Page 1 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

W HEN I WAS A GIRL , I dreamed.

Running through my father’s orchard in pursuit of my brother, ten years older and newly returned from school. Shrieking his name when he refuses to slow down, churning my stubby legs harder.

“Farshid, Farshid, Farshid!”

The sound of his laughter floating ahead of me, till suddenly I round a leafy tree heavy with bright red pomegranates and there he is, planted squarely in the middle of the path to sweep me up and swing me around.

I giggle. He twirls faster. I laugh and beg him to stop, which only makes him gain speed, till both of us topple to the ground.

We lie in the late fall grass, the sky impossibly blue overhead.

In the distance the snow-capped mountains beckon like teeth, while to the other side the flat plains sweep on and on in an endless apron of white-frosted earth.

My country is beautiful, but I don’t understand any of this yet. I just consider it home.

Collapsed on the ground, my brother tousles my dark hair, then demands to know what sort of trouble his favorite little shekambu has been causing.

“I’m not always hungry!”

“Of course you are.” He pats my tubby little belly while I scowl at him.

“And I’m not greedy! At least I wouldn’t be if I could go to school!”

“You are too young.”

“How do you know?”

“Because schools have rules, everyone knows that.”

“I don’t know that. See, you must take me to school so that I can study these things.”

“You want to go to school to learn why you can’t go to school?”

“Exactly!”

“Soon, shekambu, soon. Next year you can have lessons on anything you want. Just remember that when the sun is calling and you’re stuck with a pile of boring texts.”

I wrinkle my nose, because I know already there’s no such thing as boring texts.

There are only wonderful and more wonderful novels to read.

I’ve already learned this from my father, a literature professor in Kabul who practically lives with his nose stuck between pages, and my mother, who spends each night flipping through glossy fashion magazines before retiring to her sewing machine to tackle her next inspiration.

I have my own stack of brightly colored children’s books. I diligently peruse them when my parents are watching, then steal from their piles when they are not. I love words. All words. I love ideas. All ideas. I love worlds. All worlds.

I love this world, and my larger-than-life big brother and brilliant baba jan and gorgeous maadar jan and crowds of aunts, uncles, cousins who talk too loudly and lecture too much and swirl through our lives as busily and prettily as petals in the wind.

We live part of the year in a walled compound in the hustle and bustle of Kabul and the other months in my father’s favorite place on earth, his country estate in Herat, where roses bloom and the orchards bear fruit and there are so many places for a little shekambu and her brother to run wild and free.

Two halves of one whole, my mādar calls us. And this sunny afternoon, lying side by side in the shade of a bushy pomegranate tree, that feels exactly right.

When I was a girl, I dreamed.

During the school year, my father trims his sharply pointed beard and buttons up his vest before heading to the university each morning. Half out the door, a distracted, befuddled mess, he will pause, turn back around.

He and my mother share a look. My brother and I have studied it many times. It is their look. We don’t understand it, but on some level, we know it’s good and we’re happy they have it.

Then my father heads off to teach, while my mother prepares more tea for her and me to enjoy.

Her long black hair is carefully coiffed and pinned at the nape of her neck.

Her brown skin is flawless, her dark brows perfect arches framing her lustrous gray eyes.

My mother is beautiful. Everyone says so, even my aunts, though they fuss over her choice in clothes and make faces that communicate both stern disapproval and powerful longing.

My mother loves fashion. She reads, she studies, she designs. Late into the night, I can hear her sewing machine whirring away. In a matter of days, she’ll produce the next stylish outfit, an ode to decades past and cities far away such as Paris, London, New York.

My mother never just goes to the market. It’s an adventure of high art, where she’ll riffle through piles of beads, rows of shoes, and boxes of hats in order to perfectly punctuate her chosen ensemble.

“Chin up,” she states each time we prepare to depart, her in a perfect hat, me in a coordinating hajib.

We exit my family’s compound to enter a sea of bustling humanity, where waves of Western blue jeans and dull-colored tunics part before my mother’s sapphire wrap dress or saffron-colored jumpsuit.

Like my aunties, the other shoppers eye my mother with expressions that are a mix of awe and disapproval.

