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Noriko

 

 

 

I felt sick. I felt like my insides had been ripped out. What had I done? Blackwell Industries was his life. I destroyed it. With one careless slip of my tongue.

I kept reading the article.

 

After the public outcry over the negative press concerning his alleged horrific treatment of his Japanese mail-order bride, Drake Blackwell, CEO of Blackwell Industries, has been forced to step down. It seems these allegations have been a fatal blow to his already cold and calculating reputation in the business world. It has been reported that Mr. Blackwell has sent his wife back to Japan to avoid the local media from getting her side of this fairy-tale-turned-nightmare. Sources say that she is being paid to keep quiet.

 

My insides twisted into knots. This was why he paid for my father’s surgery. Not because he still loved me. He thought it would keep me quiet.

Oh, Drake, I wouldn’t have said anything. You didn’t have to pay for my silence, you just had to ask.

“God, Nori-chan, you were lucky to get away from him,” Emi said.

“How did you?” asked Tatsumi.

“Yes, how did you get away from the beast?”

“He’s not a beast!” I cried.

My two sisters blinked at me before trading looks.

“But the articles—”

“I don’t care what the newspapers say. They don’t know anything.” I flung myself out of the bed and rushed out onto the balcony, the cool breeze whipping around outside. I didn’t stop running until I’d slammed my hands along the railing, heaving in breath.

What had I done?

I’d ruined his life.

How could he ever forgive me?

How could he ever love—

“Nori-chan?” Tatsumi called from behind me.

“Are you okay?” Emi said, her voice all small.

“I’m fine,” I lied. No one could ever know the truth of a marriage except for the two people in it; sometimes, not even them. “I just need some air. Go back inside. I’ll join you soon.”

I could feel their weighted stares on my back. I could sense the questions they were holding back like a pack of wolves.

“Go inside,” I commanded in a tone that sounded so much like Drake’s that it sent a stab through my heart.

I heard them retreating, their hushed whispers, the door click signaling that I was alone.

And alone, I was.

The last of the fog in my vision cleared. I saw each gnarled root or jagged rock Drake and I had stumbled across over the last five months. I felt the weight of my sins and his like a single being. This was what a marriage was, I realized. It wasn’t his fault, it was ours. It wasn’t my mess, it was ours. When life got heavy, it laid across both our shoulders.

The ones we let in close, get close enough to see the cracks in our armor. And with our love we hand them a knife. By trusting them with our secrets, we show them where to aim.

Drake and I had both wounded the other. We were both to blame. Both wrong in so many ways.

Our fault. Our mess. Our marriage.

Was it even a marriage anymore?

Here was my chance to cut ties with Drake before the year was up. Was that what I still wanted?

 

 

 

It felt strange to be back here at our small house in Shibetzu. Like a shoe that’d become a tad too small. I found myself wincing at the noise of my sisters bickering as they tumbled over each other to get ready in the mornings. I found myself scrunching my nose at rice with every meal, missing the variety of foods I was served in the Blackwell dining room.

I missed the quiet and solitude of the manor. I missed my studio, filled with everything I needed. I missed the gardens where I’d often take my paints. Mostly, I missed the way my heart would kick-start when the gravel crunching outside told me that my husband was home.

I’d outgrown this place. Like a tree that had been replanted into a different shaped pot, it could not fit back into the old pot.

Papa found me sitting alone early one morning underneath the cherry tree. He lowered himself onto the grass in front of me. “Nori-chan, it’s good to have you home.”

“Yes, Papa,” I said. I didn’t lift my eyes to his.

“What of your husband? When do I get to meet him and thank him for what he has done for me?”

My husband. In the last six weeks, Papa had been silent about Drake. This was the first time he’d asked about him.

“I…I don’t think he’s coming.” Ever. My chest squeezed around each jagged word.

“He must come for you. You are married. You love each other.”

I shook my head as tears pricked the backs of my eyes. “Oh, Papa. I have ruined everything with him.”

“How could you ruin anything? It is not possible.”

I let out a sob-laugh. “Trust me, I am very capable of making a huge mess of my life.” And my marriage.

“You still love him?”

I squeezed my eyes shut as the creeping realization that I’d been trying to ignore could not be denied anymore. I nodded.

“And you’ve told him?”

I shook my head. I never got the chance.

That’s a lie, Noriko. You had the chance, several of them, you were too scared to take it.

I had used my promise to my father as an excuse. I had been too scared to make a life of my own outside of the safety of my family home. I had been too scared to give my all to my marriage. Now this house I once called home had become its own sort of prison.

 

 

 

Months dragged by… Autumn came again and for the first time it felt like an old friend, like the only one who understood what I felt inside. Leaves turned red like they were bleeding from the inside, before curling into their dry, brittle bodies, straining, hanging on by their fingers until they gave up and let go, swirling and falling to the ground and finally crumbling to dust. The air chilled and the bony branches shivered.

Then the snow fell and the world looked clean and white. A new year. A new start. If only there could be such a thing for my marriage.

Finally spring arrived with her new buds and her hope, a sentiment I no longer believed in. It had been almost eight months. Eight months without a single word from Drake.

It was a Saturday morning. My father and sisters were sitting huddled under a blanket as I stirred our breakfast congee, a rice porridge, on the stove. There was something about today, something nagging the edge of my mind about today. I couldn’t figure it out.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up outside. I froze. Our visitors were usually from the village and they walked. Nobody we knew owned a car…

I ran through the house, my bare feet pounding on the straw mats. I slid open the front door, my eyes searching, my hope soaring…

A large black car had pulled up outside our gate, a figure climbing out of the back seat. Those familiar wide shoulders. The dark shock of hair. That air of power.

Drake.

Drake had finally come.