Page 64 of The Matchmaker

The memory comes to me unbidden. The two of us sitting at the two-person table wedged in the corner of the kitchen overlooking Dolores Park. She took her tea with one spoon of sugar. A dash of milk. She’d nod along, smiling, her head leaning against the window, her hair falling just past her shoulders, as I prattled on and on about the minutiae of my day. She’d stop me to interject questions now and then. In all my memories of her, she was always smiling. I was too young to have understood how much she’d been carrying.

“Where’d you go just now?” Azar asks.

“I’m still here. Just tired. It’s been a long day.”

I look down at my cup. Steam rises, warming my face.

“You looked a bit distant through dinner,” he says. “I get it. Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“I want to forget that whole moment on the lawn.” I shiver. “When I saw Lilah with my purse standing on the front porch and ready to rush over to me, I didn’t know what I was going to do. What would have happened if things didn’t line up the way they did?”

“But things did line up the way they were meant to,” he says. “That’s what matters, doesn’t it?”

I trace a finger around the rim of the teacup. He rests his own beverage on the coffee table.

“Is there something else?”

“Isn’t that enough?” I force a laugh.

He doesn’t smile back. His eyes are filled with concern.

How does he know? How can he always tell? It’s always been this way.

“I swear you should’ve skipped med school and joined me at the agency. We could use a clairvoyant.”

“Only when it comes to you, Nur.”

I swallow. If I change the subject and move back to critiquing everyone’s homemade structures on the show, he’ll move on too. He’s not one to keep poking. But slowly, I tell him about that evening with my khala. Why I’m newly a stranger inside my own skin. I’d only meant to outline the broad strokes of what I learned. But as I start telling him about it all, everything tumbles out of me. Fiaz. And Madiha. Every sordid detail.

When I’m finished, I feel shaky. Azar rises and leaves the room. He scoots closer when he returns. Hands me a tissue. Only then do I realize I’m crying.

“I’m so sorry.” His arm that had been draped across the sofa behind me moves to my shoulders. I draw closer to him. “That’s an enormous amount of information to take in.”

“It’s making me question…everything. About my family and who I am. What about me is real and what’s not.”

“Whatever your name was—whatever your origin story—you’re still you, Nur.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore. I just…it’s hard to wrap my head around it. All those years. Khala had a million opportunities to tell me the truth.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t know how.”

“That’s what she said, but as hard as it might have been, at some point I was owed an explanation.”

“You’re right, Nur. She should have told you long ago.”

We sit quietly for a short while. I am grateful to him for this silence.

“You know what I think? You need a break,” he finally says. “Tell the team to hold down the fort. You’re trying to keep on keeping on like nothing happened, but no one can handle everything you’ve been going through and be fine. You need time to rest and recover.”

“I can’t just take time off whenever I want. I have a client coming by tomorrow for an intake meeting. My inbox is a disaster.”

“You can always reschedule the client meeting. And inboxes are always a disaster. Ignore it.”

“Sometimes I feel like you don’t know me at all,” I tease him.

“I do know you. That’s exactly why I’m saying this. You’re tired. I can see it on your face. You need to take a full week off at the very least.”

“I can’t take that much time off. I have a wedding this Saturday.”

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