One of the security guards strode over to Auntie Hanifa. She mumbled under her breath before stalking out the sliding doors.
Lulu leveled a warning look at the crowd. “Does anyone else have anything they’d like to air out? Now’s the time.”
Everyone took their cue, promptly dispersing. Murmurs flitted through the air. There would be plenty to unpack once they were safely out of earshot, because when it came to drama, this wedding was certainly delivering.
Hena’s eye caught Irum’s. She stood off to the side, her expression unreadable. Hena tentatively approached her.
“Irum,” she said once they were face-to-face. “I’m really—”
“You have some nerve talking to me right now,” Irum said.
“Irum—”
“You lied.”
“I—”
“You lied. I asked when you last saw my brother. You looked me in the eyes and said you saw him the night before, at the mehndi, like the rest of us. You said it back then. You said it again this week.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Silly me, falling for your bullshit.”
“Irum, it was complicated—”
“The way you screamed at him.” Irum’s voice shook with rage. “You told him to leave. He left.”
“It’s…it’s not what it looks like.”
“Are you saying it was a fake video?”
“The footage was real. But there was more going on.”
“Well, I’m all ears. Go ahead. Fill me in.”
The truth hovered at the tip of Hena’s tongue. She wanted to tell Irum. She wanted to tell her everything.
But she couldn’t.
“Like I thought,” Irum said. “Sorry, Hena, but it didn’t look complicated to me.”
“I loved your brother,” said Hena. “I miss him every day. He was my best friend. Every day I wish things didn’t go down the way they did. What you saw was a fight. People fight. I never would have wanted him to disappear.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you lied,” she said. “You lied to the police. To my mother. To me. You knew where he was the morning of the wedding. All these years you kept it to yourself. What if we’d known everything? What if that could have helped us find him?”
Hena didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Shehadlied. Because she’d made a promise to Nasir. To keep him safe. Because the whole point had been for no one to find him. But it didn’t mean Irum’s stony face wasn’t tearing her apart.
Before she could say more, a scream pierced the air.
Both women whipped around. The side door next to the reception desk was parted open. Hena raced through it and found Lucinda around the corner by the service entrance. She was hunched over, shaking from head to toe.
Then Hena saw. Lying near a shadowed corner by the resort’s air-conditioning units. A body. Motionless. Blood slicked the pavement beneath her.
Hena’s knees buckled as she realized who it was.
Gita.
18
•
The ambulance had left moments ago. Two ambulances in the span of a few days—except this time they had come for a woman who had been left for dead.