When the Mirror Cracks E-Book

Jan Coffey

• Herausgeber: Book Duo Creative
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 451

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Christina Phillips, grieving after a personal tragedy, leaves California for Istanbul, hoping the exotic sights and sounds and smells of the ancient city will help her heal. But when she finds herself being stalked by a young Kurdish woman and threatened by a driver who seems to know all about her family and her life, she must correct old injustices by unraveling family secrets before tragedy strikes once again. Zari Rahman fled the bombs and chemical warfare of war torn Kurdistan, seeking safety and a new life for her newborn daughter. In Istanbul, homeless and desperate, she receives an unexpected kindness that comes at a soul-crushing price. The lives of these women collide in the city where the East meets West, where together they must travel a perilous path to justice and redemption.  When the Mirror Cracks connects the past and present narratives of mothers and daughters in a tale about women and sacrifice, community and exclusion, cultural identity and the refugee experience.

Leseprobe

WHEN THE MIRROR CRACKS

MAY MCGOLDRICK

withJAN COFFEY

BOOK DUO CREATIVE

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously.

When the mirror cracks. Copyright © 2020 by Book Duo Creative.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, Book Duo Creative, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Art by David Provolo

CONTENTS

Prologue

Part I

1. Christina

2. Christina

3. Zari

4. Zari

5. Zari

6. Christina

7. Christina

Part II

8. Zari

Part III

9. Elizabeth

10. Christina

11. Elizabeth

12. Christina

13. Elizabeth

14. Christina

Part IV

15. Zari

Part V

16. Christina

Part VI

17. Zari

18. Tiam

19. Christina

20. Zari

Part VII

21. Christina

22. Elizabeth

23. Christina

Part VIII

24. Tiam

25. Christina

26. Elizabeth

27. Christina

28. Elizabeth

29. Christina

Part IX

30. Tiam

31. Christina

32. Elizabeth

33. Zari

Part X

34. Elizabeth

35. Zari

Part XI

36. Christina

37. Tiam

38. Elizabeth

Part XII

39. Elizabeth

40. Elizabeth

41. Christina

42. Elizabeth

43. Christina

Part XIII

44. Zari

45. Christina

Part XIV

Epilogue

Edition Note

Author’s Note

Also by May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey & Nik James

About the Author

For our Children

PROLOGUE

Istanbul Airport

You’ll never leave. Death awaits you here. Believe me, fate is dogging your every step. It is the wavering reflection on the tile in front of you. It is the shadow on the pillar that you pass. If you listen, you will hear it breathing behind you. Your gaze passes over me but you no longer recognize me. I’m the one whose life you threw away.

How far you’ve flown to come back to me, to come back within my reach. You are a dead woman.

You have found a perverse sense of accomplishment in destroying the lives of others. No more. Happiness and contentment will turn to ash. Your shriveled heart will be ripped from your chest and roasted in the flames of hell.

You made me suffer, and I’ll make sure that you will suffer. You made me lose those closest to me. You will lose those closest to you.

You left me with a future that was no more than a dark, starless night. You assumed I would die, but I am not dead. All this time I have been waiting here for your return, and I will have my rightful vengeance.

I’ll forgive you then…when you are dead.

PARTI

I am not from the East

or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body nor soul.

—Rumi

1

CHRISTINA

The black pickup truck comes out of nowhere, and headlights explode in a spray of glass. As the car spins, my head snaps to the side, and I’m slammed hard against the steering wheel. No. No. The baby. Please stop. Make the car stop. Suspended in a world out of control, I try to make some sense out of what is happening.

Like a rag doll, I’m flying from side to side, hitting the door hard before getting jerked forward. The belt tightens around my hips.

My child. Is the belt enough to protect the baby cocooned in my womb?

Jamming my arms against the steering wheel, I try to force my distended belly away from it, create some space, and shield my baby. I press back against the seat as hard as I can until the spinning stops.

“We’re okay, sweetheart. We’re okay.” She has to be scared. I’m scared. My heart beat drums in my ears, muffling the desperate cries of the woman in my car. It takes a moment to realize the voice belongs to me.

Bright lights flash in the passenger side just before the next avalanche of disaster arrives. Someone T-bones me. The windows shatter, showering my face and body with pebbles of glass, and the car rolls over. God, no. Don’t let her die. Please. Save her. Don’t let her die. The airbag bursts open and hits me with a blinding blow to the face and chest, smashing my arms against me.

Everything comes to a halt—time, the ugly screech and grind of brakes, the car horns. We survived…or are we dead? It’s surreal. In my mind, I’m not even in the car. I’m a detached onlooker, gazing down at a mangled vehicle with a pregnant woman inside.

Save them. Please save them. I need to get them out. My feet don’t move. My body refuses to follow directions. I blink and I’m back inside the car, hanging, suspended by the seatbelt that’s digging into my neck. The only sound is the creak of the roof as the car rocks on the pavement…and my own gasping breaths. Shards and pebbles of glass are everywhere, and there’s blood on the deflated airbag.

You’re okay. We’re okay. Shouldn’t I be feeling pain? I was coming from Jax’s funeral. Maybe I’m as dead as Jax.

The smell of tires and gasoline burns my nose. The coppery taste in my mouth is blood, and I spit it out.

Footsteps approach and someone is asking muffled, unintelligible questions. Turning my head toward the sound, my throat struggles to push the words free.

“I’m pregnant. Eight months pregnant. Save her.”

