Leaning back in her seat, Leila groaned. “Xander doesn’t care, either.”
Sami growled, handing his phone to Aisha. “Can you put the password back in? I accidentally turned off the screen.”
“Yes, dear.” Aisha took the phone, her fingers trembling, her lips pursed.
Arms crossed, Leila glared at a tuft of tulle her mother had brought lying on the table. It was pink. She hated pink, and she hated the fact that the wedding planning had only proved how little she and her mother knew each other.
Just let her have her fun.
But then, she’d been letting her mother have her fun for six months. Every moment had been torturous for Leila, from putting on that ridiculous, poofy wedding gown, to taste testing five different types of vanilla cake. She shouldn’t have gone along with it from the start, but since Xander slid the ring on her finger, she’d felt like this would have been something she and her mother could connect over.
Obviously, it wasn’t working.
Once Aisha gave the phone back and Sami was busy with his game again, Leila leaned forward. She had to put her foot down. It was now or never.
“Who is this wedding for? Me or you?”
Aisha’s eyebrows wrinkled in the middle. “You, of course. You and Xander.”
“Oh, really? Who are all these people on the guest list, then? You’ve invited half of Cairo. They’re your friends, not mine. The wedding dress is something you would wear, not me. And I don’t even like vanilla.”
Aisha glanced away, her eyes locking on a poster of a pharaoh’s death mask hanging on the wall on the other side of the café. She fingered the pearl necklace draped around her neck as forks clinked against porcelain, voices murmured, and laughter rang out across the room. Sami’s gaze never lifted from the phone in his hands.
“I thought,” Aisha said softly, turning back to Leila, “I thought you wanted this. And I thought you should have a big wedding. I never did, and I always found myself wishing… wishing that I had.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father and I eloped. And I wished we hadn’t.”
Too stunned to speak, Leila’s mouth dropped. While she already knew her parents had eloped soon after they’d met, her father’s devotion to her mother remained steadfast until the day he died. The entire time her mother was presumed dead, he’d never gone anywhere without her picture in his wallet. A framed photo of her had always been on his desk. Leila didn’t think he ever took off his wedding ring.
And here, her mother was saying she regretted marrying him?
As if reading Leila’s thoughts, her mother quickly added, “What I mean is, we should have slowed down.” Aisha looked at her hands in her lap. “Taken the time to have a big party. Taken the time to say goodbye to friends and family before I ran off and started a new life on a different continent. I didn’t even tell my mother goodbye. I never got to see her again.”
For a moment, Leila considered relenting. But why should she do things she didn’t want to do, just because of her mother’s regrets? “That’s the difference, though. I’m not going anywhere. Planning the party you have always wanted isn’t going to make up for the twenty years I thought you were dead.”
Aisha’s gaze snapped up, her eyes glistening. “That… that wasn’t my choice.”
Anger simmered inside Leila, the heat surging from her stomach to her chest. Her mother’s apparent death twenty-two years ago—drowning in the Nile when she’d actually been kidnapped by Faris Al-Rashid—might not have been Aisha’s choice, but it had been Aisha’s choice to later marry Faris and have another child with him. And stay married to him even after he’d attempted a heist at the Egyptian Museum two years ago, during which he’d tried to get Leila killed.
“If you didn’t want it, then why won’t you leave him now that you have the chance?”
Aisha stiffened. Her eyes darted to Sami, who was still enamored with whatever was on the screen. “I don’t want to talk about Faris.”
At the sound of that name, Leila scowled. But she wasn’t going to let Aisha brush her concerns aside again. This talk was long overdue and now that they were on the subject, she wanted to know everything. She had to know the truth. “Seriously, why are you still married?”
“Leila, I’m trying,” Aisha leaned forward, reaching for Leila’s hand. “But it’s complicated.”
“I don’t believe you.” Leila’s voice rose a few decibels. “There’s nothing complicated about this. I’ve asked lawyers. You’ll be set for life.”
“It’s not about the money.”
“Then what?”
Aisha’s gaze flickered to Sami again, then back to Leila. Her eyes were wide, red, as if she would burst into tears. Her voice shook as she spoke, “Think about your brother.”
“I am thinking about him. Get away before Faris’s prison sentence is up. Keep Sami away from that monster.”
“Don’t call him that.”
Leila’s breath caught as if she’d been slapped. “Are you for real?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Aisha shook her head, her eyes wide, her voice desperate. “Of course, he’s made a lot of mistakes—”
“Mistakes?” Leila jumped to her feet, her chair screeching across the tiles. “Your freaking husband tried to have me killed!”
The other patrons had grown quiet, and Leila became all too aware of the glances shooting in their direction. Even Sami had taken off his headphones and was staring at her. So what?
“That was Amir. His son tried to kill you.”
Leila gaped at her.
“I… I’m sorry.” Aisha’s eyes darted back and forth. “Just sit down. Please. We’ll talk about it later. We haven’t discussed the music yet.”
“You are the worst.” Leila picked up her bag and shrugged it over her shoulder. “What kind of mother are you? Whose side are you on?” With that, she stormed out of the café and into the museum lobby.
A few tourists lingered in the cavernous hall, their voices and footsteps echoing between the towering statues of ancient pharaohs and queens. Normally, Leila would be drawn into the museum’s depths, letting herself get lost in the richness of the history accumulated in the display cases. This time, she made a beeline for the front doors.
