CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lissy had always been competitive. It was one of the first things Ethan noticed about her, on their third or fourth date after they’d met on the PATH train, he headed to Northern State Prison, she headed to her assistant A.D. job at Rutgers. She had just finished telling him about the injury that had ended her squash career at the Cleveland Classic. She was one competitive lady, Ethan had remarked with a lopsided grin.

Well, she competed, didn’t she? To compete without being competitive—that would be like painting without being artistic.

Like talking without speaking, he’d said. Like hearing without listening. And then he’d launched into Simon & Garfunkel. He had a good tenor, even though he was just being silly. She’d thrown a napkin at him.

Still, outside sports, competitive was a dirty word. Like ambitious. If she’d grown up with a mother, maybe she would have softened her edge, learned to deny herself the thrill of clutching the trophy high over her head. If she had grown up in the world her American players inhabited, full of country clubs and etiquette, maybe she’d have sated her hunger to train harder, practice longer, nail the shots her opponents missed. Maybe, if she’d been introduced early on to pure beauty, or pure affection, she wouldn’t have relished the purity of competition—same rules for all, same starting spot, same ineluctable goal—as much as she did. But she had grown up on the scrappy north side of St. Louis, with five brothers and a dad working nights, and one of her last memories of her mother was the glow on her face, her bald head obscured by a blue scarf, as Lissy tore past the hundred-yard finish line ten paces ahead of the closest boy.

Even her choice of sport—squash, claustrophobic and un-American—was etched with ambition. Squash was what they didn’t play, on the north side. There were a couple of old courts at the back of the community center and a retired pro who let kids hit for free. But what she wanted was to beat the kids at the private schools, with their clean lines and vaulted ceilings—and when she did, her brothers exploded in whoops and her dad’s face came as close to a grin as he could ever manage.

So yes, she told Ethan, she was competitive. Insatiable, rivalrous. She’d come by her ambition honestly, and she wasn’t going to be ashamed of it, no matter how crude or unladylike she appeared. But she never cheated, she never lied. And when she came home, she left the competition outside. Those had been her promises.

But now. As she exited the Pike toward Devon she felt the messiness of what she was doing, the impurity of it. The police—she ought to go to the police, tell them where the girl was, help them discover what the hell had happened. Whatever Afia had claimed, Lissy knew what she thought: that Shahid had set a trap for her, had tried to kill her with a bomb at her boyfriend’s place. Ethan would think the same. What had he said, about these honor crimes? It’s often the brother doing the meting out.

But Ethan didn’t know everything, and neither did Afia. She, Lissy, knew Shahid inside and out. She had struggled with him through tough matches; she’d watched him find his place on the team and let go, one by one, of his defenses until he became the muscles and sinews of the squad itself. She knew he loved his sister more than life. Honor or no honor, he wouldn’t let her come to harm.

So go to the police. If Shahid was innocent, their investigation would pass him by. He’d make his next counseling appointment and then play Harvard. Would beat Harvard, and go on to a brilliant career, coaching or on Wall Street, whatever he chose, the world his oyster.

Except for the girl. Goddammit, the girl. Afia was terrified, and somewhere in her gut Lissy felt certain that her terror would derail Shahid. Would cast suspicion on him, would stir up—what? Trouble, of a kind Lissy sensed faintly but couldn’t name. Someone had set that bomb. For now, Gus was in the hospital, safe. Afia was at the camp, also safe. And there were less than five days until the Harvard match that meant everything to her best, her noblest player.

What harm would it do, really, just to wait a little while? To let the girl come to her senses? All right, she said to the world as she passed through the sleeping town, so I want victory. So shoot me.

At the top of Winter Drive she felt the left side of her cheek tightening and remembered how she looked. Pulling the car over, she flipped up the visor and checked herself out in the mirror—the bandage, the singed hair, the soot. She looked like a blind person’s attempt at blackface. She had to clean up and come clean, at least to Ethan.

•   •   •

Oh, baby.” He came to sit next to her on the couch when she’d finished describing the explosion. Chloe, thankfully, was asleep. In the kitchen was the Valentine she’d made for Lissy that afternoon. Lissy held a bag of frozen peas to the lump on the back of her head. Ethan pulled her to his shoulder. “You could’ve been killed.”

He smelled wonderfully familiar, the warm musk of his skin. “I’m lucky,” Lissy admitted. “Afia cleaned up the one bad spot. I’ll have a doozy of a headache in the morning, but—”

“What about Afia? Is she all right? Where is she?”