A hand touches my shoulder. There’s so much blood all around, and I can’t focus on the face of the person talking. We couldn’t have survived the accident. Hope withers and shrivels my heart.

“One casket. My baby should be buried with me in one casket.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Sirens and flashing lights approach. The car is a twisted pile of metal and broken glass. No one inside could have survived the accident.

“No cremation.”

Disembodied voices join the first one. Words become clearer.

“We’ve got you.”

I close my eyes. I want to believe them. They’ve got us. I keep repeating the words in my head, wishing for my unborn child to hear them. Four weeks until our due date, but the doctor had said she could come anytime. She’s perfect. All should go well.

All had gone well, until today. Moments from the past eight months flood my mind. Hearing her first heart beat, the hiccups that make my entire stomach jump. The feeling of her toes digging into my ribs. The kicks. The constant kicks to remind me that she’s there, taking care of me as I watch over her.

Kick me now. Please kick me. Tell me you’re okay.

They have me out of the car. All the EMTs are talking at once as they lift me onto a gurney. The glass crunches under the rolling wheels, and then I’m in the ambulance.

Sharp cramps hit me. My underwear is soaked. I know what’s happening. “First pregnancy. I’m in labor.” They would want to know. My voice is scratchy and sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. “Save her. If it’s her or me, save her. Please.”

“We’ve got you. Both of you.”

I’m a broken record, saying the same things again and again, but I feel myself fading in and out. Someone is asking me whom to call. Did they say husband, or did I imagine it?

“No…no husband. Kyle doesn’t want her.”

I force my eyes open and look into the blurred face of a woman moving beside the gurney. The ceiling lights behind her head are blinding. We’re already in the hospital, but I don’t remember getting here.

“My mother,” I say to her. “Call my mother.”

* * *

Hot bile burns like acid in my chest, and my eyes pop open as I sit up. I’m not in a hospital, but for a moment I’m not sure where I am.

I look around, trying to focus, but the memory of the accident is still right there in front of me, refusing to let go.

The sky is bright outside the open windows of the strange room, and the black screen of a TV stares back at me from the wall. My suitcase sits open on the floor next to a portable crib.

Then it all comes back to me. I’m in Istanbul. The flight from Los Angeles arrived late yesterday afternoon. Fourteen hours on the plane and a ten-hour time difference, and I was exhausted, but my brain refused to shut down. Sometime during the night, I dug out the bottle of melatonin pills. I can’t remember if I slept afterward or not. I must have.

Nausea climbs into my throat and, running into the bathroom, I bend over the toilet, heaving and retching. Where I have been, what I have done, where I am going to and what I must do are a blur. I’m traveling through time on a speeding train. There are no stops. No chance for me to catch my breath. No going back.

You have a beautiful girl.

My head is swimming with the lights and humming sounds of the hospital as I sit back on my heels.

She’s eight pounds, one ounce, and twenty-two inches.

My fingers trace the perfect nose, the clump of dark wet hair, the round cheeks.

My body is cold and clammy with sweat, and I pull myself up to lean against the tub. I take deep breaths, trying to settle my stomach.

Smells waft in through the small window over the tub, and I breathe in the aroma of Turkish coffee and spiced, fresh bread. I can’t remember when I last ate. Maybe that’s the problem.

When I stand up, I feel wobbly and hold onto the edge of the sink until the wave of light-headedness passes.

I turn on the shower and watch the water run down the marble tiles. Another memory flashes back. A nurse is holding my arm, helping me take the few steps from the bed to the shower. The sound of my mother’s voice comes from the chair by the window. Do this on your own, Christina. She’ll be right there at the door if you need her.

Every millisecond of the accident plagues me night and day. The crash, the spinning, the tumbling over and over. It all comes back to me every time I get behind the wheel, every time I see a black pickup truck on the road. In the hospital, they had the hardest time finding my veins, and still they took blood every morning. Bruises take shape on my arm, and I blink to make them disappear. A thick fog clouds my mind, and I blame it on the sleeping pills. I don’t like taking them, not even the over-the-counter types.

My stomach is tied in a knot. I step into the shower enclosure, and the water pricks my skin like a thousand needles. Do I want it hot or cold? I can’t decide, so I stand there as water beats down on me, and the swirls and patterns in the tiles blur.

Focusing on my job always takes my mind off the rest of my life, so I think of Externus, Jax and my mother’s company. That’s why I’m in Istanbul. The company is for sale, and we need to come to terms with a buyer and close the deal. I try to recall dates and schedules, but it’s so exhausting. Leaning my head against the tile, I want to shut down every troubling door of my life, but my brain keeps pulling me back to that horrible night. I can’t drag myself clear of that mangled car and the hospital.

The baby’s cry rips through the fog, and I force my head off the tile.

My vision is blurred, but my body reacts immediately. It knows what to do. Instinct kicks in. I shut off the water and grab my robe. My feet are wet, and I slip on the bathroom floor and nearly go down but catch myself somehow.

The baby is wailing between gasping coughs. She’s getting sick. The flight from LA to Istanbul was too long. She’s too young to travel. I shouldn’t have brought her.

I hurry into the bedroom and go directly to the crib. “Hush, Autumn. I’m here, my baby love.”

The morning light streaming through the window blinds me. Gauzy curtains lift in the breeze. Another flash of a memory materializes, and voices fill my head.

You can’t pick her up every time she cries, Christina.

She’s my daughter, Mother. And I’m not you.

