She entered the flower shop and headed for the back stairs, the only way to get up to her own apartment. It would be this way until the landlord decided to make a separate entrance. But Siham didn’t mind so much. “Hello, Mrs. Donato,” she said to the black-haired, elderly woman sitting at the counter, arms folded across her chest and eyes closed.

“Hello, bella,” she replied, her eyes snapping open.

“I did not mean to awoke you, Mrs. Donato.”

“No, no, bella. Iz OK.” Mrs. Donato beckoned to her daughter, who was at the other end of the shop arranging flowers in a basket. “Wait, wait for Carla. There is a woman here before. Blondie woman.”

“Blondie?”

“Wait for Carla. Wait, she tells you.”

Carla approached them with two lilies in her hands, the long stems coiled like serpents. “Hi, Siham. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you very much.”

“How is Nader?” she asked, a curious glitter in her brown eyes.

“Fine. Your mother, she said about a woman?”

“Yes, there was a woman here about an hour ago, looking for Nader. A tall, blonde woman. Red suit, linen, with black heels. Looked a little younger than me, maybe forty or forty-five years old.”

“What does she say?” Siham interrupted Carla’s flood of description. She liked Mrs. Donato, but Siham was wary of Carla, who was obviously very smart but who thrived on gossip, like her old aunts back home. A woman who never missed a single detail or a gesture or a look.

“She asked if Nader Jundi lived upstairs. I said yes, he does, with his wife.” Carla casually snapped the heads off the lilies and Siham watched a lone, white petal float to the floor. “She asked how long you’d both been married. I said, ‘I don’t know,’ but that you had moved in together a few months ago.”

“Does she—did she leave a message?”

“No, she just left. Didn’t even say thank you. Tossed her head and walked out.”

“Thank you, Carla. I will see you later.” Siham headed upstairs, a sick feeling creeping into her belly.

“Bella, have some coffee with us,” Mrs. Donato called out behind her.

“No, thank you.” She scaled the steps three at a time. Before she shut the door firmly behind her, she heard Mrs. Donato yell at Carla for ruining the flowers.

Later that night, she questioned Nader about it, as soon as he walked into the apartment. Her father used to say, as he furrowed his shaggy brows, that his daughter had been aptly named. Siham meant “arrows” in Arabic. Straight to the target. No deviations.

Nader was visibly startled, his eyes widened like white discs. Especially when she told him of her feeling that it was the same woman who had phoned the day before. “It was probably an old friend, habibti, from work or something,” he said reassuringly, though he didn’t stop tapping his foot through the rest of dinner. Siham felt suddenly guilty for upsetting him. That night, their frantic lovemaking knocked the blue stone off the wall. It rolled along the headboard and, before she could grasp it, shattered into fragments on the hardwood floor.