The Tyrant's Daughter (17 page)

Mr. Gansler is also using my mother to spy on my uncle. That’s the only explanation I can live with. The only reason she would willingly contact the man who murdered her husband. Even my poisoned mind can’t accept that she’d do it voluntarily.

She’s doing it for me. For me and for Bastien, that is. She’s doing what she has to do to take care of her children. To keep us from being evicted, to buy us new shoes, to feed us. This theory allows me to keep my mother. To not hate her.

I have no idea if it’s true.

Finally, Mr. Gansler comes downstairs. If he is surprised to see me, he doesn’t show it. Is surprise the first thing they train out of a CIA officer?

“Laila. It’s been a while. How are you?”

I don’t return his greeting or his carefully neutral smile. “Can you just tell me one thing?” I ask.

He glances at his watch. “I’m not sure. What is it you want to know?”

“Whose side are you on?”

Darren Gansler
can
look surprised. Briefly, anyway. Then the slippery bastard winks at me.
Winks
. He’s already walking away as he answers. “Whichever side is winning, Laila.” He looks proud of this answer, so he says it again over his shoulder. “I’m always on whichever side is winning.”

And with that, our conversation is over, proving once more that I am the Invisible Queen. Easily ignored, easily dismissed.

I want to hurt him, to throw something at his back as he walks away. My shoe, perhaps. I can practically hear the glorious sound of hard heel on thick skull. But I don’t. We need him. I know that, even if I hate it. So I control myself, taking deep breaths. I won’t throw anything now, but neither will I continue to be a passive bystander.

No one will answer my questions, so I will have to find the answers on my own. I
am
involved. I
will
be heard.

“Are you sure we won’t get caught?” I ask Ian this for the third time.

He laughs. “Relax, Laila. This is the perfect place to practice. There’s no one around.”

I am eager to begin my search for answers. I itch to toss our apartment, to look under cushions and mattresses, to open, to find, to redial. But Mother rarely goes out, and so I will have to wait. In the meantime, I am learning to drive.

Ian has a driver’s license but no car. I have a car but no license. Together, we make a whole driver. Theoretically. If only I could manage to keep my foot on the gas pedal long enough to make any progress. Some reflex deep within causes me to slam on the brakes the second I get any momentum.

I’m also distracted. Ian smells nice, woodsy and toothpasty—a more appealing combination than it sounds.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you driving?” I’m delaying.
We’ve been here nearly an hour and I still haven’t been able to correctly angle the car into any of the thousands of empty spots in the parking lot of an abandoned mall. No matter how many times I try, I end up crooked, straddling the lines. Ian may not be frustrated, but I am.

“Try it again. You’re getting closer.” He points to a spot three rows over. “I’m saving for a car, but it’s slow going. Technically I have enough for the car, but it’s the tags and the insurance I can’t afford yet.”

This gets my attention. “Can you make me a list? Please?”

He braces himself against the dashboard as I jerk to a sudden stop. “A list of what?”

“Those things you just mentioned. Tags and insurance. And anything else. How you register a car, that sort of thing.”

His eyebrows climb. “So let me get this straight: you’re too young for a license, you have no insurance, and your car isn’t even registered? Forget what I said earlier—you
are
going to get us arrested.”

He must see the panic on my face, because he quickly reassures me: “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You’re fine as long as we stay in this parking lot. But I’ll take the back roads home. Just in case.” He gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. He’s better than a seat belt at making me feel safe.

“Let’s take a break. I don’t want to practice anymore.” The car seems more trouble than it’s worth. Besides, I can’t picture my mother doing this—enduring shaky starts and jerking stops until she finally masters driving.

“Good timing—I’m starving.” Ian reaches into the backseat for a plastic bag and pulls out two bags of chips and two
cans of soda. “Which do you want? We have salt and vinegar or barbecue chips.” His gold-brown eyes twinkle in the sunlight as he changes to a campy French accent. “Only zee best for zee mademoiselle. Zee finest delicacies from zee finest convenience store in town.”

I wrinkle my nose and just take one of the cans.

