Page 94 of Angels Are Falling

Dear God!

My gaze wandered inside the restaurant to the guests seated indoors, those who had chosen shade. Surely, they weren’t looking at Kai.

I stopped dead.

My mind must be playing tricks on me. Because it couldn’t be.

Through the window, at a table near the glass, a woman sat over the remains of a long meal. Her hair was different, shorter, carefully maintained. The man beside her had the settled posture of someone who had been in the same chair a hundred times. Two teenagers at the table, laughing at something, the boy reaching across to steal food from the girl’s plate.

I watched the way the woman angled toward the man when he spoke, not leaning forward, just shifting slightly, the gravitational drift of someone at ease in their own life.

The woman laughed. It was a real one. I could see it through the glass, the way her shoulders dropped, the way her head tilted back. I knew that laugh all too well, even though it had been years since I last heard it.

“Amelie. What’s wrong?” Kai’s voice came from far away.

“It’s my mother.”

Kai followed my gaze and looked at the happy family inside the restaurant.

“My mother’s here,” I repeated. I had heard from a distant relative that she’d moved to this neighborhood. Running into each other didn’t cross my mind, but I should have known. It was bound to happen.

“Are you sure it’s her?”

It was a fair question. I hadn’t seen her in years, but I’d recognize that laugh anywhere. She looked older than I remembered, or maybe I had just stopped picturing her as she was and started carrying a fixed image instead, the way you did with the dead.

“It’s her,” I whispered, my heart stilling.

My mother had spent the best years of her marriage to my father waiting for him to see her. He hadn’t. He was the kind of man who was always in the room and never quite present, whose attention landed everywhere but where you needed it. The divorce didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, well, except for me, and it wasn’t long before she had gone looking for someone who would actually show up for her. It hurt that she didn’t take me with her. But it would’ve been difficult to remarry with a child tying her down. She wanted the freedom to start anew without baggage.

The table through the glass looked happy. A loving family. A real meal with a man who passed the bread without being asked. Children who stole each other’s food. A woman who laughed with her whole body. It looked like what I had been building with Stefan since I was sixteen years old, and what had been disassembled piece by piece the moment a better life materialized for him.

“Do you want to talk to her?” Kai asked. Quiet. Even.

I didn’t see the point. My mother didn’t want me in her life. Even if I wanted to get to know my half-brother and sister, I had no interest in messing up their perfect family by forcing my way in. In any case, the idea of her lived in my head; it had never been my reality. It was like how I had imagined seeing Beirut with Stefan, never realizing that version now existed only as a figment of my imagination. Just like my mother, Stefan had moved on. Kai was my reality, offering me everything my heart desired. I wanted to pour myself into people who reciprocated, not beg unwilling people to love me back.

Kai waited.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t want to talk to her.” Not because I was angry. I was just done chasing ghosts.

Kai looked at me for a long moment. Something moved across his face that he didn’t bother to hide, which was unusual for him. It wasn’t pity or empathy. It was understanding. “Then let’s go.” He stood, dropping some cash on the table.

My chest did a tight-and-release thing. I was still watching my mother when she suddenly looked up.

Our gazes clashed through the glass.

There was a beat of recognition as she stared at me, wide-eyed. She didn’t call out for me. She didn’t stand. All kinds of questions were probably running through her mind. She had no idea why I was in Beirut, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t chase me down to ask. Slowly, she smiled. Small. Careful. Almost apologetic. She lifted her hand in a little wave, the kind you gave someone you weren’t sure had the right to expect more.

I didn’t wave back. It wasn’t cruelty. It was acceptance.

Instead, I found myself reaching for Kai’s hand. He looked down at our joined hands and said nothing.

I stood, and then I stepped closer to him, and he absorbed it without words. I let him guide me toward the exit.

Just at that moment, my phone buzzed. I glanced at the phone in my free hand. Stefan. I had left his messages on read since our big fight.

Stefan: I understand if you need space from me. I’ll leave you alone for now if that’s what you want. But please, Am, can we talk this out after I return? Don’t shut me out. I love you.

I stared at the message. After I return.