I bend over the crib and stop dead. I stare, trying to make sense of this. A roaring sound is building in my ears. The crib is empty, the sheets stretched tightly over a mattress.

“No. No. No. Where are you?”

I whirl and spring toward the mess I made of my own bed last night, tearing off the blankets and the pillows.

“Autumn! Autumn!” My cries echo off the walls.

But I heard her cry. Where is she? Someone took her. Someone picked her up and took her. My eyes are everywhere, searching the empty room. On the door, the security bar is still latched. Panic floods through me. My hotel room is on the third floor, and it’s a long drop to the grassy courtyard below. No one could have come in or gone out that way.

My body is shaking, and tears sting my eyes. I’m hysterical when I punch the button for the front desk. Thankfully, a woman answers in English.

“Call the police. Get a manager up here. Please. Help me. I was in the shower. My baby is missing. Help me. She’s gone. Someone took her.”

The woman’s tone immediately becomes urgent. She fires directions at others in Turkish, and garbled voices come through the phone.

“The manager is coming up to you right now, Miss Hall. I’ll call the police. We’ll find her.”

The handset slips out of my fingers, and I watch it bounce on the floor. My knees are locked. I can’t move, and my head is about to split open.

Again, headlights and the crash. I’m back in the hospital, and Kyle is furious. She’s mine. My daughter, too. I should have been the first one you called. I can’t argue, so I turn my head away.

“Autumn…sweetheart.” I choke out the words. “Where are you, my love?”

There’s a loud knock at the door, and voices call from the hallway. I don’t feel the floor under my feet as I move to the door and open it.

“We’ve called the police, Miss Hall. Guards are standing at every door. No one will leave the hotel…”

I don’t want to hear what they’re doing. I only want Autumn back.

Bodies bump past each other. I back up to get out of their way and sink into a chair. I rock back and forth, trying to understand what’s happening, but I can’t think. Their voices are so loud, and they’re bombarding me with questions in Turkish and English.

“My child. Gone. She was right there. I was in the shower. I heard her crying. I came out of the bathroom. She was gone.” I say it again and again. “I didn’t leave the room during the night…No….I’m a good mother.”

I don’t see her come in, but I recognize the familiar touch. It’s a poke, actually. I lift my head and feel relief push against the anguish tearing me up inside.

“She’s gone, Mother. Autumn’s gone.” My voice breaks, and I hiccup while struggling to speak. “They took her. Help me find her.”

My mother pulls up a chair and sits facing me. “Christina, breathe.”

Shaking my head, I rock back and forth, unable to catch my breath. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Not in front of all these people. Go into the bathroom.”

Hot and cold, trauma has me shaking. “I can’t move. She’s missing!”

“Think, Christina.” This time her tone is sharp enough to shatter glass.

Turning abruptly to the manager, Elizabeth speaks to him in Turkish. A long pause fills the room. Then, heads nod and eyes dart toward me. There’s more whispering and, one by one, they file out.

“Where are they going?”

“I told you to order room service last night. But you haven’t eaten, have you?” It isn’t a question. Elizabeth closes the door and sits down again.

“What did you say to them? Why did you send them out? Where is Autumn? What has happened to my baby?”

She takes my hand and brushes away a wet clump of hair draping over my eye. “You should have kept on these people about the crib when you checked in. I should have said something to them myself. That was thoughtless.”

The crib? I glance at the crib and at my suitcase. My clothes are spilling out of it. But there are no diapers, no baby clothes, no stroller.

“Tell me about the cry you heard in the shower,” she asks softly. “Did you hear Autumn cry, Christina?”

The panic drains slowly out of me. But as reality reasserts itself, a sharp pain stabs me in the chest.

“No. There was no cry.” I take a deep breath. “There was no baby. I lost her. I lost Autumn…after the accident.”

2

CHRISTINA

That first day, the doctors called the outcome of the accident a miracle.

Autumn, born a couple of hours after we arrived at the hospital, showed no sign of stress from the trauma. Her Apgar score was eight. As I held her in my arms, the pain from the whiplash and cuts and bruises, and the haze of concussion I’d suffered during the accident, disappeared. She studied me and I watched her, her small hand clutching my finger, her trust unconditional. The happiness flowing through me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. In my mind, the circumstances that led me to keeping the baby after learning I was pregnant were justified, regardless of Kyle’s reaction or feelings.

My life was finally whole. Autumn engulfed my heart; she was in my arms. She was a piece of me, all of me. I had brought her into this world, and she was everything I’d wished for, dreamed of.

“I’m recommending a minimum seven-day hospital stay before sending you home, considering everything,” the internist explained to me the following day.

Whatever they wanted to do, any test they wished to run, was fine with me. I was happy so long as they allowed Autumn to stay in my room.

It was on the third day that my condition raised concerns. My headaches were lingering, and the doctor ordered a CT scan.

“You’ll only be away from her for an hour,” a soft-spoken nurse assured me before wheeling me away.

Autumn’s crib was rolled into the nursery. During the test, a tight fist closed around my heart, as if in warning, letting me know something wasn’t right. When I came back, my daughter’s crib was empty.

“The pediatrician ordered to have her moved into the ICU.” The same nurse escorted me to where Autumn had been taken.

Maybe they were doing another test, I thought. I tried to build a bridge of hope, thinking I could cross it, bring my baby back. But with every passing hour, with each test they ran, the supports to that bridge weakened and cracked and finally collapsed. It was then that I was told the structure was flawed to start with.

