Chapter Twenty-two

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up

and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come."

- Anne Lamott

Two days had passed since their return, and Sayid had avoided any contact with Nadia. Today he sat at his workbench on the beach, scouring over some equations. Libby approached him and kneeled beside him, asking if he minded if she spoke with him. He shook his head.

"You're friends with Nadia, right?" she asked.

He glanced at Libby and then back at the papers. He didn't answer because he wasn't sure how to answer.

"I need your advice. I'm trying to decide whether I should tell her something."

Sayid looked away from the numbers and focused on Libby. "Tell her what?"

Libby looked down at the workbench, at the loose papers, the pencils, the scattered wires. "While you were gone, I tried to talk to Nasser. You remember I was worried about him?"

Sayid nodded.

"I thought it was going well at first. I thought he was opening up to me. He seemed very friendly, outgoing, even…charming."

Sayid lowered his pencil to the table, but he still held it in his hand. He didn't like where this conversation seemed to be going.

"Then he made a pass at me," she mumbled quickly. "I rebuffed him of course."

Sayid tapped the pencil nervously against the table.

"I don't want to keep this from Nadia," she said, "but I also don't want to be responsible for causing tension in their marriage. I don't think it was something he planned to do. He was very remorseful afterwards. I think he was…you know…just looking to connect. I think it was an unusual, unexpected thing for him, and it may be a symptom of his—"

Sayid interrupted her. "It is a symptom of his serial infidelity."

Libby looked at him in disbelief.

"You really thought it was the first time he had done such a thing?" Sayid asked her.

"Do you know otherwise?"

"No, I do not know otherwise. But you have now given me adequate reason to believe otherwise. You may tell Nadia, if you think you must, but I suspect she already knows. Not about this specific incidence, perhaps, but in general."

"Then, then…" stuttered Libby, "why does she stay with him? Why didn't she leave him long ago?"

Sayid went back to tapping his pencil on the table.

"And don't tell me," Libby continued, "that it's because she's a Muslim. I know Islam permits divorce."

"It is not because she is a Muslim," said Sayid. "It is because she is Nadia."

Libby glanced with annoyance at the distracting movement of the pencil. Sayid stopped the tapping and merely held it between his fingers. "Nadia," he explained, "has a tendency to believe in fallen and worthless men. It is not a bad thing."

"It is a bad thing," disagreed Libby. "It's a terrible thing. It's a sign of dependency and weakness--"

Libby stopped speaking and glanced at Sayid's hand because she sensed it shuddering. He was bearing down so hard against the pencil that the wood snapped between his fingers. "It is not weakness," he said, in a voice so thick with repressed anger that she drew away from him.

"I am sorry," he muttered. He continued, gently now, "But can you imagine how much strength it must require to draw out the best in a man even while he is hurting you? Such love can change a man."

"That's just the problem, Sayid. A woman can't change a man. That's what women who are emotionally or physically abused always believe, but they're wrong."

"Not always wrong," he said softly.

"It is foolish for a woman to think that her love is going to change a man. It just doesn't work that way."

He looked down at Libby's left hand. He was studying her ring finger, to see if she had any kind of tan line there. "Do you speak from empirical observation or from personal experience?"

"This isn't about me, Sayid."

"Not even a little?" he asked.

She folded her hand and brought it down into her lap. "Listen," she said, almost as if she were pleading with him, "I don't know why you seem so personally invested in this conversation, but obviously there is more going on here than I perceived."

Sayid dropped the broken pieces of the pencil on the table and looked at her anxiously.

"I don't mean to offend you," she said. "And if I somehow unknowingly have…I'm sorry. I am only struggling to determine and to do the right thing."

"As so many of us on this island are," he replied. "If only it were easier."

"If only," she agreed, and her eyes pitied him, though she did not quite know for what.

He picked up another pencil and began to write on the paper. He did not turn when he heard Libby rise and walk away. He concentrated instead on the numbers, the precious numbers that were so beautiful to him because, no matter how he arranged them, no matter how baffling or complex the equation, always, always, there was only one right answer.