Lissy lifted her head and adjusted the bag of peas. She hadn’t thought what to say. From the beginning, she and Ethan had told each other everything. Old love affairs. Grudges they couldn’t let go of. All the stale fantasies that turned them on—she would pretend to be a call girl, he that they were strangers on a cruise. Now she felt honesty slipping away from her, like snow melting off a bank. The camp in Hadley was the best place she could think of, four hours ago, but it wasn’t her place. It was Ethan’s, and he’d hung on to it over the objections of his sisters, who wanted to sell. It was the place of his happiest memories, he’d told Lissy once, and the place he wanted to pass down to Chloe. Could Lissy inform him that she’d secreted a girl there, a witness to a bombing, a girl who could be at risk from her own brother? He wouldn’t share her lurking, inchoate fear. He’d see only her ambition, her determination to push Shahid to a win and get her precious fitness center built.

“And why,” Ethan went on while she tried to phrase an answer, “didn’t you call the cops?”

Lissy leaned back. She met his worried eyes. “Afia,” she said slowly, “seemed more frightened of the police than of the blast. She was talking crazy, Ethan. Like—like someone would be after her, if we went to the police. When I kept on at her about it, she said she’d tell them she set a bomb.”

“So now she’s—”

“Hiding. Somewhere safe. And I don’t want to tell you where, honey. Please.”

Ethan rose. She heard the clink of ice as he fixed them both a vodka tonic. “Can you tell me,” he asked when he came back, “what happened this afternoon?”

“Sure,” Lissy said. She described the conversation with Shahid, Afia’s willingness to return to Pakistan, her own outrage, Afia asking for Lissy to bring her back to Smith.

“So when you called me to say you were in Northampton,” Ethan said—swirling his drink, looking into the fire—“you were lying.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I was panicked. I thought somebody could be after her and—”

“You mean you thought Shahid could be after her.”

There they were, already, at the place she’d feared. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted. “Afia agreed to go back to Pakistan. Shahid won.”

“Winning’s not everything, Liss.”

“You know what I mean. He loves her.”

Ethan removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’ve got a lot of ifs here,” he said. “A freak accident—we don’t even know it’s a crime. Could have been all sorts of stuff stored in that garage. Things combust. What about your player, Gus? His brakes gave out last week, right? Does he have enemies?”

Lissy shook her head, startled. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, we’ll find out quicker,” Ethan said, “if you and Afia talk to the police.”

“And we will. Let’s just give her a couple of days.”

Ethan was silent a long time. A log cracked, in the fireplace. He crossed his arms over his chest. Finally he said, very quietly, “You need Shahid. You need him for the Harvard match.”

No point in denying it. “I do.”

“And you need him not to be facing a bunch of accusations about his sister.”

“Ethan, Shahid would not do this. And you know how Muslims get treated, when there’s violence. If he and Afia were deported—”

“Tell me where she is, Liss.”

The Hadley camp. Why had she been so impulsive? He would never let the girl stay there, if he knew. But just a few days. He didn’t have to know, now or ever. Meeting his eyes, she couldn’t lie. She could only be stubborn. “Please, Ethan. You’ve got to trust me on this.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve got to be honest with you. And you’re making a lousy decision. You’re doing it because you care about your player. I know that. And his sister. You care, Liss, but you’re wrong. Thank God you didn’t come to real harm. But I won’t help you if this gets messy. Do not count on me for that.”

He unlocked his arms. He put them around her and kissed her ashy hair.

•   •   •

Somehow the next day proceeded. At Enright, Lissy explained her injuries with a story of a fall on the ice in the dark, a crack of her head against stone steps. No one seemed to doubt her, even as the place buzzed with news of the explosion at Gus Schneider’s garage. A cat had been rescued; the place was sealed off, police at the scene. At noon, a meeting with university officers about the capital campaign. Don Shears was jolly. Charles Horton, he announced, was coming up from the city for the squash match against Harvard. Depending on the outcome, he would pledge whatever it took to complete a state-of-the art fitness center.

“How much do we figure that would be?” asked Penny DuBois, the faculty dean.

They turned to the comptroller, a spare coffee-skinned guy named Roy Jones. “Counting the initial pledge from Jeff Stubnick and a few other small donations, I’d say it’d take about eight hundred grand to put us over the top,” Jones said.

“Pretty nice premium, for a squash match.” Don winked at Lissy. “Now, if we could just get Coach Hayes’s fund-raising muscle for the new chem labs, we might gain a notch in our academic rankings.”

When the meeting broke up, he walked Lissy out. “You got the chops for that Harvard match?” he asked.

