Afterlife of Alanna Miller

Part 2

TWO

Living in witness protection is like living someone else's afterlife. Everything from your past life, including your own name, is dead...but you're still alive, forging the future as someone else.

Of course, there'll be times you forget your new name. It was never really yours to begin with.

"Um, that's you," a voice behind me whispered.

Disoriented, I blinked back into the present, lifting my eyes as I ascended to the stage. Barely hesitating, I shook the Chancellor's hand and summoned a genuine smile as she whispered, "Congratulations, doctor." I beamed at the photographer for the obligatory flash before she released me and I escaped to the offstage anonymity I usually enjoyed.

No one knew who I was. Just another graduate with a medical degree, the ink barely dry. I slipped into my seat and invisibility once more.

But to one person, I'd never be invisible.

"I still can't believe it." Dad was waiting for me in the foyer, wiping tears from his eyes. "My little girl is old enough to be a doctor."

I waited until he enveloped me in his arms before I whispered, "You know I'm not. If you'd put the right dates on my school enrolment forms when I first started kindergarten, you wouldn't be here until next year."

"I blame the stress. I was supposed to bring two girls home, not just one." He pulled away and hooked his arm through mine. "She would have been so proud of you today. Let's take the official photos and then go back to my hotel. I think I need to tell you about your mother."

We posed for the photographers, I got to hand back the hideous black graduation gown that made me look like one of the black-draped cocktail tables, and we were free.

We crossed the hotel lobby and Dad jerked his head at the restaurant. "Do you want to go in there or would you prefer if we get room service upstairs?" As I watched, his eyes strayed back to the restaurant.

"Is that the one with the really good seafood you were telling me about?" I hid my smile as he looked at me guiltily. "I haven't had lobster in a while. Let's do dinner at the restaurant."

Given how late it was, the place was pretty empty, so the hostess offered us our choice of tables. Dad pointed to one tucked into a corner and that's where we sat.

I waited impatiently as we ordered and our drinks were served, but Dad didn't say anything. I took a sip of my wine and finally said, "Okay. You've waited for almost twenty years and now you've dropped a hint, you won't say any more?"

He gulped his beer and set it down. "It hurts, sweetheart. The last time I saw her was twenty-three years ago when she was pregnant with you. Barely showing, but her face was aglow. When I returned for my girls, she was cold and buried in a grave I couldn't even visit and you stared at me with her eyes, but you didn't know me." He sighed. "You know, I met your mother at a university. You see in the news about Islamic countries where women aren't allowed to be educated, but she was. She was a graduate student, doing her PhD in chemistry. I never even found out if she finished it. Anyway, we'd found what we thought were some significant gas reserves, but the samples went missing on the way to the lab and by the time we managed to get the survey vessel back to take more, the whole lab had been turned into a crater. We don't know who blew it up – the Americans or the Iraqis – but it didn't really matter. We had a fresh set of rock samples and I got volunteered for lab duty. Someone arranged a lab for me in a university – don't ask me its name, because I couldn't pronounce it then and I don't remember it now – and I was working late into the night, every night, to get all of the samples analysed.

"One night I must have fallen asleep on one of the benches and I woke up to a furious argument I didn't understand a word of. Probably a good thing, too, because I learned later that I'd been called all sorts of things, including an ass." He laughed.

"Koon," I said slowly, nodding.

Dad looked surprised for a moment, but he recovered and continued, "Anyway, eventually the shouting ended and the man left, leaving a woman clad entirely in black. You know, from her head to her toes, like a nun, but covering her face, too."

"You mean a niqab?" I asked.

"Yeah, that. She turned to face me and told me to get out of her lap. Not lab, lap. All of her covered except her eyes and they were furious. But I couldn't stop staring at her eyes. She had eyes like yours – huge and dark and deep enough to drown in. It took me a minute to understand what she said because she had me absolutely mesmerised, but when I did, I burst out laughing. The wrong thing to do, I learned because she absolutely let rip. Your mother's voice was amazing. She abandoned English, or at least that's what it sounded like, but the message was clear. I was intruding and I needed to leave and ...by the time this tiny, veiled woman was done shouting at me in Farsi, I felt like I was this high." He held up his finger and thumb, barely an inch apart. "I backed away from her, hands up in surrender, and called my boss. I told him there was a crazy woman in my lab who looked like she wanted to kill me and could he please find another facility if he wanted me to survive to finish this analysis. I heard the door close before I ended the call and she must have left, because she wasn't in the lab when I looked around again. Before she came back, I raced around the room, packing everything up in preparation for a move.

"The call never came. Every day I'd have to unpack more of it, and every day she ignored me. I could hear her on the other side of the lab, but whenever I looked at her, she'd either glare at me or turn her back. She never left – didn't even break for lunch.

"And then one day, I heard her come in and then this weird sound, like when you whip a tablecloth off the table. So I turned around and she'd taken off that ghastly habit-thing. And underneath she was dressed...normally. Well, she still had a scarf over her hair and she had a long skirt and long sleeves and...it was odd. The only skin she revealed was her face, but it seemed like so much more. And she was beautiful, so beautiful...I don't know if I've ever told you, but you look just like her."

No, he'd never said it, but I'd seen the strange sadness in his eyes when he looked at me sometimes. It was the same look he'd always gotten whenever I'd asked questions about my mother. I knew. I nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow of his tale.

"I couldn't stop staring at her and she got that same hard look in her eyes I knew from the day I'd met her. She told me if I was going to look at her like the other men did, then she'd put her niqab back on and never take it off again. She asked me if I'd never seen a woman's face before where I was from. I apologised and told her I couldn't stop staring because she was so beautiful. Then I introduced myself and apologised again for invading her lab, telling her I'd leave as soon as my company found me somewhere else or I finished testing all the samples. She told me her name was Fatima and not to be afraid because she didn't really want to kill me. I was so embarrassed, but then she smiled and...I think I fell in love with her then and there. A bit stupid really, like something in a book. Falling in love with someone because they told you they didn't want to kill you."

Nathan. Nathan had said something similar – that he'd never wanted to hurt me. Not that I'd fallen in love with him at the time, given the circumstances, but it was the first glimmer of trust that had led me to love him later. Of course, he'd thrown that back in my face when he'd chosen his career over me, but he'd made his choices and he was the one who had to live with them. I wondered if he ever regretted letting me go.

"Sweetheart? Do you think I'm crazy? Or have you heard enough?"

I shook my head, both to clear it and to answer him. "No, please, I want to hear it. And we all have our crazy moments. Love's supposed to make you at least a little bit crazy." I looked up to find him staring at me. "What?"

"You sound like you have personal experience. Do I get to meet him?"

I couldn't help it. I laughed. "Dad, I'm twenty-three and I'm not completely innocent any more, but I would tell you if there were someone in my life I needed you to meet."

He squinted at me. "Who was it? Was it that creepy Jason, Jo's brother? You know, I heard on the news that he got arrested in Sydney for having an orgy in a convertible. Him and three girls. You weren't one of them, were you?"

I gave a most unladylike snort. "s**t, no. Even the thought of Jason n***d makes me lose my appetite. Why don't you tell me about you and...Mum, instead?" I couldn't remember if I'd ever called her that. I didn't know what I'd called her if I'd even been able to talk.

"Oh look, here comes dinner," Dad said, smiling at the waitress as she served our order.

Choking down the desire to ask a million more questions, I concentrated on finishing my food so Dad would tell me more. Why had he decided to unburden himself now, of all nights? A chill crept over me as I feared the worst.