After Adel and Naomi’s Return from the Honeymoon
_From Naomi’s room
After Nelly fell asleep, wrapped in a fleeting sense of victory over Adel, and Adel settled uneasily on the sofa in the living room—his mind weighed down by anxiety that had filled the house, by the newly born conflicts that had clouded his day, and by the mysterious young man Nelly had come to know—Naomi lay awake, thinking in all the wrong ways.
She lay on her bed as though imagining what might be happening in the next room. Her thoughts circled around Adel and Nelly, and she convinced herself that they were spending a night of happiness together, reunited after Adel’s month-long absence. For a moment, a passing wave of jealousy tightened her chest, but she quickly restrained it and whispered to herself:
“I must acce
