“When?” His whisper was compassion itself.
She gulped, forced an answer. “T-two months ago.”
“You’re still in mourning.” It was a statement.
She exhaled a tear-laden breath. “I’ve been mourning my mother’s loss for over a decade. And the worst part was I never really got it—what was wrong with her. A friend once told me we take our psychological health for granted, that we never grasp how someone with a disorder feels. It’s true. I lived with her suffering but, no matter what I go through in life, I’ll never understand the prison of torment and despair she lived in. I can only hope she found peace. I still can’t find any, can’t stop thinking if I’d just listened to everyone’s advice and put her in an institution, instead of insisting on taking care of her myself, they may have succeeded where I failed and pulled her back from that final act of desperation.”
Her words petered out at the ferocity that appeared in his eyes. Or was it a rogue beam from the setting sun igniting the gold?
Then he spoke and there was no doubt what she’d seen.
“Never think that,” he ground out. “You did everything beyond right and into outright self-sacrifice.”
She shook her head, mortification sizzling in her cheeks. “There’s no self-sacrifice in taking care of your family. She would have done the same for me if she’d been the healthy one and I had been the one with the affliction.”
“It was self-sacrifice,” he gritted, his eyes adamant, brooking no argument. “You didn’t abandon her, someone who I’m sure people, starting with her doctors, labeled a lost cause to the care of strangers. You knew she wouldn’t have been better off in an institution. As canny as addicts are, you knew they wouldn’t have stopped her from abusing chemical substances. And she would have had the added torment of feeling abandoned by you. She would have suffered far more, before ending her life just the same. But most people would have gone that route, convincing themselves they were doing the best for their loved one while buying themselves a shot at an unburdened life. While I can’t presume to condemn them for such a choice, I can’t commend you enough for making the toughest one of all, and sticking with it. Your mother could have lived forty more years and you would have sacrificed your chance of a normal life, of building a family, for her.”
She lowered eyes that felt about to burst. Not with remembering the ever-increasing burdens or the suffocating helplessness but with Malek’s total understanding, with his assurance that she hadn’t harmed her mother, who people had called a lost cause, by refusing to institutionalize her.
When she spoke, her tear-soaked voice was almost unintelligible with anguish. “You make it sound so noble, like I gave up my chance of building a family, when in reality I never thought of having one. It must have been my mother’s disastrous experience tingeing my views of romantic involvements and domestic bliss.”
“I find it impossible to believe hordes of men didn’t try to change your mind,” he drawled, his gaze burning down her body and back to her face.
Heat rose to her face, held for a second before flooding her body. She gave him a tremulous smile, desperate to lighten the mood. “Not sure about hordes, but some tried, the so-called serious ones, while letting it drop that a man didn’t want a woman who came with such a burden.”
“So only men in pursuit of flings didn’t care about your situation,” he bit off. “While men interested in a future and a family let you know they want you only as long as you came with no burdens.”
She stared at him, stunned yet again at his laser-accurate insight. Then she shrugged. “I think any man has a right not to sacrifice the normality of his life for a stranger, to want an emotionally available—an available, period—wife.”
His lips thinned. “I think any man who wants a woman to share his life must take her with her own better and worse, not demand or expect that she gets rid of her responsibilities to provide him with peace of mind.”
To that ferocious declaration she had no answer.
She stared at him helplessly for a moment then exhaled. “Actually, none of that really mattered after all. When my mother died, I figured out the most important reason why I’d never thought of having a family. One is supposed to live first before thinking of that. I realized I never have.”
Silence thickened, along with the magma smoldering in his eyes. She felt it filling her lungs, slithering down her nerves, burning, besieging.
Then he finally drawled, “And to live, you came here. And instead of securing a lucrative job and enjoying the luxurious lifestyle Damhoor can offer someone of your assets and skills, you joined GAO. You have a singular definition of living, Janaan Latimer.”
Her lips twitched in relief at his lighter tone. “Oh, there is method to my madness. I thought that to live I had to find out who I am. I thought I had to start with exploring the other half of my heritage. So I came here to find my father.”
“Your father is Damhoorian?” She nodded and he shook his head in amazement. Then he drawled, his voice dropping to fathomless reaches, “Janaan of the ceaseless surprises.” He looked at her for a long moment, as if he were studying a multi-faceted gem. Then he cocked his head, making her heart tilt to the same angle inside her chest. “When did you find out about him?”
“All my life,” she said. “It was him who named me, though he couldn’t give me his name. He was the only man in my mother’s life, and though her psyche must have been fragile to start with, I think his loss and my birth were the catalysts that initiated her descent. She fell in love with him when she was here as an exchange student, but it turned out he was married, had children already and his family forbade him to take her as a second wife. Or to acknowledge me. He visited us a few times when I was growing up, phoned frequently, always telling me how much he loved me, how sorry was he couldn’t be with us. He helped financially by paying into a trust fund. Towards the end he called more, saying he was hoping to finally have us with him. Then he suddenly stopped calling. A few months later my mother killed herself. I think it was giving up on him that made her give up on life.”
She paused for breath, the breath the intensity of his gaze was knocking out of her lungs. She needed it, to get it all out, to lay her innermost self bare before him. “So after all the investigations into my mother’s death had been concluded, I felt like the foundation of my life had been yanked from underneath me and I was dangling in a vacuum. I guess I needed a new foundation, and just five days ago I made a decision to use the money he’d saved for me to come here, find my roots so to speak, in the country I lived my life dreaming I’d one day live in, with a miraculously healed mother, a father and siblings. Problem was, I found out the reason for my father’s silence. He was dead. And my half-siblings understandably don’t want to know about me …”