A day later, Autumn died.

Tears burn my eyes. This morning is another reminder that some sorrows never leave. The loss of my daughter will be with me forever.

The doctors had an official term for what happened to Autumn—traumatic brain injury. It had occurred during the accident. There was no way to have known it.

“You should call the front desk and explain.”

Elizabeth’s words are a slap, cutting into my thoughts of the past.

“Mother, please. Not now.” I keep my tone mild, but she knows what I’ve been through.

“You had good reason for acting that way. And it was their fault for leaving a crib in this room.”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. It’s over.”

I bury my head into my hands. Over the past two months, I’ve been trying to rebuild my life. Piece by piece. The fact is, something broke inside of me when my daughter died, and I can’t quite get a firm grip on my grief. Feelings of guilt dog my waking hours and haunt the restless nights.

The pickup truck changed lanes. No alcohol or drugs were involved, but I should have been more attentive. I should have been quicker to react. I should have…

Too many should haves rattle around in my brain.

There is no quick fix, no going to sleep and waking up and forgetting what happened. The empty crib in the hotel room this morning transported me back to the hospital nursery. My first thoughts then were that someone had stolen my baby. It was after speaking with the nurse that I learned the floor pediatrician didn’t like something she’d seen while examining Autumn.

“We’re booked in this hotel for ten days. I don’t want them to think less of you. At least, call them and explain what happened. Tell them you’re in mourning.”

My nerves are getting stretched thinner with every word she speaks. “I don’t care what they think of me.”

“But I do,” she persists. “You’re jet-lagged. You didn’t know where you were.”

I’m a fucking guest at this hotel. A paying customer. I don’t need anyone’s understanding or sympathy. But I know there’s no point in arguing with Elizabeth when she sets her mind to something. She’s doing this for my sake. To protect me. Her way of showing love is to take charge of my life.

I run my hands over my face and stand up, looking for my cell phone.

“Losing a baby is a very traumatic thing,” she says. “I had three miscarriages before I got pregnant with you.”

I’ve heard Elizabeth repeat this too many times since leaving the hospital. It’s as if she thinks my knowing what she went through can somehow diminish my pain. I need to distract her as much as I need to distract myself.

My cell phone is charging next to the bed. I fire a text to Kyle to remind him about sending the updated schedule for today. He’s been in Osaka attending a gaming convention, but he’s flying into Istanbul tomorrow night. The two of us have been assigned by my mother to oversee the sale of Externus. Kyle has been in charge of sales and marketing, and I’m the business strategy person. We’re the bookends holding the small company together until we can hand it over to the next owner.

Elizabeth Hall and Jax York married six years ago and two years later started the active-media gaming company. Since then, it’s been a five-person operation. Using a pool of freelance programmers, Externus has thrived. Now, with Jax gone, my mother is the sole proprietor. And she’s ready to sell.

“Time marches on, Christina. You’re young. There’ll be lots more babies in the future for you two.”

There’s no point in arguing with her. Kyle and I work together and live together. We were an item when I got pregnant. Thinking back, there were conversations he and I should have had long before I slid that First Response test in front of him. It should have been obvious to me that he wasn’t ready to be a father. True, he didn’t immediately pack up and move out, but I guessed it was only a matter of time before we went our separate ways.

“Before it happens next time, though, see if you can get him to put a ring on your finger.”

Elizabeth’s words make me feel cheap. There’s plenty I’d like to say to her, starting with a reminder that she was an unmarried mother too. But staying silent wins out. I’ve come to terms with my mistakes. I should have communicated with Kyle. And even though my mother did the same thing, my holding back with him was still wrong.

While I wait to hear back from Kyle, I sit on the edge of the bed and page through my Instagram account. My thumb hovers over the pictures I posted while I couldn’t sleep last night. The aerial view of Istanbul while the plane circled. The photo I took coming out of the international arrival gate at the new airport. The driver who met us was holding a sign reading Hall. I enlarge the photo and look at the woman wearing a brown headscarf and standing next to the driver. They have the same pose, the same expectant expression. They’re both waiting for us.

Elizabeth continues. “When they were leaving, I said a few words to the manager about taking the crib away. I assume housekeeping will take care of it.”

My attention stays focused on the woman in the picture. The raincoat covers her from chin to knee. Her face is washed out, sick pale. High cheekbones dominate her thin face. A surgical mask is draped around her neck, the kind people who are worried about germs in public places wear.

“She looks like she’s just seen a ghost. I hope she connects with her people.”

“Who are you talking about?”

I get up and hand my mother the phone. “Her. The woman at the airport. We saw her coming out from Customs. She looks sick. I hope she connects with her people.”

Elizabeth zooms out of the photo and stares intently at the driver and the woman standing side-by-side.

“I liked the driver. We should use that company again. I know we’re going to be busy with meetings, but I hope we’ll have a chance for some sightseeing. This is your first time in Istanbul. There’s so much of the city I want to show you.”

I leave the phone with my mother and go to the window, pulling open the curtains. The hundred-year-old hotel we’re staying in was originally built as an Ottoman jail. But with all the marbled hallways and plush furnishings, I doubt any former prisoner would recognize the place. And I do want to get out and feel the true pulse of the city, if possible.

“Who is she?” Elizabeth asks, coming to stand beside me. She’s still going through Instagram pictures. “Is she on my company’s payroll?”

