attorneys who were in charge of her father’s estate, and she had done it because she knew she had to—that she couldn’t expect Amie to handle all of the details on her own. Mia knocked gently at the door. “You forgot your coffee,” she called out softly.
“Can you bring it in?” Rami called back. Mia opened the door as unobtrusively as possible, carrying the mug towards Rami’s desk. “Yes, I will need to arrive as early as possible…I’d prefer first class, but if that’s full… Of course, but please call me back quickly, there are many other arrangements I need to make today.”
Mia stepped up put the mug down by Rami’s hand and stopped to watch him silently for a moment. His eyes were still bleary from the late night of drinking, but his voice sounded steady, clear and polite. Mia smiled slightly, proud that he was stepping up—for the moment at least. She took the few steps around his desk and silently leaned in to press a kiss to the top of his head before retreating from the room, closing the office door behind her.
She sat down on the couch once more, at a loss for what to do with herself. Clearly Rami would have to be with his family in the next few days. Based on his mother’s reaction to her, Mia would just as obviously need to remain behind. A funeral is definitely not the place to remind his mom that I’m carrying her grandchild. Her as-yet illegitimate grandchild. I can just picture the scene. Mia shuddered. Her hands shook slightly as she picked up her cup of tea; she wasn’t sure what to do with herself.
About an hour later, Mia was running out of “normal” activities to occupy herself with when suddenly Rami emerged from his office. He came to her in the kitchen where she was making a start on some lunch, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the lips. “Thank you for bringing me my coffee,” he said quietly.
“I figured you’d need it,” Mia said, half-smiling. “Are you okay?”
Rami nodded. “I sort of feel numb. I was never really close with my dad, but my family needs me to be there.”
Mia hugged Rami a little tighter. “I take it you’re taking the first flight to wherever it is you need to be?” He nodded again. “Well I’ll watch the house for you, and take care of things here.”
Rami pressed his lips together. “I want you to come to the funeral,” he told her, his voice gentle. “I know you probably don’t want to—and I have no right to ask for your support—but I would really appreciate it if you were there with me.”
“Are you sure I won’t just be causing a bunch of drama?”
Rami shrugged. “It’s a funeral. There’s going to be drama whether you’re there or not.” He smiled slightly. “But I’ll feel stronger if you’re by my side. I need to leave today, but I’ll make sure I have a ticket booked for you by the time the date is set for the funeral.” Mia hesitated, then nodded. “You’ll want a black, knee-length dress, and if you can, a black scarf to cover your hair…”
Mia nodded. “I’ll figure it out. I won’t show you up, don’t worry.” She smiled weakly and Rami brushed his lips against her cheek.
“I’ll need to pack and make sure Ma knows I’m coming,” he said, sighing. “Do we have any leftovers I can eat before I go back to making arrangements? I’m starving.”
Mia grinned. “I was just heating up some food, actually. Do you want to sit and eat with me, or would you prefer some privacy?”
“I want to spend as much time with you as possible before I leave,” Rami told her, smiling a little more warmly. “I’m not looking forward to not being able to see you for a few days.” Mia returned his smile, still uncertain, but willing to go along with whatever he needed for the time being.
As they ate, Rami and Mia talked about everything but their relationship. She listened to Rami’s stories about his father, knowing he was searching for some bigger, grander theme to latch onto. “You know, the first time I got drunk I think I was maybe fourteen,” Rami said, spearing a tomato on the tines of his fork and bringing it to his mouth. “I was sent into my father’s home office for punishment.” Rami smirked. “Dad said that he would give me just the one pass—but that if I was caught drinking again, he would punish me more severely than I could imagine. As long as I wasn’t caught, he didn’t have to punish me.”
“Sounds like a pretty fair system to me,” Mia said dryly.
“I realize now that mostly he just didn’t really want to be bothered with punishing me,” Rami said, looking down onto his plate for a moment of meditative silence. “But he was…I mean I have to assume he cared about me at least a little, you know? Why else would he have adopted a child?” It was a question that Mia had asked herself about Rami’s parents on so many occasions that she was almost relieved to hear someone else asking it.
“They’re children of royal lineage too, right?” Rami nodded. “So maybe that’s all they ever knew.” Mia didn’t think that was much of an excuse, but she bit her tongue.
“But I want different for my child,” Rami pointed out. “Why didn’t they, if they grew up that way?”
Mia shrugged. “They may have wanted to do things differently from their parents but not known how,” she said, uncertain as to why she was defending Rami’s parents when his mother had been so openly cruel towards her. “Either way, there’s no point in carrying any kind of bitterness about your dad with you anymore.” Rami hesitated for a moment and then nodded.
“You’re right. I can’t keep looking for his approval; he’s not around to give it to me anymore. I’ll just have to do what I think is right.”
Mia smiled. “Well I think you’re on the right track.”
Rami reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s hope I stay that way.”
SEVEN
Rami scrubbed at his face with his hands as the engine in his rental car cut off. It had been an exhausting twenty-four hours, but he knew that he had at least another week to get through before things would even begin to calm down. “Just keep doing the next right thing,” he told himself, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the headrest.
He had had to take the first flight to the family compound; while his parents had a home close to his, for the purposes of the funeral, Rami knew that his mother, siblings, aunts, uncles—everyone—would be convening at the big property in California, where his branch of the family had first established themselves in the US. The cemetery that held all of Rami’s family members’ remains was just a few miles away from the sprawling family compound,.
He had called Mia the moment the plane had touched down, even a moment before the captain had cleared the use of phones in the cabin. “I assume you made it safely, then? Mia had said without any preamble.
“I did,” Rami had replied, smiling slightly. “How are you feeling? Are you resting?”
“I laid down for a nap after you left and I’m just eating some dinner now. I don’t even really know what it is.” Mia had laughed. “I just sort of threw things together until it started to smell good and then filled up a bowl.”
“Some of the best things you’ve ever cooked for me, you’ve made that way,” Rami had pointed out, smiling slightly to himself. “You are going to be able to make it in time for the funeral, right?”
“You let me know when it will be and I will make sure to get there in time,” Mia had told him. “But you need to take some time to be with your family. Especially your mom. I’m sure she must be absolutely wrecked by this.” Rami had his doubts about that; his mother had always struck him as the most self-sufficient, self-controlled woman on the planet. He couldn’t imagine her falling to pieces, even over the loss of her husband.
Rami couldn’t escape a sense of guilt that, rather than intense grief, all he felt was a kind of cold numbness. Maybe if I had more than a dozen memories of my father, I would be finding this more difficult, he thought, stretching against the tightness in his back and shoulders. He looked through the windshield at the main house. All of the lights were on, and a few cars had already arrived. “I might as well get it over with,” he told hi
mself.
Rami opened the car door and stepped out, walking to the trunk to extract his suitcase. He glanced at his reflection in the tinted glass of his rented car’s windows and decided that the black dress pants, clean white shirt and matching black blazer, would be acceptable for meeting with his family.