“What’s wrong with chips?” he asks. “Breakfast of champions, second only to cold pizza in the morning!”

“Ugh, I hope not.” I shudder. Then giggle.
Did I really just giggle?
Ian’s banter renders me happily foolish.

“You’re not a fan of good old-fashioned American junk food, huh?” He opens the bag of barbecue chips with a flourish.

“It’s just—” I try to think of the nicest way to phrase it. “The food here is so … 
loud
.”

He mulls it over, then laughs. “I never thought about it like that, but I see what you mean.” He makes a show of crinkling and crunching his way through a bite of chips, then laughs again as I open my soda with a sharp crack.

He tilts his seat back and shifts so that he’s almost facing me. “I’m glad you asked me to teach you to drive. Even if you aren’t doing much driving.” He grins as I stick my tongue out at him. “You’ve seemed a bit, I don’t know, distracted or something lately.”

I can’t argue with that.

“I thought it might be because of your family stuff. The General is getting some pretty bad press lately. He seems like he’s in over his head, to put it mildly.”

The muscles in my shoulders go rigid. Where did
this
come
from? I stare straight ahead. I don’t want to look at Ian right now. I made myself clear the other day, so why does it feel like I’m being interviewed?

For once he doesn’t notice my reaction. He presses on, and it just gets worse. “Has anyone in your family been in touch with him? I mean, I’d hope not, not after what he did to your dad. But he is your uncle, so I assume that someone somewhere in your family tree is still talking to him?”

The buzzing starts in my ears again. It’s almost drowning out his words as he continues to talk to my profile. I focus on a distant point—an old movie theater marquee advertising films long gone.
Why would he ask this? Of all questions, why this one?
It could be a coincidence. I
know
it’s a coincidence. But it’s too late. Something in me has already shifted, and my poisonous thoughts are burbling over, fizzing and spitting like the warm soda in my hand.

Finally, he notices. “Hey, I’m sorry, Laila. I didn’t mean to upset you. We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. I just …” He trails off. “I’m just interested in you. I’m just trying to know you. To understand you.” He’s leaning toward me, trying to grab my eyes with his, trying to get me to look at him.

“We should leave now. You drive.” I get out of the car and walk around the front. I stand outside his door until he opens it and steps out.

“Laila—” he starts. He sounds miserable.

But I slip around him into the passenger seat and shut the door. He stands, looking at me through the window for a long minute before his shoulders slump and he makes his
way to the driver’s side and starts the car. “I’m sorry, Laila. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m an idiot.”

Or a spy
. There, I’ve thought it. Most of me knows it’s a stupid, laughable idea—the delusional notion of someone who has watched too many movies. After all, Ian’s original appeal was the fact that when I’m with him, I’m just a girl and he’s just a boy. Nothing more complicated than that.

But in my experience there are always complications. And rarely coincidences.

And my life—my history—contains more spies than boyfriends. I don’t have room in my head for any new fears, no matter how ridiculous they are.

“Take me home.”

He taps the top of the steering wheel with his fist twice, slowly. He wants to say more, I can see it, but he doesn’t.

We drive home in silence.

At last the door closes and I am alone.

Bastien came home two days ago with a note from his teacher requesting a meeting with his parents. The surprising plural of that word made me wonder what legends my brother has been weaving for himself.

They left a half hour later than planned—a delay that had me nearly screaming with impatience. Bastien was sloppy and morose, first losing track of one shoe and then insisting that he couldn’t leave until he’d found his gray sweater—no other sweater would do. Mother wasn’t much better. She changed her clothes twice and frowned her way through an excruciatingly slow cup of tea before heaving a deep sigh and finally walking out the door.

I begin immediately. There aren’t many hiding places, so this shouldn’t take long.

Mother’s bedroom is surprisingly tidy. Dresses are carefully
hung in the closet, makeup tubes and bottles are organized by size on top of the dresser, and drawers contain only ordinary, folded things that are supposed to be found in drawers. There are no pictures on the walls; there is no ornamentation anywhere. Even the bedspread is plain and utilitarian, and the jewelry box I was certain she once had is nowhere to be seen. The room makes me think of Amir’s apartment. It is the bedroom of someone who does not plan to stay long.

