Page 64 of A Life Betrayed

“To honor their memory?”

Rayan nodded.

“Come with me.” Imam Amir ushered him into the building and led Rayan through a series of corridors that smelled of agarwood and sparked a flurry of memories, like a key unlocking a cage.

“Who are you wanting to memorialize?”

“My mother. And my brother.”

The imam stopped to look at him. “We’ll want two plaques, then. Side by side so they can be together.”

Rayan’s breath stalled in his lungs. The two of them, lost separately to the world beyond, would finally be reunited. While he could no longer be with their mother, the least he could do was ensure that Tahir didn’t share the same fate.

“Together,” Rayan murmured, astonished at the peace that thought brought him.

They walked outside to a large area of land behind the building, filled with modest graves. The imam paused to recite a short greeting to the cemetery’s inhabitants, wishing them peace. Rayan gazed out across the grassy field, where a line of mature oaks marked the perimeter. In the far corner by the boundary fence was a stone garden dotted with small concrete plaques.

Imam Amir led him down to the garden and gestured toward several available spots. “We know a ritual burial isn’t always possible. Family may live overseas or have been put to restelsewhere, so the plaques allow us to hold a place in their honor.”

Rayan stopped when he reached a section of the garden that was shaded by nearby trees, tranquil, quiet. “Here.”

“A beautiful place. Inside, we can discuss your chosen verses.”

Rayan followed him back through the cemetery and into the reception building. The man opened the door to a small room off the hallway and stepped inside. From the doorway, Rayan could see the prayer rug in the corner, positioned before an alcove in the wall where the Quran lay open. He froze, unable to cross the threshold. To him, it was no longer anything but superstition, yet to his mother, it had been important. He could not bring what he’d become through that door.

“I can’t,” Rayan said, a tightness in his throat.

The old man turned and gave him a thoughtful look. “Wherever your life has taken you, son, and the ways in which you have strayed from the path, know that Allah’s divine mercy has the power to pardon even the gravest sins.” Imam Amir pulled out a chair across from the desk and indicated for Rayan to sit.

He made his way into the room, and they both sat down, the imam reaching for his glasses resting on the desk and placing them carefully on the bridge of his nose. “Now, let us talk of your mother and brother. Tell me their names.”

Rayan said their names and, like a river bursting its banks, began to speak—about his mother and those Saturday mornings, the books she’d given him, the nights when he’d been sick and she’d kneel by his bed, stroking his hair. He spoke of his brother and the fights they’d had, the rivalry, and those days on the street with nothing but the knowledge that each was all the other had. Before him, Imam Amir sat perfectly still, listening.

Rayan spoke until the words dried up in his mouth and he fell silent. Then the imam picked up his pen and, in scrawlingcursive, wrote two separate lines of scripture onto a sheet of paper. He slid it toward Rayan, and it was as though the man had known his mother and Tahir without ever having met them. Rayan nodded, and Imam Amir smiled, gathering everything up into a neat bundle.

“The plaques will be ready in a few weeks and installed shortly after.” The imam took Rayan’s payment and stood. “It was a pleasure meeting you, young man.”

Rayan got to his feet and was struck by a resounding sadness. To think he’d denied them this peace for all those years. “I should’ve done this a long time ago.”

Imam Amir laid a hand on Rayan’s shoulder. “But you are here now. And that is all that matters.”

Mathias’s mother was unusually reserved when he arrived at her apartment that afternoon. Now that the decision had been made, there was a list of things that required his attention, and he wanted to make the most of the lull that had followed their interference in Truman’s plan. Allen had gone quiet, but he knew it was only a matter of time before she appeared to lay down the next obstacle for him to vault over.

His mother stood at the front door, her forehead furrowing, before leading Mathias into the kitchen and reaching for the kettle to heat water for coffee. This wasn’t one of his regular calls—she was well aware that he wouldn’t willingly visit her more than once in the span of a month. Even that had been too frequent for Mathias, the need to leave kicking in as soon as he set foot inside. It felt oddly freeing to be here on his own terms rather than out of some misplaced sense of filial duty.

Marguerite made the coffee in silence, and Mathias took a seat at the kitchen table, watching her. As an adult, he’d grownaccustomed to her endless chatter, but this felt more like the mother of his childhood—cold, sullen. They’d shared the same space but had always seemed to occupy different parts of it. When Mathias was young, she would breeze past him without a word, as if he was in her way and it was easier to simply pretend he wasn’t there. Unless she needed him, of course, and then there was nowhere in the apartment to hide. Even then, he’d known it wasn’t really him she needed—he just happened to be the person closest.

His mother placed two cups of coffee down on the table and sat across from him. She pressed her lined lips together, small wrinkles appearing at the corners of her mouth. Despite the impromptu nature of his visit, her makeup was applied perfectly.

“This is unexpected,” she said.

“You’re always at me to come by, so here I am.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Something’s different. You’re different.”

Mathias realized on some level, she already knew he was leaving—she was primed for it. His mother could smell desertion coming from a mile away. His gaze moved to the collection of vitamins and supplements lined up along the kitchen counter, a shrine to his mother’s unrelenting effort to maintain herself and delay the inevitable. Staring at the jars and vials, he recalled another bottle—small, amber, with a prescription label affixed to the front.

“When I was eleven,” Mathias said, the memory coming back to him in slow motion, “he called to say he wouldn’t come anymore, and you emptied a bottle of pills into your hand. Said if I didn’t call him back and make him change his mind, you’d swallow them.”

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