Amie nodded, leading him to the door. “Of course, of course. I’m glad you came to see me at all!”
Rami turned to leave, nodding a last goodbye to his future mother-in-law.
At the last moment, Amie grabbed his wrist, detaining him. “Before you go, I have to thank you.”
Rami stared at her in confusion. “Thank me? For what?”
Amie looked down at the floor for a moment before meeting his gaze, blushing slightly. “For—for helping me get well,” Amie said, almost stuttering. “I know it was you who donated the money to the hospital,” she explained, as Rami’s eyes widened in shock. “I understand that you probably wanted to stay anonymous, but I just can’t go through the rest of my life and not thank you for what you did for me.” Words were tumbling out of the woman’s lips as if she couldn’t get through them fast enough;
Rami shook his head, taking Amie’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “Wait, Amie, wait.”
Mia’s mother looked up at him, flustered.
“I didn’t donate the money. Of course I would have if I could have, but I barely had enough to keep the household expenses at that point. Where did you get the idea that it was me?”
Amie stared at him in silent surprise for a moment. The next instant, she blinked and gave herself a shake. “Well, when I was there, getting treated,” she explained, “I tried to get some information from the hospital. They said that they couldn’t help me, but I kept bugging them—especially once I got home and started recovering.” She smiled slightly.
“Somehow I think I know where Mia gets her stubbornness from,” Rami said, mirroring her smile.
“Well, I finally got to someone who would tell me something,” Amie told him. “But all they could give me was the name of the charity: Hope. That was it; not ‘Hope for Treatment’ or anything like that. Just Hope.”
Rami nodded, frowning. “So how did you come to think it was me, if there was a specific charity?”
Amie grinned. “Well, once I had the name I was able to do some digging,” she explained. “And what I found out was that the charity that donated to fund my treatment was a subsidiary of your father’s largest corporation.”
Rami blinked, staring at Amie blankly. “But that’s impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “I was in the process of selling the company then. There was no money to spare.” But even as he spoke, details began to come together in Rami’s mind. He thought he might have an idea of how the miraculous charitable donation could have happened without him being aware of it.
Quickly, Rami decided not to share the information with his future mother-in-law. He wasn’t sure how Amie would feel about his suspicions, and he wasn’t sure if the source of the donation—the true source—would want him to reveal their involvement. Instead, he shrugged. “You know, it was probably just a coincidence,” he said, patting Amie’s hand. “Maybe the new corporate owners looked up my affiliations and found out about you; they might have wanted to look good to the current employees or something. Don’t worry about thanking me—and definitely, please don’t feel like you owe me anything.”
Amie’s mother looked at him for a long time, but she let him go, and Rami hurried away from the house to his car, trying to look as though he wasn’t running away from the surprise disclosure.
EIGHTEEN
As Rami drove home from Amie’s house, his half-formed conclusion about the source of his future mother-in-law’s benefit began to solidify more and more. He was fairly certain that he would never be able to confront the benefactor in person, but realizing who he believed had made the donation warmed his heart. Rami knew that he had to discuss it with Mia; he just hoped that she would be willing to avoid disclosing to Amie. Rami whistled a little tune to himself, shaking his head and smiling at the truth that he strongly suspected he knew.
Arriving at home, he found most of the family in the kitchen. His mother was overseeing dinner preparations, while Mia held their four-month-old son in her arms, dancing him around out of the dangerous part of the kitchen. Rami’s sisters were playing a new album from one of their favorite performers, and for a moment, in spite of his momentous news, Rami couldn’t help but watch the domestic scene with satisfaction. While he was anxious to move out on his own, to be with Mia and Aziz away from the constant supervision of his siblings and mother, there was something to be said for the close-knit relationship the family had taken on when they had lost their wealth.
“There’s my future husband,” Mia said. Her voice stirred Rami out of his thoughts, and he grinned at her, crossing the room to give her a quick kiss on the lips.
“You two had better be planning an actual wedding,” Rami’s mother said with half-joking sternness. “Especially now that you’ve had a baby together, it has to be really official. None of this running off to the courthouse business.”
“Don’t worry, Ma, we’re going to have a real wedding,” Rami said, hugging his sisters before stopping to kiss his mother on both cheeks. “I promise, you’ll be able to wear a beautiful dress and tell everyone that it was you who convinced us to get married. It will be your shining glory moment.”
Amal chuckled as she checked the progress of the stews. “As long as you have some kind of real ceremony, and a real reception, I’ll be happy,” she said. “But for right now you should give your poor wife a break from entertaining your son and let her rest before dinner.”
Rami laughed, only too happy to take his mother’s advice. He had important information to give Mia—information he couldn’t tell her in front of his other family members.
Rami draped his arm around his fiancée’s waist and they walked out of the kitchen together, moving as one to their bedroom where they would have the most privacy. “I need to talk to you about something,” Rami told her, as soon as they were out of earshot.
“What?” Mia looked at him concerned. “There aren’t any new problems with your father’s businesses, are there?”
Rami shook his head. “No, it’s something good, don’t worry.” He smiled at her and then at his son. Aziz grinned back, reaching out to grab at Rami’s face. Rami led Mia into their bedroom and closed the door behind them.
“So what’s going on?” Mia settled Aziz on his back on the bed, freeing him of the swaddling to kick and twist around.
“I went to see your mother this afternoon,” Rami said, his mind still spinning with the news he had learned from Amie.
“That’s awesome! How is she doing?”
Rami smiled slightly. “She’s doing very well,” he told her. “The interesting thing, though, is that she told me she was able to get some more information on the charity that funded her treatment.”
“That’s great!” Mia beamed. “What was she able to find out?”