The secrets lie under the bed.

Everything I need to know is contained in a single cardboard box, the low, flimsy kind that might be used to gift wrap a man’s dress shirt. I’m almost disappointed—my mind had concocted entire roomfuls of evidence. In reality, there is curiously little—a few photos and a small stack of papers.

I pull out the photo on top. It’s darkly framed in heavy wood, a gaudy state seal fighting the image for attention. The picture is familiar—a candid shot of my parents on their wedding day that used to sit on the desk in my father’s office. The event was a major affair, choreographed and formal, but in this picture they look as if they were alone. They’re staring into one another’s eyes, transported. My father is fierce as he gazes at his new bride—he looks protective and consumed. My mother is a glowing version of herself. The woman in this picture
adores
.

The next picture in the box erases my nostalgia.

It’s another candid shot, this one more recent—two brothers standing side by side in happier times. At least my father looks happy. My uncle looks the same as always: ill-tempered and uneasy. Every inch of him is a living, breathing
condemnation of my father. His beard, groomed in the style of those worn by religious scholars in my country, practically points at my father’s clean-shaven face, accusing him of giving in to modern vanity.

The faint, bluish smudge on my uncle’s forehead announces to the world that
he
is more devout, that
he
bows lower in prayer: low enough and often enough to leave a constant bruise. I always suspected him of bashing his head against walls when no one was watching—he was far too proud of that badge of faith for it to be genuine. Next to him, my father’s faithless skin is unblemished—the devil’s own complexion, if you were to believe his brother’s accusations.

Even the clothing worn by the two men in the photo is a source of tension. My uncle, who never wears anything but a military uniform or the traditional collarless shirts of my country, used to mock my father’s silk neckties. “You look like a Western dog wearing a leash,” he said more than once over our dinner table. Each time he said it my mother ordered more ties from her favorite shop in London the next day—spiteful gifts that became a running joke between my parents.

“What did you know? What were you planning?” I whisper the questions out loud before I realize that I don’t know which man I am asking. Both of them had a head and a heart full of secrets when this photo was taken. I shove the picture aside in disgust, flipping it over so I don’t have to look at it.

But then I pick it up again. This time I focus on my father’s image, searching. I see a mouth that used to sing me silly songs, eyes that used to wink at me, and a nose that looks exactly like my own. I can’t find any hint of a monster, no
matter how I try. The man in the photo is just my father—no more, no less. My father, with a dead man’s smile on his face.

I can’t get distracted now.

I flip through the documents, not even really knowing what I’m looking for. There are bank statements with grim balances and legal documents bearing looping signatures and heavy stamps from American officials. There’s also a map from home, heavily marked with red and black ink, and one page of handwritten notes.

I try to decipher the writing, but it makes no sense. The entire page is covered with long number sequences and strange punctuation. Some numbers are crossed off; others are circled. One sequence is underlined twice—angry red slashes that dent the paper with their force.

What kind of secret code is this?
Even without understanding the meaning of the numbers, I know I have found what I’m looking for.

I glance at my watch, debating what to do next. On the one hand, I feel totally justified in snooping. Mine is a righteous sort of treachery if ever there was one. But if I’m caught, the notes are sure to disappear. I will lose all access to my mother’s secrets.

The fear of being cut off makes my decision for me. I race to my bedroom with the page and feverishly copy as many of the number sequences as I can before my nerves make my hand start to shake. I don’t know how long my mother will be gone, but I’m guessing she’ll keep the meeting with Bastien’s teacher very short. It’s not in her nature to be lectured or counseled, and she’s apt to walk out if she hears even a hint of criticism.

The notes are back in the box, the box under the bed, the bedspread smoothed, and my face arranged into careful boredom by the time she comes home.

“Laila, please get something started for dinner. I’m going to take a bath.” She’s rubbing little circles into her temples like she’s trying to unwind a headache. “Bastien, this conversation is not over.”