Elizabeth isn’t on my page; she’s on Kyle’s. The post is from last night, and the picture shows the front of the Externus booth at the convention.

“They look pretty cozy, standing that close.”

I try to ignore the wave of jealousy rolling through me. Kyle’s finger-combed blond hair stands out amid the sea of dark-haired people in the picture. The woman beside him has jet-black hair that hangs nearly to her waist. She has a practiced smile, and confidence oozes out of her. She’s a woman accustomed to being stared at and admired.

I’ve seen her picture before on his account. He posted it the last time he was in Japan four months ago.

“Those legs,” Elizabeth says admiringly. “Everyone needs a short black dress like hers. What size do you think she wears? Maybe a two?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I reach for my phone, but she holds it away from me.

“Did you bring the black dress I bought you at Bloomingdale’s last year?”

“No. I’m twenty pounds heavier than this time last year. It doesn’t fit me.”

“Maybe you should think about going on a diet. It’s been two months already.”

My weight was an issue with her even before the pregnancy. That’s another conversation I don’t want to have right now.

Relief comes through the text notification popping on the screen, and I snatch my phone back before walking away. “Kyle says we have no meetings today or tomorrow. The first one is scheduled for Wednesday morning.”

“He’ll be here for it?”

“He’ll be here.” I pick up my suitcase and put it on the bed, sorting my clothes to put in the dresser drawers.

Cozy. I think about Elizabeth’s not so subtle insinuation that Kyle has something going on with that woman in the picture. Our relationship has definitely been on the rocks since I announced my news. But with the baby on the way, I’d hoped…I’d hoped…what, that he’d suddenly decide he’s ready to be a father? That he’d forgive me for not being forthcoming about wanting a baby badly enough to leave him out of the equation?

“What do you want to do today?”

Elizabeth’s voice puts an end to the thoughts of my fractured relationship. I need to get out and move around. Maybe it’s the history of this place as a prison, but the walls are closing in on me.

“Maybe take a walk in the neighborhood. I should get some work done too.”

“No, we’re going to a hamam. Massage. Pampering. There’s nothing like it. You could definitely use it, especially today.”

Elizabeth picks up the phone, and I listen to her speaking Turkish to the concierge, making arrangements. It amazes me that after so many years, she is still fluent. My mother knows her languages. In any given situation, she can break into German, French, Farsi, or Spanish. She credits it to being an Army brat, traveling everywhere. That and her years working as an interpreter overseas. Four of those years were spent in Turkey, during which I was born.

She did her best to encourage me in languages as I grew up. After-school programs. Native-speaking tutors. But some broken high school Spanish is the best I can do.

“I asked for a good place where locals go. She’s booking us at a traditional hamam near the Spice Bazaar.”

“Give me a few minutes to put myself together.” I disappear inside the bathroom to dress.

I pause in front of the mirror and cringe. My face is all puffed up. My hazel eyes are slits, barely visible. I shudder at my hair. It’s frizzy and totally out of control. I think of all the people who paraded through my room an hour ago.

I pull on my clothes and gather my hair into a ponytail. By the time I come out, Elizabeth has a bag packed for me. As we’re walking out, my eyes are once again drawn to the crib. It was here in the room when we arrived last night. A mistake, or a misunderstanding, by the hotel staff. The dates of the travel, the length of stay, the hotel where we’re staying were all decided by Jax months ago. He and Elizabeth had planned to come on this trip themselves. The two were to be joined by Kyle later when the acquisition details were finalized. I wasn’t supposed to be part of this trip because of the baby.

“The Spice Bazaar isn’t too far away from where we’re going. Maybe we can walk through it afterwards.”

“Lead the way. Take me were you want. You are the expert.”

Passing through the lobby, I don’t look at the people behind the desk. I can feel their eyes on me. Elizabeth walks beside me, chatting with everyone as if half of the hotel staff wasn’t upstairs this morning, searching for my imaginary infant. I think of what she said as far as explaining. I should have thanked them, at least. But I was still too numb. And it’s my nature to always react to whatever Elizabeth says. All part of a long story of our mother-daughter drama.

Outside, the doorman signals to a cab that immediately pulls up in front. The sun is shining. The leaves on a pair of trees across the narrow cobblestone lane are starting to turn.

Just as the taxi starts, I see her. She’s standing at the corner, by the door of the Seven Hills Restaurant. Sunglasses cover her eyes. The surgical mask hanging around her neck. A group of tourists are lined up, waiting to go in the restaurant, but she’s not with them. She’s watching us.

“There she is,” I say to my mother.

“Who?”

“That hijabi woman. I showed you her picture.”

“Where?” Elizabeth is distracted, counting her Turkish liras.

I look out the back window. Her face is turned to our cab as we move slowly down the street.

“Next to the restaurant. The woman in the brown headscarf and raincoat.”

“We’re in a city of eighteen million people.” She counts the coins.

“I’m talking about one face, one person. She looks familiar. Are you sure you don’t know her?”

Elizabeth finally turns around and follows the direction of my gaze. “I don’t see anyone I recognize.”

I pull out my phone and search through the photos for the picture at the airport.

“Her.” I point. “The woman who was standing at the gate.”

Elizabeth half glances at my phone and dismisses the whole topic. She’s more interested in talking to our driver in Turkish. They go back and forth, and both are smiling.

She catches me watching her and decides to take on the role of tour guide.

“This city has been the center of the world, connecting the East and the West, for thousands of years. Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottoman Turks. They all came and conquered. One civilization building on top of the last. And our hotel is in the heart of it all.”