“Can’t say, Don. Harvard’s tough.”

“If the injured player—”

“Gus? He plays second string. We’ll be fine without him.”

Don said, “Poor kid,” and Lissy agreed. Turning away, she felt a lump in her throat, as big as the one swelling her cheekbone.

That afternoon, calling the hospital, she learned Gus was discharged. He would know about his garage by now. The other players did. Through the afternoon they streamed into her office—Carlos, Afran, Yanik, Jamil, a few of the girls. Had she heard, they wanted to know. Wasn’t it crazy? Carlos had gone by the garage, “And it was a war zone, man, like something on TV.” Yanik had talked to Gus, but couldn’t get much out of him, the dude was too upset. They had all heard about the rescued cat. Had Coach gotten a call from the police? Because Afran had, also Carlos. They were carpooling down to Gus’s mom’s place.

No Shahid, Lissy noted. Perhaps he wasn’t a good enough liar to come forward. Not possible, she fired back at herself. He loved Afia. You couldn’t kill what you loved. She didn’t give a shit about cultural difference. You couldn’t do it and be human.

She was relieved when the phone rang and it was George Bradley from Harvard, calling to talk squash. “I got a tape of your boys against Trinity,” he said. “They’re eating their Wheaties.”

“Working hard,” said Lissy. A little pouch of breath that had been trapped in her lungs let go. Coaches, even rival coaches, were the easiest people to talk to.

“Didn’t see your main guy. That mean you’re cutting us a break?”

“Shahid?” Another pouch of breath caught in a lower lobe, which clamped tight. “He’s back now.”

“Hope so. I want a good look at him. And I’ve got a couple of recruits for you. South Africa and Argentina. I’ll bring their folders to the match. Consolation prizes.”

Lissy hung up. Hope you’ve got the chops, Shears had said, for that match. Only with Shahid did Enright have such chops.

Doubts she’d dismissed the night before festered as the day went on. Who was she protecting—Afia, or Shahid? Or herself? The words she used when she lectured her players echoed in her head. When you’re loyal to something that’s rotten, it rots your loyalty. Had Shahid gone rotten? He was her best, her best-loved player. And if she turned Afia over to the police, they would surely finger him. Just a few days, Lissy needed. To know what to do. To beat Harvard in front of Charles Horton. To watch Shahid and understand him, better than she ever had before, so she could bring Afia back to him in safety. A few days, which after all . . . what did they matter? Gus’s place was gone, Gus’s animals were dead, and no amount of confession would bring them back. And the marriage awaiting Afia in Pakistan—that could wait, too. She reached for her phone and dialed the camp.

Afia’s voice was small and tight. “Yes?”

“I’m making sure you’re all right.”

“I am all right.”

“You can’t keep staying there. I shouldn’t have brought you there.”

“I do not think . . . no. I will go from here soon, Coach. But not to the police. How is Gus? You have seen Gus?”

“Not yet. They found his cat.”

“Oh, I am so glad. So glad.” She was crying. “Facebook and Ebay.”

What was the point of telling her: just the one cat? “Afia, I’m going to drive up there tomorrow morning. You need to think seriously. The police will be looking for you. They are your safest alternative. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Coach.”

“I’ll be by, I don’t know, sometime after nine. We said one day, remember?”

“I know, Coach, but my brother—”

A knock on Lissy’s door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Afia.”

She checked her watch: 4:25. Practice in five minutes.

“Come in,” she called when the knock repeated. She knew from the way the door opened who it would be. She had to lie to him, and this time it wasn’t like snow melting but like the twist of a knife. “Shahid,” she said—as calmly as she could, but her voice rose like a hiccup on the second syllable—“I thought you’d gone to take your sister to JFK.”

“She is not there. She was not in her classes. She does not answer her mobile.” He strode into the room, dropped his squash bag, and began pacing, to Lissy’s desk and back to the door, to Lissy’s desk again. He looked more like the American players, baggy-eyed and unkempt, than like the pro athlete he used to be. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. His winter jacket hung loose over warm-up pants and squash shoes. “I have this plan,” he said. “Anywhere a family member has a phone turned on, yes? I can find her. Only she does not show up, on this plan. She is not anywhere.”

“Shahid, settle down.” Lissy came out from behind her desk. She stood firm, her arms crossed over her chest. She noted he wasn’t asking about the black eye, the bandages. But his overlooking her injuries didn’t mean anything—the other guys on the team had probably shared the story of the fall on the ice, and Shahid was distracted. “I don’t know your sister that well,” she said, watching his pacing slow, like a tired lion, “but she didn’t seem eager to give up college and fly back home.”

