Page 71 of You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Feyi opened the door quietly and went back toward the library. “Alim?”

She stepped into the room, pushing the door ajar. He was standing by the French doors, his shoulders curved in as he watched his daughter’s car recede and get swallowed by the greenery.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. She wanted to go up to him and touch him, take his hand, hold him, but she wasn’t sure if that would be welcome.

“I’m sorry if you heard any of that,” he said, still looking out. “I’m not sure how loud we were.”

“I came downstairs,” she confessed. “Heard some of it.”

“Hmm.” He just kept staring out through the glass and for a moment, Feyi wanted to disappear because it felt like he didn’t even notice or care that she was there.

“Do you want me to leave? Like, do you need a minute?” She hated herself for letting the insecurity show in her voice, the slight plaintiveness that colored her questions.

Alim looked at her and frowned. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” He reached out a hand. “Come here.”

Feyi stepped forward and slid her hand into his, feeling some tension loosen as soon as she was touching him, close to him again. Alim pulled her against his body and Feyi laid her cheek against the crisp white cotton of his shirt. Her head fit under his chin and she held him as tight as she could.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure what she was apologizing for, other than the pain she could feel knotted up in him.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice winding among her braids. “You’re perfect.”

Tears stung at the back of her eyes. How could he say that?

Feyi felt a wave of guilt pull up through her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “this is all my fault. I don’t want to drive a wedge between you and your daughter, it’s already bad enough with Nasir …” She dropped his hand and took a step back. “Maybe I should go, Alim, just for a bit. Just till they calm down. It might be—”

“Feyi.” Alim’s voice was low and tight, but it cut through the fog of her worry, and she looked up at him. He had closed his eyes. “Don’t do that,” he said.

She twisted her hands together. “Do what?”

“Don’t make it—and I mean this in the gentlest way pos-sible— don’t make this about you.” He ran a hand over his face and didn’t quite look at her. “If you’re going to leave, then leave for yourself. Don’t make it sound like you’re leaving for me. I’ve already told you what I want.”

Feyi wanted to object, but his read was too accurate, and so she stood there, speechless. Alim glanced over at her, and his eyes were shuttered windows. He looked so tired.

“I’m going to go for a run, okay?” He kissed her cheek lightly and left the room.

Feyi looked around the library, then sank down on a chair, dropping her face into her hands. After a few minutes, she pulled out her phone and texted her therapist, asking if she had time for a session in the next day or two. They had an arrangement built over the years since Jonah died, that Feyi could reach out any time and ask to talk, even after they discontinued their weekly appointments. It had carried Feyi through the dark years before she decided to live, and she knew it was important to recognize old faces, the moment the anxiety became louder than a background hum, when it jumped in front of your face and instead of seeing the people you cared about, all you could see was the thrumming noise, the fear, the voice seizing everything around you to confirm that you weren’t wanted, that you were the problem.

This wasn’t something she could keep expecting Alim to hold. He had enough of his own and this was hers, her monster to fight and slay and skin, dry it in the sun, hang it on her wall as a reminder that she was more than what the voices in her head tried to tell her.

Feyi waited in the chair until her phone pinged with available slots from her therapist, then she sat back, relieved. It was time to shift some things.

• • •

The session wasn’t until the next day, but just having it scheduled settled Feyi’s stress considerably. She went out into the courtyard and did some meditative stretches to re-center herself in the thick heat, techniques she’d had to learn after the dark road. In the back of her mind, ideas for Pooja’s commission were swirling around.

What did survival mean? Madness, certainly. Guilt, but she didn’t want to lean into that. It leaned into you hard enough already, it didn’t need encouragement. Feyi could feel it even now, trying to replay the conversation she’d just had with Alim before he walked out. The guilt whispered that she was a burden, a child who couldn’t control her feelings, that he would get tired of reassuring her if he wasn’t tired already and the rift with his children would be her fault if things didn’t work out.

Feyi extended her arms above her head and tilted her neck back, brash sunlight falling on her face. The guilt was a liar—she had to remember that. It was possible that Alim could get tired of reassuring her, but it was Feyi’s job to reassure herself, too. That was work she had to do with her therapist, to take responsibility for her own feelings. She was grown, and so was Alim. They would both live with their choices and be the ones accountable for them. It would be messy, but so was surviving.

So, madness and mess. Something that took up space. Something that felt furiously alive, because survival could be so very, very angry. Feyi had seen a glimpse of it in Pooja during their lunch, had felt it in herself while confronting Nasir at the museum. Madness and mess, anger and life, but the anger was specific, a fire fueled by grief. Heart-rending, cloth-rending grief, but it couldn’t return to that place she and Alim had talked about, the place you might never get out of. You weren’t alive in that place.

Feyi stopped her stretches and went into the kitchen because her left temple was throbbing slightly. She was dehydrated and probably needed to eat as well. There was a jug of cucumber-infused water in the fridge, and Feyi stared at the rest of the shelved contents as she drank down a glass. She wanted to make Alim something for when he got back from his run. It obviously wouldn’t be as amazing as anything he made himself, but he was always the one doing the cooking, the reassuring, the caretaking, and as much as it was easy to fall into that because, my God, it felt amazing to have someone care for you like that, Feyi knew it wasn’t healthy to leave it that imbalanced. He needed to know he was safe with her as well, not ambushed by her anxiety, unseen by her fear, and all that.

Feyi already knew there was no way she could cook something fancy from scratch, but what she could do was jazz up a simple recipe. She pulled out her phone and looked up grilled cheese recipes, then hit shuffle on one of her favorite playlists, letting the music bounce around the kitchen as she started cooking. Feyi heated up a skillet and added some butter and olive oil, then roughly chopped up fresh thyme and rosemary from the herb corner, swirling that in the fat with salt and pepper. So far, so good. The recipe she was attempting called for caramelized onions, so she diced a white onion and added it to the pan, stirring until the onions started to soften and brown, then shook in some brown sugar. It felt counterintuitive to add sugar to a grilled cheese recipe, but if there was anything Feyi had learned from watching multiple seasons of Nailed It!, it was to follow the damn recipe and not fuck around. She slid the onions out onto a plate; a few of them seemed a little crispy, but Feyi figured that charred could be a flavor. Technically.

More butter, more rosemary in the skillet, then she pulled out two slices of pumpernickel bread and here was the truth—of course Feyi had cooked before. Her mother would have been appalled to hear her say that she didn’t know how to, but a life was a complicated thing, and Jonah had loved cooking, so he’d done most of it and between him and her mother; Feyi got by for years without having to cook. After Jonah died, she hadn’t picked it back up. What was the point in learning how to scale down, how to make things in single portions? What was the point in cooking in bulk, freezing Tupperware as if you believed in a consistent future enough to plan meals for it?

As she spread mayonnaise on the slices of bread and slid them into the sizzling rosemary butter, something tight eased up a little in Feyi’s chest. She was alone, just with herself, remembering the creeping peace of putting something together on a flame, the sounds of bread turning gold, the rhythm of grating Gruyere cheese and layering it, then watching it soften and melt. Feyi spread the onions on the cheese, then sandwiched the pieces of bread together, turning the stovetop down to its lowest setting. She was watching it so closely to make sure the bread didn’t burn while the rest of the cheese melted that she didn’t hear Alim come into the kitchen or see the slow smile as he took in the sight of her.