The car maneuvers through the traffic, and she’s pointing at buildings. Hagia Sophia. Across a huge plaza, the Blue Mosque. Tourists and locals crowd the sidewalks and open spaces. Buses are lined up along the streets. Signs direct people where to queue up. Tour leaders carrying signs snake their groups along, pointing out what they should see, diverting attention away from beggars and refugees. Like a young girl with a dirty face, dressed in a ratty T-shirt and pants. She holds a cardboard sign toward my window as the cab stops for a red light. It reads in scrawled English, Syrian. Hungry. Help.

My fingers move for my purse. Elizabeth clamps her hand on mine, stopping me.

“Don’t do it. The money doesn’t go to them. Don’t enable their handlers.”

The car moves into the intersection and turns down a side street. The look in the child’s dark eyes stays with me, and my shoulders stiffen. They told me all babies are born with blue eyes. Autumn’s were blue too, a dark blue, the same as the color as the sky just before dawn. What color eyes would my own baby have eventually had? I’ll never know.

The headache is back. This car and these streets are closing in.

We take another sharp turn into a busier street, and I clutch at the worn leather seat of the cab. My fingers slide off.

Today, I opened a door to thoughts of Autumn, and I can’t close it.

My baby cried all the time. But as soon as I picked her up, she’d nestle against my bare skin, listening to my beating heart, and then she’d sleep.

I remember counting her fingers, breathing in the smell of her skin, feeling the silky softness of her light brown hair.

Kyle came and stayed late at the hospital the first night we were there. He brought me a giant vase of flowers and did a great job of pretending that he was happy. But Autumn cried the entire time he held her, as if she knew this father-daughter thing wasn’t permanent.

For the rest of my stay, he came late or his visits were short. He had to work. With Jax dead and me in the hospital, someone had to take the reins of the company. It’s sad that he wasn’t there when our daughter was born, and he wasn’t there when she died.

“Burası,” my mother says.

The driver cuts in front of a moving bus, blocking traffic as he pulls to the curb. As we get out, Elizabeth says something. The young man says something back. They’re all smiles. She even calls back to the driver of the bus, and we get a friendly wave.

Inside the hamam, cushions line the walls of a carpeted waiting room. In one corner, a low table holds a samovar and glasses for tea. By the reception desk, a potted jasmine plant fills the air with its sweet, exotic fragrance. Seeing it makes me think of the little balcony of my apartment, where jasmine grows wild with the star like flowers. A tall, fit woman greets us in broken English. I’ve worked with enough Russian programmers to recognize her accent. She looks visibly relieved when Elizabeth answers in Turkish.

While my mother is deciding on what package we’re signing up for, I look back out through the smoked glass door onto the busy street.

She’s there across the way, by a raised flower bed. The sunglasses are pushed up on top of her head, and she’s wearing the same headscarf and raincoat. She’s staring at the building.

I walk toward the door and flatten my hands against the glass. “She’s back.”

Elizabeth enjoys practicing her Turkish and is talking a mile a minute to the front desk person.

“She followed us here,” I say louder.

“Is an eighty-minute massage enough?”

I glance over my shoulder at my mother. “I think I’m going out there to speak to her.”

She finally comes over. “Who are you talking about?”

The street is crowded with locals going in every direction. From what I’ve seen, Istanbul is a city of both tank tops and hijabs, and everything in between.

“The same one we saw on the sidewalk. I think she’s following us. Are you sure you don’t know her?”

“I don’t see anyone I know. You probably are confusing one headscarf for another.”

She’s disappeared. My mother doesn’t say it, but from her tone it’s clear she thinks I might be imagining the young woman altogether. I know I’m not.

“She was there a minute ago.”

She pats me on the shoulder. “Eighty-minute massage?”

“Whatever works for you.”

My feet are dragging as I move away from the door. The Russian woman hands us each a thin red-and-white plaid towel and terry cloth slippers. As we follow her, she points down different hallways, explaining where everything is. Marble floors, marble walls, the ceilings are white too. This place feels as sterile as the hospital I was taken to after the accident.

“The hamams are separate for men and women.” Elizabeth translates. “The big pool and the steam room and sauna are over there. They do the massages in that direction. The central hamam is through that door.”

I haven’t really been thinking about what we’re doing, and it’s quickly sinking in. This is not just a massage, but a hamam, a public bath.

Ahead of us, two middle-aged women come out of the pool area, chatting away. They smile and walk into the locker room. They’re naked. The elder is pear shaped with a birthmark the size of a quarter on her ass. A red-and-white towel is draped over her arm. The younger is thin and flat chested and wearing her towel around her hair like a turban.

I stare at the towel the receptionist handed me and curse under my breath, hoping that Elizabeth stuffed a bathing suit in my bag.

In the locker room, another naked woman is blow-drying her hair in front of a wall of mirrors. I try not to stare. I don’t want to make eye contact. They’re perfectly at ease with their bodies, but I’m not. I look for any space that will offer a little privacy. There’s none, except for the toilet stalls around the corner.

Clearly, this is the norm, and I’m the aberration. Turkish women have a very different attitude than Americans about their bodies. In this culture, modesty has little in common with Western women’s inhibitions. Or my inhibitions.

The receptionist speaks to my mother again.

Elizabeth translates for me. “She only has one masseuse available this morning. We’ll have to go back-to-back. Do you want to take the first appointment?”

