Page 2 of 10 Days to Surrender

Her French has gotten good. Good enough to my ear, at least, although that bar is admittedly very low.

I reach out to open the curtain. Before I can, it gets whisked open from within.

And for the first time in fifteen years, I’m eye to eye with my sister.

My throat closes.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years of funeral-black dresses and phantom phone calls where I’d dial her old number, just to hear “this line has beendisconnected”in English and Greek. Fifteen years of wondering if her ghost resented me for staying with Leander. For becoming Ariel Ward instead of joining her in the grave.

“Jas,” I croak.

The violin in her hand hits the floor with a thunk. “Ari.”

Time takes on a funny quality. Molasses-slow and somehow taut at the same time. The girl in my memories—nineteen, trembling in fear as our father and Dragan bundled her into a black-tinted van—is gone. This woman has crow’s feet and calloused hands, a bolt of gray shot through her caramel hair. But her eyes…

Her eyes are still green, just like mine.

“Jas,” I say again.

“Ari?” Her voice is a shattered thing. “No. No, you’re?—”

“It’s me, Jas. I’m here.”

The boy at her side—Alain, I’m assuming—is baffled. He looks up at Jasmine and says something in rapid-fire French that means absolutely nothing to me, except for the very last two words:“Madame Morgane.”

My eyebrow raises. “‘Morgane?’”

Jasmine laughs and winces at the same time. “Like the fairy, yeah. It’s… I don’t know. Cheesy, obviously. I needed something to make me laugh when I picked it, because otherwise, I was going to cry.”

“I know the feeling.”

She bends down to touch the boy’s back and whisper back to him. He nods, grins, hoists his violin case, and scampers down the stairs and away.

The bell chimes.

Then we’re alone.

Jas looks at me sidelong. “Do you… I mean, you can come in if you want. But it’s my last lesson for the day, so if you’re tired, my apartment is?—”

“Let’s just sit for a second, if that’s okay. I’m… It’s been a very long few days.”

“Of course. Yeah, come in.” She holds open the curtain and I duck through.

I sit on the first thing I come across, which is an overstuffed armchair, formerly red, now faded to a pale pink by sun slanting through the windows. Jas takes a seat on a wooden stool across from me.

“You look awful,” she remarks.

I look at her. She looks at me. I look at her some more. She squints back at me…

And then we both burst out laughing. It pours out of us, fifteen years of laughs we were robbed of, laughs we should’ve gotten to share, that wewould’vegotten to share, if it weren’t for stupid, power-hungry men playing stupid, power-hungry games.

I’m laughing so hard that I slide off the armchair. Jasmine comes tumbling down off the stool and hugs me. We end up in a Chinese finger trap of crisscrossed limbs, hair tickling each other’s noses, as we laugh and laugh and laugh.

Eventually, though, the laughter fades. The inevitable tears start to well up.

I grimace and wipe my eyes. “I don’t want to cry.”

---