Some gazes, under the thickly furrowed brows of darkly dressed men, follow her too long and too intently.

Their stares are filled with a kind of heat I don’t understand and already don’t like.

But when my mother catches them, she stops and skewers them with a look of her own, till one by one, they glance away.

My mother has many duties at the market.

Picking out perfect cucumbers and ripe tomatoes for the evening’s chopped salad.

Inspecting the fresh herbs for just the right bundle of mint.

But there are other activities, too. A pause here, a whisper there.

A discreet passing of one palm across another.

Like children everywhere, I know when to fade into the background.

Later my mother will smile at me and nod approvingly.

And I know we share something special, just like her and my father with their parting glance. So I never speak of these moments, not even with Farshid, who rolls his eyes and groans over how much time women spend in the market.

One day, I want to be just like my maadar jan. I will never be as beautiful but maybe, just maybe, I can be as clever.

When I was a girl, I dreamed.

The whispers start when I turn twelve.

Always behind closed doors. First my father and my mother. Then my aunts and uncles flitting about. Everyone talking, talking, talking. But no one saying anything.

My brother, returning home from his university studies. Additional murmurs behind my parents’ bedroom doors, where my mother spends more and more of her days.

Pale when she comes out. Exhausted when she returns.

My auntie, Fahima, a hawkish older woman with a relentless attention to detail, starts meeting me each day after school. Stand taller. Don’t read that. Don’t look at him. Don’t touch that. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.

Her fashion tastes run to flowing trousers and plain billowing blouses with a simple dark hijab covering her hair.

I want my mother. I miss her warm smile and outrageous outfits and fierce stare. But my m ā dar appears only long enough to disappear. A sudden shadow of her former self, patting my cheek, stroking my hair, telling me I’m pretty today—which we both know is a lie—before retiring once again to rest.

Whispers.

In our house, the city, my country, where Blackhawk choppers now circle overhead and concrete barricades expand daily, along with checkpoint after checkpoint, until a walk to the local market feels as arduous as a border crossing.

The American soldiers are leaving. Our own forces will now protect us, though safe doesn’t feel so safe anymore.

Within a matter of months, my father summons me to the hallway outside my parents’ room. My brother is present but doesn’t meet my eye.

“Your mother wants to speak to you,” my father states, his voice thick. He points to the cracked door, indicating I should go in. But my feet won’t move. For once in my life, I don’t want to know. Whatever awaits on the other side, there won’t be any books that will be able to fix this.

I gaze at my brother pleadingly, but he keeps his attention fixed on the floor.

“Two halves of one whole,” I try.

“Not this time, Sabera. Not this time.”

My father pushes the door open. Slowly, I force myself to step inside.

“Janem.”

My mother utters the term of endearment as half whisper, half sigh. I follow her hushed voice through the shadowed space till I’m just able to make out her face in a room where the drapes are tightly drawn and the bed piled high with blankets.

“Janem,” she murmurs again. The covers shift. She reaches out a hand so skeletal it’s painful to see. Her fingertips, light as feathers, dance across my forearm. She finds my wrist, clasps it lightly.

“Don’t,” I tell her. But I don’t mean for her to stop holding me. I mean for her not to say what she’s going to say. I mean for her not to leave me.

I drop to my knees, placing my forehead against the mattress, clasping her hand to my cheek. If I don’t let go, she will have to stay. The future will not happen. My m ā dar will always be mine.

She speaks, a dry rustle of words spinning around me. That she loves me. That I’m beautiful and strong and she’s very proud. That I am her daughter in every way possible, and she will always be with me, that voice in the back of my head, that feeling of warmth in my chest.

I can’t answer. I bathe her fingers in my tears. I clasp her bony hand tighter, as if that will make a difference.

Then she says what I’ve always feared. She states the words that expose our little secret, a deathbed confession involving the one piece of our relationship I’ve always known is mine and mine alone.

And I hate this, too. It makes what will happen next too real, this passing of the guard as secret keeper from her to me.

“You know.” Her words are soft. A statement of fact. “You have seen.”

I bite my lip, sullen and resentful. If I refuse to speak of the market, acknowledge everything that happens, then she will have to stay. I’m certain of it.