“No. You go first.”

I’m relieved to have answered right, as she doesn’t put up an argument and walks to the wall of lockers.

I need a little time to adjust to this. My expectations of going to a hamam were plush white robes and a masseuse behind closed doors. Probably that’s exactly the experience our hotel has for tourists, like they never left America.

I have hang-ups about my body, and my mother knows it and likes to rub it in. She’s seventy-four and petite and fit, and as toned as a forty-year-old Pilates instructor. Far different from her, I’m big boned. I was never a size zero, two, four, or six. I might have worn size-eight jeans when I was twelve years old, but not after that. The pregnancy only added on the pounds.

I stuff my bag into the nearest locker and disappear inside a bathroom stall. The door reaches to the floor, and it gives me a small semblance of privacy.

The sound of water running in a sink beyond the door makes me think of Autumn. I had given her a sponge bath at the hospital. Her eyes were wide open the whole time, watching me. She had a cleft on her chin, round cheeks, an angel kiss between her eyebrows.

The tears come, and I can’t stop them. Don’t. I can’t fall apart. I won’t. Not twice in one day. I can deal with this. I have to deal with this. I have a job to do in Istanbul.

There’s a tap on the door of the stall. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

She has a sixth sense. I use my shirt to wipe my face and flush the toilet to muffle my voice.

“Good. I’ll be out soon.”

“Where are you going first?”

“Hamam.”

“I can wait and show you the way before I go in for my massage.”

“I’ll find it. I remember the way.”

She’s silent for a few moments, but finally I hear her getting into a conversation with the women in the locker room. They laugh at something she says. Still fully clothed, I sit on the toilet and wait.

Think about work. Think about work.

It’s so much easier thinking of business. Elizabeth has promised Kyle and me a bonus once we close the deal on Externus. We’ll both undoubtedly lose our jobs, but we’ve never spoken about what happens after. I have no idea what he’s planning to do with his money or what he’ll do for work. I know what I’m going to do. I decided it months ago, even before I lost Autumn.

The hairdryer stops, and Elizabeth’s conversation ends. I wonder if the women think it’s strange that I’ve barricaded myself in this stall.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?” My mother is outside the door again.

“I’m fine. Really. I’m coming out.” I hear her footsteps drift away.

The changing room is silent now that she’s gone. I wait a minute more before stepping out. The women are all gone. But there’s a young girl reaching into my locker.

“What are you doing?”

She jumps back, wide-eyed, and waves a folded paper at me. “Korkma. O bana verdi.”

I don’t know what she’s saying. I look inside the locker. My purse is still zipped. The duffel bag with my things is sitting next to it. Neither looks touched. I think of all the warnings everyone says about pickpockets and beggars. But she doesn’t seem to be either. And she isn’t running away. She continues to wave the paper in front of me.

“O bana verdi. Amerikalı için.”

“I don’t speak Turkish.”

“Amerikalı mısın?”

“Yes.”

“Bu seninki.” She shoves the paper into my hand and goes out, looking like she’s just done me a favor.

I unfold the note and stare at the words. The writing is in English.

Welcome back, Christina.

3

ZARI

THEN

She’s mine. Mine. You can’t take my daughter away from me. I won’t let you.

Tears bathed Zari’s face. They wouldn’t let up. She’d come to Istanbul, to this hotel, prepared with the words she had to say, with what she was willing to do. But she had no chance.

The journey here was a nightmare, the hours careening along the razor edge of panic and despair. The bus from Ankara broke down in a long tunnel that cut through the green mountains. The honking, blaring sounds of car and truck horns were deafening, echoing in the steaming concrete tube that entombed them. Zari thought she would die in that darkness. The five-hour journey turned into eight, and the rain beat on the bus roof, falling in sheets as they crossed the Golden Horn into Istanbul’s old city.

The trip was torture, but this was worse. She was too late.

She paused on a landing of the hotel’s back stairwell. The walls around her were pressing the air from her lungs. But in reality, it wasn’t Zari who was struggling to breathe. It was the baby in her arms.

“I’m not going to let you die, little one.”

Giving up was not the Kurdish way. Back in Qalat Dizah in Kurdistan, before the bombs murdered her people, before the army tanks and bulldozers leveled her city, Zari grew up memorizing Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Book of Kings. Character and perseverance were ingrained in her from childhood.

She always saw herself as the intelligent and independent Sindokht. As Farangis, who raised an army to avenge her husband’s death. She was the brave Rudabeh, mother of Rostam, the greatest of all heroes. And when Zari was forced to leave behind her country and everyone she loved, she was Manizheh going into exile. The blood that flowed in their veins flowed in hers.

Memories of those heroic women from their history came to her now. They embodied wisdom, devotion, and courage. They shaped civilizations. They were mothers who fought for their families, for their people.

But today, she had no chance to be like them. She had no chance to raise her voice or fight. Zari’s body trembled. She’d come here as quickly as she could, but she was too late. Every shred of hope she’d been clinging to was gone now. Her life was shattered.

The Kurds have no friends but the mountains. It was so true. Here in Istanbul, she was alone. She had absolutely no one to help her. No one to fight with her, to stand at her side. She was nothing but a refugee, just one of the million forced to walk away from their war-torn homeland.

But Zari hadn’t walked away. She ran. With the shriek and blast of artillery shells all around her, she’d ran as quickly as she could. Cradling her swollen belly with both hands, she’d escaped the city she called home.

