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Falak is gone.
His wife—his cunning, manipulative, terrifying, charming, beautiful little wife—is gone. Falak is gone. Falak is dead. He felt her dead throat pulse nothing against the skin of his shivering fingers, her eyes wide open still, staring into nothing, looking peaceful and still as he’s ever seen her in his life, dead as the day she was born, and she’s gone.
Falak is gone.
Gone.
“Daddy,” Tala muses and lets go of his hand. “I wanna get more seashells.” She takes off, little feet pattering against the beach sand, right to the breezy shore in her hunt.
It breaks Karim out of his trance. He smiles at her, light of his life, and nods. “Go ahead, my love.”
Falak is gone.
Tala’s sweetness, unbridled purity, dislike for Alma, it makes Karim think—she’s Falak’s daughter. He was a sweet boy at her age, but she’s her momma’s daughter too. He sees the coy, pure, happy teenage girl he fell in love with.
Falak had that purity in her. Falak had that sort of unbridled childlike curiosity, an inherently endearing quality to everything she did; even when she was livid, huffed and puffed and stuck her nose in the air and said things that cut bone-deep, intended to haunt and cause destruction, all Karim thinks now, now that she’s gone, now that he loves her again, now that she lives and breathes in his every move and vibrates from each and every fibre of his body—she was a hurt child hurting others, the best way she knew how to. They say hurt people hurt people. Falak was dying, wasn’t she? She was past the point of hurt. She was irreparably damaged, sick to her soft core. Falak’s venom was just an amalgamation of the poison she had rotting inside of her. She couldn’t let it destroy her. She did the only thing she knew how to, sucked it up into her throat and hurled it, purged and purged until everything around her was just as rotted as she was.
She hurt people. What else could she have done? What was she supposed to do? A girl, then a woman, that had never been cared for, loved, taught what to do and what not to do, set off into the world with nothing but the knowledge that she had to hurt people. It makes Karim’s heart ache. It was all she knew. Even in the throes of her love for him, she hurt him. She knew nothing else. What else was she supposed to do, to know, to live?
Alma never hurt anyone before her. Alma had a uniquely pure quality to herself as well. Butterfly-delicate, sensitive as silk sheets, breathe over the tender skin of her flesh and she’d bruise and take off from you, ever the little enigma.
But as she stands in front of Karim, head to toe in angel-white, hair down, with that small, cherubic, saddened smile on her face and her eyes glittering for him, all he feels is disgust.
She stands there in angel-white, glistening for him, and Falak is gone.
Everything I’ve ever done was for you, Karim. I did what any other woman would’ve done. I protected my family. My husband. The father of my child. Tala. Everything I’ve ever done has been for you. But you don’t see that.
I hate you. Oh my fucking God, I hate you with everything I have inside me.
“Can we,” Alma murmurs, little voice breaky and female-fragile, “talk about us?”
Falak is gone.
He stares into Alma’s beautiful eyes, his irises darting from one to the other, over and over, teary.
“You’re not the woman I fell in love with.” He speaks simply. Choice words. His mouth tastes of bile. “You’re not who you once were.”
Falak is gone.
It’s all for you. Everything I’ve ever done—it’s all for you, I fucking hate you, I hate you, I hate you I hate you I hate you I
Karim runs to Tala, grabs her little hand, and takes off running. Sick to his fucking stomach. He nearly hurls on the trek back to his car.
Tala doesn’t question him, only runs as fast as her tiny body can let her. Smart girl. Unbridled purity, a dislike for Alma—when he sets her in the backseat and rushes to shove himself into the driver’s, she keeps quiet, then, when they’re halfway home, shows him all the seashells she had gathered.
He aches, head to toe.
Falak is gone.