Page 3 of 10 Days to Surrender

Jasmine, shoving herself to a seat against the wall, nods. “Done plenty of that.”

“More than plenty.”

“You can if you want to, though. It’d be okay with me.” She pulls my head to rest against her shoulder. We sit in the sun for a while as she strokes my hair.

I’m so, so tired. My whole body is one giant ache and the slice in my hand hurts as bad as it does the moment I got it. I don’t have a home anymore, or a fiancé, or a father, or faith that everything will always work out and love will win in the end, like Mama always said it would. I don’t know what the next hour holds, much less the next day or year or the rest of my life.

But I have my sister back.

That’s enough.

2

ARIEL

Her apartment is a few blocks down from the music school. When I’m ready, we lock up the studio, then go there, holding hands the whole way. It smells like her when she opens the door and welcomes me in. Likejasmine.

“Cute place, Jas.” I mean it. It’s tiny, but drenched in sun. Window boxes spill rosemary down stucco walls.

She sets about making us two cups of tea while I wash off the grime of airplanes and taxis in the sink. She presses a mug into my hands when I emerge. Both of us settle at her kitchen table.

“I can’t stop looking at you,” she gushes. “You’re a woman now.”

I scowl at her. “Don’t start. It’s not like I was a baby when you were— when you left.”

“Not that far off!” She reaches out to pinch my cheeks. “Little baby Ari. Couldn’tstandbeing left out of the fun. Always wanted to play dress-up with her big sissy.”

“More like ‘big sissy always wanted to use me like a mannequin.”

“Mhmm.” Jasmine sips her tea. “And then you’d throw a fit and I’d have to go steal cookies from the pantry and force-feed you until you calmed down.”

“And then Baba would—” I freeze before I finish the sentence, because a rush of such thorny, twisted, complicated pain hits me that my mouth momentarily stops working.

Baba, slumping to his knees. The hole in his forehead weeping blood. Then crumpling, tumbling, like a wadded-up receipt, and falling into the orchestra pit.

Suddenly, nothing seems quite so funny.

I look up at Jasmine. I can tell there are a million and one questions burning on the tip of her tongue. I can hardly blame her for that. Why am I here now? What’s happened? What changed?

But the thought of unloading it all is so much. I don’t even know where to begin. Which loose thread do I pull on? Will the story unravel first, or will I?

I suck in a deep breath. Jas, sensing what I’m going through, reaches out to cup my wrist in her delicate fingers. “Take your time,” she says. “We’ve got that now.”

I nod, swallow, and start. “Baba’s dead.”

Jasmine goes still.

“Dragan shot him.” Then, because if we’re doing this, we might as well rip the Band-Aid clean off, get all the trauma unbagged and laid out in front of us as soon as we can, I add, “And I’m pregnant with Sasha’s baby.”

She looks at me for a long, long time.

Then she turns to look out the window.

I follow her gaze. She’s got a decent view from here. Half of it is blocked by a neighboring building, and she’s only on the fourth floor, but there’s still a beautiful slice of the city to be seen. Marseille sprawls down the coastline like a dropped dollar-store necklace—tawdry and harmless and bright. Beyond it, the sea beckons.

Finally, she sighs and turns back to me. “How… how are you here right now, Ariel?”

I shrug helplessly and let out a laugh to match. “I wish I knew. I mean, the x’s and o’s of it are pretty straightforward. But it just… It’s all spiraled out of control so fast.”

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