“She’s never lied to me. Almost never. Actually, I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his head. His unwashed hair stuck out. Instinctively Lissy touched the back of her own head, where the lump was slowly shrinking. “But she has to be there. She has to be somewhere. Coach, if I cannot find her, you don’t know—” His face twisted as if in grief. If this was acting—if he thought a bomb he had set had killed, or missed killing, his sister—he had a greater talent for acting than for squash. He dropped into a chair and rested his eyes on the heels of his palms. When he looked up, he asked the question Lissy had been dreading. “Did you take her directly to Northampton, yesterday?”

Sharply she recalled Shahid’s plea, yesterday, to drive Afia to Northampton himself. Gus’s snake; Shahid never saw the cage, couldn’t know they were taking it back to the garage. “She wanted to see her professors,” she said. “Maybe you need to give her a few more days, Shahid. You can change the ticket. She loves you, she respects you, I didn’t get the sense that she would put your family at risk—”

“Damn it, Coach! You don’t understand anything!”

Lissy pulled a chair up to face him. Her left side pulled painfully as she sat. She put her hands on Shahid’s knees. The right one drummed against the floor. “I understand,” she said, “that you are under a lot of pressure. Have you gone for counseling?”

“Once, yes.”

“Was that helpful?”

“No. He wants to talk about my sister, about—about—about Gus Schneider, about what’s happened to him, I don’t know anything about this awful thing with Gus, it’s nothing to do with me, only he keeps his hands away from my sister, that’s all. Same thing I said to the police.”

“The police spoke with you?”

“What do you think? At lunchtime, they find me in the dining hall, they put me to shame in front of everyone. They ask me did I fight with Gus, was Gus dating my sister, where was I yesterday, where is my sister.”

“And where,” Lissy asked cautiously, “do you think your sister is?”

Dead, he might say. Or hiding from me. His brows drew together, hawklike, the way they did on the court. Finally he said, “I am afraid, Coach.”

“Of what, Shahid?” Of yourself? she wanted to ask. But such questions were Ethan’s department. To her, Shahid simply looked the way you look when something out there terrifies you. “Did you give the police,” she asked carefully, “all your whereabouts yesterday?”

“Of course I do. Hitting with Afran, then lunch at the dining hall, then the library, and a girl I know saw me. Then your house.”

“So you have nothing to fear.”

“From the police? No.” He shook his head, as if he were talking to a simpleton. “It’s for her I’m afraid.”

“She’s fine, Shahid.” Which was, of course, the truth. But she knew he heard empty reassurance. If she could only be sure of him! Could she tell him what she’d told Ethan, everything except Afia’s location? She opened her mouth to try.

Then he said, “You talk honor, Coach. But you don’t know honor. If I could just—” Plucking one of the hard blue balls from the bin in her office, he squeezed it as if he would crush the pulp out of it. Lissy’s impulse shrank, at the fury of his gaze.

“Come on,” she said weakly. “Let’s work it out at practice.”

•   •   •

By the next day she couldn’t stand it. Ethan had avoided all discussion of the bomb. On the surface, nothing had changed. When she told Chloe she’d slipped on the ice, he added for Chloe to be careful about Mommy’s boo-boos. Leaving for his office, he’d kissed her on the lips with what seemed like more than the usual warmth. But she sensed him watching her. She felt his disappointment like a bad taste. Canceling her morning appointments, she headed out of town. She had told Afia one day; one day it would be. Shahid had an alibi. Whatever Afia was frightened of could not possibly derail his concentration on the Harvard match. The police would clear them both. He could send her home to Pakistan next week, if he was so determined to send her home.

Then she spotted the blue Hyundai sliding onto the road behind her. A blue Hyundai, anyway. No telling if it was the same one she’d seen at the hospital. Its windows were tinted, the sun bouncing off the windshield; she couldn’t tell what sort of person was driving. When it followed her off the main road and onto the shortcut around town, her blood froze. Not the driver but the machine itself seemed to follow her. This wasn’t any car she knew. Carefully she wound her way south from Devon ten miles to the Mass Pike and headed east instead of west. At the first exit she lined up third at the toll booth. The Hyundai pulled into line behind her. Only when an opening presented itself did she turn the wheel and gun the car over to the next lane. Sailing through with her EZ Pass, she checked the rearview. The Hyundai had lost a spot to a pickup. Off the ramp, Lissy turned left at an amber arrow and wheeled around to reenter the Pike heading west. The blue car, thank God, was nowhere to be seen.

