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and photographers everywhere. But then, after we talked, it didn’t seem to matter. He took me to dinner, he took me dancing.”
    “You danced for him?”
    “With him.” Phoebe set Adrianne on the bench beside her. Nearby a bee droned lazily, drunk on nectar. The sound buzzed pleasantly in Phoebe’s ears, made musical by the drug. “In Europe and America men and women dance together.”
    Adrianne’s eyes narrowed. “This is permitted?”
    “Yes, it’s permitted to dance with a man, to talk to a man, to take drives or go to the theater. So many things. People go on dates together.”
    “Go on?” Adrianne struggled with her English. “Dates are to eat.”
    Phoebe laughed again, sleepy in the sun. She could remember dancing in Abdu’s arms, and his smiling down at her. How strong his face had been. How gentle his hands. “These dates are different. A man invites a woman out. He comes to her house to pick her up. Sometimes he’ll bring her flowers.” Roses, she remembered dreamily. Abdu had sent her dozens of white roses. “Then they might go to dinner, or to a show and a late supper. They might go dancing in some crowded little club.”
    “You danced with my father because you were married?”
    “No. We danced, we fell in love, then we were married. It’s different, Adrianne, and so hard to explain. Most parts of the world aren’t like Jaquir.”
    The niggling fear she had lived with since the night shehad witnessed her mother’s rape took hold. “You want to go back.”
    Phoebe didn’t hear the fear, only her own regrets. “It’s a long way back, Addy. Too far. When I married Abdu I left it all behind. More than I understood then. I loved him, and he wanted me. The day we were married was the happiest day of my life. He gave me The Sun and the Moon.” She touched a hand to her bodice, almost feeling the weight and the power of the necklace. “When I wore it, I felt like a queen, and it seemed that all those dreams I’d had as a young girl in Nebraska were coming true. He gave me part of himself then, part of his country. It meant everything to me when he fastened the gems around my neck.”
    “That is the most precious treasure in Jaquir. It showed that he valued you above all else.”
    “Yes, he did once. He doesn’t love me anymore, Addy.”
    She knew it, had known it, but wanted to deny it. “You are his wife.”
    She looked down at her wedding ring, a symbol that had once meant so much. “One of three.”
    “No, he takes others only because he needs sons. A man must have sons.”
    Phoebe cupped Adrianne’s face in her hands. She saw the tears, and the pain. Perhaps she had said too much, but it was too late to take the words back. “I know he ignores you, and it hurts you. Try to understand that it isn’t you, but me.”
    “He hates me.”
    “No.” But he did hate his daughter, Phoebe thought as she gathered her close. And it frightened her, the cold hate she saw in Abdu’s eyes whenever he looked at Adrianne. “No, he doesn’t hate you. He resents me, what I am, what I’m not. You’re mine. He sees only that when he looks at you; he does not see the part of himself, maybe the best part of himself, that is in you.”
    “I hate him.”
    The fear grew sharper as she looked quickly around. They were alone in the garden, but voices carried and there were always ears to listen. “You mustn’t say that. You mustn’t even think that. You can’t understand what’s between Abdu and me, Addy. You aren’t meant to.”
    “He strikes you.” She drew back, and now her eyes weredry and suddenly old. “For that I hate him. He looks at me and doesn’t see. For that I hate him.”
    “Shh.” Not knowing what else to do, Phoebe pulled Adrianne back in her arms and rocked.
    She said nothing else. It had never been her intention to upset her mother. Until the words had been spoken, she hadn’t even been aware she’d held them in her heart. Now that they had been voiced, she accepted