Sweet Revenge

dozes to be certain no one separated her from Phoebe. Now, enervated, she walked mechanically between the two women into Celeste’s penthouse.
    “I’ll give you the grand tour when you’re not so exhausted.” Celeste tossed her coat over the back of a chair and wondered what in the hell to do next. “You must be starving. Shall I send out or whip up an omelette?”
    “I couldn’t.” With care Phoebe sat on a sofa. She felt as if every bone in her body would break if she moved too quickly. “Addy, are you hungry?”
    “No.” Even the thought of food had her stomach roiling.
    “Poor thing’s dead on her feet.” Celeste moved over to wrap an arm around Adrianne’s shoulders. “How about a nap?”
    “Go with Celeste,” Phoebe said before Adrianne could protest. “She’ll take care of you.”
    “You won’t go away?”
    “No, I’ll be right here when you wake up.” Phoebe kissed both of her cheeks. “I promise.”
    “Come along, love.” Celeste half carried the exhausted child up a long sweep of stairs. Talking nonsense, she stripped off Adrianne’s coat and shoes and tucked her into bed. “You’ve had a long day.”
    “If he comes, you will wake me up so I can take care of Mama?”
    Celeste’s hand hesitated as she started to stroke Adrianne’s hair. The skin beneath her eyes was bruised with fatigue, but the eyes themselves were awake and demanding.
    “Yes, don’t worry.” Not knowing what else to do, she kissed Adrianne’s brow. “I love her too, honey. We’ll take care of her.”
    Content with that, Adrianne closed her eyes.
    Celeste drew the drapes and left the door ajar. By the time she left the room, Adrianne was already asleep, as was Phoebe when Celeste came quietly downstairs.
    The nightmare woke Adrianne. She had had the same dream sporadically since her fifth birthday: the dream of her father coming into her mother’s room, of the crying, the shouting, of glass shattering. Of herself crawling under the bed with her hands over her ears.
    She woke with her face wet with tears, biting back a cry because she was afraid to disturb the other women in the harem. But she wasn’t in the harem. Her sense of time and place was so jumbled that she had to sit very still for several minutes before events fell into an ordered progression in her mind.
    They had gone to Paris on the little plane and she had been frightened. The city had looked like a storybook with its oddly dressed people and its banks of flowers. Then there had been the shops, all the colors, the silks, the satins. Mama had bought her a pink dress with a white collar. But they had left it behind. They hadn’t gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower. But they had gone to the Louvre. And they had run. Mama had been frightened, and sick.
    Now they were in New York with the blond lady who had the beautiful voice.
    She didn’t want to be in New York. She wanted to be in Jaquir with Jiddah and Aunt Latifa and her cousins. Sniffling, Adrianne rubbed at her eyes as she crawled out of bed. She wanted to go home, where the smells were smells she recognized, where the voices spoke in a language she understood. Taking the doll Celeste had given her for comfort, she went to find her mother.
    She heard the voices as she reached the top of the curving stairs. Adrianne walked down halfway to where she could see her mother and Celeste sitting in a big white room with black windows. Hugging the doll, she sat and listened.
    “I’II never be able to repay you.”
    “Don’t be silly.” With one theatrical gesture Celeste dismissed everything. “We’re friends.”
    “You can’t imagine how much I’ve needed a friend these past years.” Too wired up to sit, Phoebe rose, drink in hand, to circle the room.
    “No, I can’t,” Celeste said slowly, concerned with the nerves she saw in every jerky movement. “But I’d like to.”
    “I don’t know where to begin.”
    “The last time I saw you, you were looking radiant, in miles of white silk and tulle, wearing a necklace straight out of the Arabian Nights.”
    “The Sun and the Moon.” Phoebe closed her eyes, then took a long drink. “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I thought it was a gift—the most exquisite symbol of love any woman could ever dream of. What I didn’t know was that he’d bought me with it.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I could never make you understand life in Jaquir.” She turned. Her brilliant blue eyes were bloodshot.