Page 62 of Mistaken
Even after seeing his face?
But no, the touch of her slender fingers against his seemed real enough, and there was no mistaking the rosy flush in her cheeks as she spoke, the way she kept gazing at him, expression almost worried, as though she feared he was going to laugh at the foolishness of a human who would dare to love one such as he.
He was not going to laugh, though. Of course he could not laugh, not when she had just given him the greatest gift possible.
The gift of her heart.
“Perhaps I loved you from the first moment I heard you,” he said. “I had no conception of love, no experience of it. I only realized as time went on that I wanted nothing more than to be with you, to see you, to hear you. Singing made you happy, so I would be your accompanist. You enjoyed being out in nature, so I endeavored to devise expeditions that would please you. Everything I have done these past few days has been for you, only I was too blind to see the reason why.”
She swallowed. But she did not pull her hand from his, or try to look away. No, she continued to gaze at him without flinching, which he thought was quite the show of bravery, considering how ravaged his face had always been.
“And I didn’t recognize what was happening, either,” she said. “Or if I did, I thought I must be suffering some kind of Stockholm syndrome.”
Although Abdul knew a great deal of human history, he did not believe he had ever heard that phrase before. “‘Stockholm syndrome’?” he repeated.
Now, she smiled, and something of the intensity of the moment seemed to fade. “Well, I won’t pretend that I know everything about it, but basically, it’s a way of describing when someone starts to have positive feelings for their captor. I mean, I was trapped here because of you, but instead of coming up with ways to escape, all I could seem to do was think about the sound of your voice or what it felt like that one time when you took my hands so we could escape from that thunderstorm. Things like that.”
Color had returned to her cheeks as she spoke, and Abdul wondered if that was because she was embarrassed by her feelings, or simply because some time had passed since she first heard his confession, and she had regained some emotional equilibrium.
But he also knew how much her words had moved him, that all the time his heart had been opening to the idea of loving her…even if he had had no idea that was what was happening to him…her heart had warmed to him as well.
“It seems that fate guided us to be together,” he said, and she tilted her head, considering his words.
“Maybe you could call it that,” she replied. “I’m not going to lie, Abdul — I know what I feel for you, but I also can’t ignore what you’ve done.”
“I am not asking you to do that,” he said. This was not how he had wanted the conversation to go, and yet he knew he could not shy away from the hard things, not when so much was at stake. “And, as I said before, I will not make excuses. I suppose it comes down to how you will allow yourself to view my deeds.” He paused there for a second or two, then continued as an idea occurred to him. “When the bombs were dropped on Japan during your Second World War, who did you think was responsible for all those deaths? Oppenheimer, the man who invented the atomic bomb? The men who flew the planes on those missions? The government? The American people, who put those people in power? Or would you say it was the Japanese themselves, for not surrendering when the war in Europe ended?”
Sarah stared back at him, wide-eyed. It seemed clear enough she had never considered the question before, which he supposed was not so strange. Those bombs had been dropped sixty years before she was even born, and she certainly would have had no reason to analyze the question of the morality involved…unless, perhaps, she had been assigned to write an essay on the topic in school.
“I…I don’t know,” she said, her voice now shakier than it had been a moment earlier. “I suppose it wasn’t any one person, that there was plenty of blame to go around.”
“And I would say this is a similar situation,” he replied. “Or rather, while the deaths involved are an order of magnitude greater than those who perished in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the principles are not so very different. I created this plague, true, but I did so because it was something the rest of the djinn wanted. So…are they to blame? Am I? Do the elders hold some responsibility, for they certainly went along with the plan? All it would have taken was a single word, right until the very moment when I began to disperse the disease, and I would have stayed my hand. The Heat, as your people called it, would never have been released. But that word was never given, because it was something the djinn desired. The only ones blameless in all this are the members of the One Thousand, for they saved the ones they could.”
During all this, Sarah had continued to hold his hand. Now, though, she released it — if gently — but only so she could knot her fingers around one another, as if that might help her to think more clearly. For a long moment, she said nothing, but only sat there in silence, rosy lips pressed together while she seemed to wrestle with herself.
“I don’t think it’s my place to forgive you,” she said at last. “I mean, that’s taking a lot on myself, since I can’t speak for the ones who died…or the ones who survived. But I think I understand what you’re telling me. There’s plenty of blame to go around.” Another hesitation, and then she added, “But — but you don’t have any plans to hurt the people in Los Alamos, do you?”
The idea had never even occurred to him, so he felt comfortable in replying, “No, of course not. If God saw fit to make them immune — and saw fit to create the scientist who invented the djinn-repelling devices — then I am not one to interfere. Indeed, I rather admire them.”
“You do?” she asked, her expression both relieved and a little startled.
“Yes,” he said. “For they have shown great ingenuity. They are survivors, and it seems they have learned some of the lessons from the world that was destroyed. I do not think they will repeat the mistakes of the past.”
“They won’t,” Sarah said, and now her voice was firm, confident. “I’ve seen all the work they’ve done to make sure the settlement is sustainable, that the things they do and the plans they make are all designed to avoid hurting the environment.” She stopped there, sending him a rueful smile. “And since I just realized I’ve been referring to them as ‘they’ and not ‘we,’ I guess that says something about where my loyalties lie.”
A cautious hope warmed him then. For a few moments, he was not sure what she intended to say — perhaps to tell him that even though she cared for him, she could not allow herself to truly love someone burdened with so much death and destruction? — but those last words appeared to indicate that she was ready to accept him as he was.
However, he needed to find out for sure.
He rose from his seat, and after a moment of hesitation, she got to her feet as well, her lovely face a picture of confusion.
Did she truly not know what he intended to do?
Never in his long life had he ever kissed anyone. But he understood the mechanics of such caresses well enough.
Now he needed to discover whether he dared to put theory into practice.
He bent and touched his mouth to hers, and although she hesitated for just the barest second — more out of surprise than anything else, he thought — she then twined her fingers with his and leaned in close, lips parting slightly so he might taste her, the sweetness of wine on her tongue, a certain delectable flavor that he thought was hers and hers alone.