker of his eyes would not give her away.

“Her I forgive,” Khalid was saying. “Her I marry.”

“You? You're the guy she's marrying? Not the guy in—”

“Shut up.”

“I mean, congratulations, man. I have all respect for you. Honest.”

“Shut up.”

The light silhouetted his back. He stood maybe thirty feet away, the length of a squash court. She had one chance. Overhead serve, the high-risk serve. She lowered her left arm, lifted the blue ball. It rose, going dark and then invisible, into the high space, as her knees bent. Her right arm arced back, looking for power. Muscle memory, the blindfold over the eyes. She sprang. At the
pock
of the strings, Khalid started to turn, but too late. Ninety miles an hour. The hard ball hit between his shoulder blades.

“
Ungh
,” he breathed. His back arched. The hand with the gun flung upward. A shot exploded into the glass wall of the squash court. Gus began to rise from his knees—too slowly, his leg still weak. Lissy dropped the racquet. Her legs churned. Khalid was recovering; he still had the gun, he was wheeling around. She hurtled forward. Her head connected with his torso, her arms on his hips. He was taller than she was, but not strong like Shahid. She felt the breath push out of him as he staggered, and they both went down. Over her head, the world exploded. Her head whipped back, struck the carpet. Above her she saw Khalid regain his feet. His shoulder blazed red. He was waving his weapon, firing. Lissy sliced out with her right leg, catching him at the ankle, and then he was down, and she pulled up from the floor, her head clanging, and with a great lurch she landed on top of him, her arms pinning his arms, the rich soup of blood filling her shirt, the stench of it, and Khalid's choked breath at her mouth, and she was grunting and sobbing at once until she heard Gus say, “Okay, Coach. It's okay. I got the gun.”