Breathe, she ordered herself. Her hands gripped the steering wheel like a life raft. She had no idea what she was frightened of. She checked the rearview along the rest of the interstate and after she pulled off, but no blue Hyundai. Few cars generally, though the roads were dry and the sky bright blue.

When she unlocked the hasp at the camp, she found the place cold. “Afia?” she called. No answer came. The back door was shut but unbolted. Panic caught at her breath. Carefully she stepped out the back. From the door of the shed, she saw the girl’s eyes peek out, then her body wrapped in her wool coat, an improvised hijab outlining her pale face. “What are you doing out there?” she called.

In her shearling boots Afia stepped gingerly over the snow. “I thought police had come.”

Lissy looked her up and down. Afia was shivering. “So you figured you’d escape them? In my shed?”

Afia’s arms squeezed against her sides. “There is a closet, in there.”

“And you thought I would turn you in. Just like that. Trusting, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Coach.”

Afia followed her in. Bending to inspect the woodstove, Lissy found the fire died down to embers. “We’ll have to clean this out,” she said.

“Coach, please. No. I cannot go back.”

“Afia, our deal was one night, to get yourself calmed down. You’ve had two.”

“Yes. I know.” The girl was hugging herself. Lissy returned to the kitchen, started putting the Pop-Tarts into a grocery bag. “If I could,” Afia said from behind her, “if you would be able . . . you have been so kind . . . but I have no one else to ask . . . Gus would do anything, but then he would be of danger again—”

Lissy turned. Afia’s blue eyes were twin pools of fear. She placed both her hands on the girl’s thin shoulders. “What are you trying to say?”

“I am thinking two hundred dollars would be enough.” Afia bit her lip. She looked down at the stove, crackling into life. “I take a bus. Disappear. When they come to ask you, you say you do not know me, you never saw me.”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“I will repay you. Only if Shahid asks, you do not tell him. And if they come for Shahid, you say he was not at the garage, he could not have done anything.”

“I don’t have to vouch for Shahid, Afia. He’s accounted for his whereabouts. I don’t think he’s a suspect in whatever happened at Gus’s.”

“You are sure?”

“It’s what he told me. He has an alibi.”

Afia chewed her bottom lip. She seemed to be making a calculation. Of how well her brother could lie to the police? Or of how well the police could protect her from whatever else lurked out there? “I cannot go with you, Coach. I am sorry. I am happy for Shahid. Tomorrow, I leave here. By myself. If you cannot loan money—”

“Afia, if you’re in the danger you say you are in, leaving here with two hundred bucks won’t get you to safety!”

God, the frustration of the girl. Lissy stopped loading the groceries. She’d never seen terror like this before. Would she wrestle Afia to the car? Have her open the door and tumble out on the road? If she reached for her phone and called the police, the girl would bolt; her whole body seemed poised, like a deer’s when it senses the rifle. And that blue Hyundai—that hadn’t been a coincidence. Someone had tried to track Lissy, someone suspected she would lead them to Afia.

“This is my husband’s family home, all right?” she went on. “It’s not fair to him. Not fair to me, or to Shahid.”

The girl stood mute, stubborn. Her glasses made her eyes look enormous.

“All right.” She was pissed at herself, for relenting. But already she was putting the groceries back on the counter. “You can stay another forty-eight hours. That’s it. Maybe by then they’ll have caught whoever set that bomb. That would make the world look different, wouldn’t it?”

Afia fell to her knees, clasped her hands together. “Thank you, Coach.”

Lissy checked her watch. “I’ll fetch you a few provisions from the local store, then I have to go. So listen up.” She took hold of the girl’s hands, pulled her up from the floor. She spoke the way she would to a player losing a battle of nerves. “Don’t go out except to pee or fetch wood. Use the back door. Bolt it when you’re inside. I’ll lock the hasp on the front. Tomorrow I’ll call the landline. I expect you to pick up. If you have to call me—here’s my number—use that line.” Tearing off a piece of the grocery bag, she scrawled her cell number. “No other calls except to the Devon police. And I’d appreciate your letting me know if you come to your senses and make that call.”

Afia was nodding, her lower lip caught in her teeth. “You are very kind,” she said. “I only wonder if . . . if word could get to Gus . . .”

“Oh, no. No no no. I am not contacting anyone until you’re ready to make a statement.”

“But he will be so worried—”

“He’ll have to stay that way.”

Impulsively, she drew the young woman’s head toward her. She planted a kiss on her forehead, still smelling of ash. She exited from the front, locking the hasp behind her.