The Language of Secrets by Ausma Zehanat Khan

she knew he meant the words as a threat.

 
    10
    Khattak turned his key in the lock and let himself in. The family home was in Forest Hill, not far from the boys’ college where he had spent his youth with Nathan Clare. The girls’ school his sisters had attended was also within walking distance, hallmarks of a privileged childhood. His mother spent the winters in Peshawar. His sisters lived in the family home, a space he shared when his mother was away, a fact that Ruksh sometimes quarreled with. Misbah, on the other hand, would look at him with compassion, and whisper to Ruksh that Esa was lonely.
    It was late afternoon, and the house was cold.
    He could hear his sisters’ voices in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He took the stairs two at a time, not pausing to reflect upon how to approach Rukshanda, the older of his two sisters, the one guaranteed to disagree with any suggestion he offered.
    Ciprian Coale’s words still rankled, as did the easy superiority behind them suggesting that Coale knew Khattak’s family better than Esa did. Coale had wanted to get under his skin—Esa would be a fool to let him. But the questions remained: Had Esa been so immersed in the Drayton scandal that he hadn’t noticed his sister was wearing an engagement ring? Would Ruksh have taken such a step without consulting him?
    He knew it couldn’t be coincidence. If Ashkouri had found a way to ensnare Esa’s sister, knowing who Esa was, it would be part of his design, somehow connected to the Nakba plot.
    He knocked on the door of their mother’s room. His sisters didn’t notice him at first. Ruksh and Misbah were bent over the king-size bed, removing colorful fabrics from their plastic sheeting. On one side of the bed, books and magazines were stacked in a haphazard pile. A dozen of these were wedding magazines: Modern Bride, The Knot, Kismet, Asiana . And one peeking out of the stack that Khattak had never heard of: Lavish Dulhan.
    He took a breath. Ruksh’s ring finger was bare. He wasn’t the world’s most absentminded detective after all. But if Coale had been exaggerating, it wasn’t by much. The clothes on the bed were wedding silks—in red, Persian green, and royal blue.
    In that moment, he felt the keenness of his sister’s peril.
    What was Ashkouri’s real interest in Ruksh? How was he planning to use her?
    Misbah glanced up and saw him, her smile bright and welcoming.
    But Ruksh was startled, a guilty thing surprised.
    Khattak was never home at this time of day. And both of his sisters should have been out, Ruksh at her residency in epidemiology, Misbah at university, studying for her final exams. Instead, they were ensconced in their mother’s room, cheerfully picking out wedding clothes.
    Whose wedding? When was it to take place? And most of all, who was Ruksh thinking of marrying?
    Khattak’s habitual warmth with his sisters was beyond him at this moment.
    â€œWould you leave us please, Misbah?”
    An apprehensive glance passed between the sisters.
    And in that moment Khattak saw that they were not as dissimilar as he had always supposed. Ruksh was younger than him by a decade, Misbah by an additional five years. Ruksh resembled Khattak in physical appearance, if not in temperament—dark-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned, her striking features made more dramatic by her volatile personality. Misbah was quiet like Khattak, reserved in judgment and pronouncement, less obviously Pathan in coloring, small, dark, and slight, with an ever-present warmth that brought Khattak’s mother to mind. When Misbah was around, he missed his mother less.
    Now, in the glance that passed between his sisters, Khattak found a surprising familiarity between them. In the normal course of things, Ruksh had little time for Misbah. Her true sisterly attachment was to Nathan’s younger sister, Audrey Clare. Audrey and Ruksh were the same age, they had attended the