Joining one weary, tattered group and then another, she’d dragged herself through the rugged passes. The moon glistened on the snows of the rocky peaks as she traveled north and west into Turkey. She could still feel the bitter night-cold in her bones. And beside the trails, she’d seen the remains of fellow Kurds, mostly the old and the injured, who had not survived the arduous trek. But when they passed by the small, swaddled bundles—too numerous to count—she’d averted her eyes and whispered soothing words to the one in her womb.

Now, here in the hotel in Istanbul, Zari tried to pry open the fingers squeezing the blood from her heart.

The child flailed one arm, unable to get even a whisper of air into her lungs. The cough was getting worse by the hour.

“Breathe, my love. Breathe.”

The congestion was as thick as mud. From dawn to dusk and more, twenty-four hours a day, Zari had fed her, changed her, played with her, loved her. If she could only breathe for her.

She was no doctor, but she knew that any one of these moments could be the last. A final, exhausted try. And then surrender.

A coughing fit and the baby gasped.

“Please do it. Don’t give up, kızım.”

Kızım. My daughter.

Panic prickled down her spine. Placing the child on her thin shoulder, Zari clapped her repeatedly on the back as she descended the steps. Suddenly, a hard cough and the child drew a raspy, wheezing breath. And then she shrieked.

She hurried down, knowing the reprieve was momentary.

At the bottom of the stairwell, the door to the service alley swung open. A uniformed hotel security guard stepped forward, blocking their path. Wariness darkened his features.

“Wait.” He stared at the scarf on her head, at the heavy bag slung from her shoulder. She averted her eyes. “You’re not a guest, and you don’t work here. What are you doing inside the hotel?”

The guard spoke Turkish. Zari understood the language well enough, but she couldn’t risk speaking it. Her native tongues were Sorani, Farsi, Arabic. None of which she could speak now, for he’d recognize that she was a Kurd and a refugee. Since arriving in this country, she’d learned and spoken mostly English. She had to. That’s what she decided to use now. “I came to see a friend who is staying here. I thought she was staying here.”

“A tourist?”

“A tourist.”

“From where?”

Zari clutched the child tighter in her arms.

“America. But I was wrong.” Before he could ask the name, she motioned to the door behind the guard’s shoulders. “I’m leaving now.”

“Your baby?” He looked suspiciously from Zari’s worn, wet clothes to the child’s new coat and shoes.

“Yes. Tiam. Tiam Rahman. She is mine.”

“You are not a Turk. Show me your papers.”

The skin on Zari’s neck prickled with worry. She was illegal.

“Papers.” He extended his hand.

She could play the confused, submissive woman. It had worked before, when a policeman stopped to question her on a dark highway outside of Kayseri. Perhaps this one would let her pass, but she was so tired of it all. Tired of these men. Just then, a horrible gut-wrenching cough erupted from the child in her arms, filling the stairwell. It sounded like the baby’s lungs were being ripped apart. He stepped back involuntarily.

“Papers.”

The child flailed her arms, trying to breathe. The blood of those women of the old stories caught fire in Zari’s veins. Fierce, maternal anger rang out in her voice. “I cannot stop for you. I must get her to a hospital. Get out of my way.”

Pushing past the security guard, Zari rushed out the door and turned down the alleyway toward the street, praying he wouldn’t follow.

4

ZARI

Zari ran along the streets, praying she would find help in time. The baby was struggling to breathe.

The city was new to her, but when she found a pharmacy on a side street, she pushed past pedestrians and went in. One of the clerks approached her immediately.

“I need to find a hospital,” Zari said.

The woman eyed the wheezing child with concern. “Of course. There’s a clinic on the next street, but you’d be better off at the hospital by the Grand Bazaar.”

“Where is that?”

“Do you know the city at all?”

She shook her head. “I have just arrived.”

“Follow the tram tracks up the hill. The hospital costs money, but your child will be better off in their hands.”

By the time Zari reached the sliding doors of the emergency room entrance, she thought her own chest would burst. The nurse who took them in, checked the child’s vitals, and wrote down the information, however, was calm and reassuring.

The doctor who came in greeted Zari in Turkish. After examining the baby, he straightened up, draped his stethoscope around his neck, and turned to her.

“The congestion in the chest is heavy. She’s having more than an asthma attack. I suspect pneumonia.” He gave orders to the nurse, who hurried off, leaving the two of them.

Zari leaned over the crib, trying to soothe the agitated child. “Can you help her?”

“How long has she been like this?”

“Two days, maybe more. We’ve been on the road. But this is the worst.” The child’s lips were blue. “Can you get her to breathe now?”

“Any vomiting or diarrhea?”

“Both today.”

“How long has she had the fever?”

“Since this morning.”

“I have to admit her.” He looked toward the door where the nurse had disappeared. “We have a new respirator in the ICU that can get air into her lungs. I’ll start her on medication.”

They knew Zari was an outsider. Still, no asking for papers. No demand for money up front. No turning her away because her shoes were worn and she covered her hair with a headscarf. No ignoring her because she spoke Turkish poorly. No strange looks.

At least, not by the nurse or this doctor.

“Has she had antibiotics before?”

“Yes. Last week. And the month before. She gets like this. Can’t breathe. Bronchitis and pneumonia. She’s sick a lot.”

“Hospitalized?”

“Yes.”

“What hospital? Who is your doctor?” He took a pad and a pen from his pocket. “I’ll need to contact him about previous treatment and medication.”