TAK’S CONDO WAS a high rise on Ocean Drive, center stage on South Beach. “The Jewel on the Beach” was what they called the property, and from what he could gather, they took the claim literally. His father had purchased the loft, a three-bedroom on the twentieth floor, at the vision-blurring price of 3.5 million. With it came private ocean access, a spa and fitness center and twenty-four-hour white glove service—and he was still trying to figure out what the hell that meant. But his place was a tattered old tent compared to the Mediterranean masterpiece his parents called home.
The Jewel was a thirty-story, sleek and lofty post-modern design envisioned by an MIT professor who was once one of his father’s former classmates. Tak remembered visiting the property as a potential buyer with his father and watching him scrutinize fixtures, pull out measuring tape and harass the real estate agent for blueprints. When he asked Daichi just what he was doing, his father frowned at him with that all-too-common sneer of impatience and said, “Michael Cook was a B student. Any work by him needs to be double-checked.”
When Tak graduated from UCLA there’d been no discussion about him remaining in California. His father simply told him that he was to pick a condo somewhere in South Florida and that would serve as his graduation gift. Had Daichi been a different sort of father, Tak would’ve taken the gesture as an indication that his father wanted him near. But since he was Daichi, he figured it simply never occurred to him to ask his son’s opinion about where he might want to live.
Still, the condo was beyond generous, and Tak couldn’t help but be excited about it. And though it was expensive, he could afford the property tax on it. Thanks to his father, he’d never had to prescribe to the struggling artist routine. A trust fund of upwards of twenty million released to him the day he graduated from college had ensured that Tak would never have to lift brush to canvas should he not desire to. But he enjoyed his work, and he enjoyed earning his own income.
No one, it seemed, knew how much his father was worth. He kept his wife, his children, everyone save the IRS and his accountant, swathed in ignorance. For years, Tak ran a guestimate, tallying projects and expected payouts in the hopes of figuring out his father’s elusive net worth. But when he gained access to his trust fund and found that it alone consisted of more than he’d figured his father was worth, he knew that math wasn’t his field.
After graduation, Tak educated himself on market trends, invested his money aggressively and kept up the frugal spending habits he’d developed in college. The result was a net worth that swelled from twenty to twenty-five million, and, more importantly, the sense that he shared responsibility for his fate and success.
His first artistic triumph came as an undergraduate at UCLA after winning a citywide collegiate competition. The grand prize was an art gallery showing with major press coverage. From it he was able to segue a short-lived fame into a full-fledged gallery deal, first in Miami, and then eventually in Manhattan.
He should’ve considered himself successful. Last year he’d been commissioned to do an oil painting for the Miami Museum of Art and the earnings for it alone were stellar. Better still, his gallery showings were always well attended and always profitable. But his scale for weighing success was tilted and broken—after all, he was the son of Daichi Tanaka. Short of morphing into Picasso, Van Gogh, or his father, success was all but unattainable.
DEENA ARRIVED AT her grandmother’s house in time for breakfast. There were grits on the stove alongside sausage links, eggs, bacon and flapjacks. Coffee brewed in the percolator while orange juice waited on the table. But Deena could stomach no food. Not for what she had to do.
She stared at the flimsy slab of door that stood between hers and Anthony’s rooms. White and peeling, he’d slammed it in her face in exasperation, anger and annoyance. What she wouldn’t give for him to slam it one more time.
Deena brought a hand to the brass knob and hesitated. Never had she walked into Anthony’s room unannounced. There was something so final about presuming to do so, so irreversible, that her body seemed unwilling to do it. She turned the brass knob and the door slipped open. There. It’s done.
The room was stale; the white curtains drawn and already gathering dust. Air Jordans were strewn about—an orange and red one near the entrance, its match near the window, a purple one at her feet, the other absent. As Deena stared at those shoes, her brother’s pride, a bitter sort of amusement washed over her. How many times had Anthony declared that his shoes were off limits, that they would be touched only over his dead body? And how right had he been?
Deena moved to open the lone window. The heat and smell of old shoes threatened to smother her. The window caught, refusing to open, and she abandoned it. Looking around she realized she’d neglected to bring a box or bag for mementos. She headed for the kitchen and returned with a fistful of Glad bags.
Deena worked slowly, gathering and folding his shirts and his pants, giving them the attention that he never did. Her mind was on autopilot, processing data and giving orders through a fog of melancholy. She bagged shirts, shoes and sneakers for Goodwill before digging out a pair of Jordans for herself. They were his first pair, as gleaming as the day he’d bought them. Varsity red and white, the sneakers were a vintage tribute to originals released two decades earlier. Deena set them aside. They would join a fitted Miami Heat cap and a bracelet he used to wear, now in her closet at home.
She moved on to his dresser, an old oak hand-me down with five drawers, and stopped at the sight of his keys. Air eluded her. Silver and unassuming, the keys sat, forgotten.
Deena lifted them with trembling fingers and closed the keys in her fist. He’d forgotten them that night, left there on the dresser as he went to his death. Would he have returned had he remembered? Would he have lived had he remembered?
Deena brought the keys to her heart and with a sob. Never would they be used again. Not at her house, or her grandmother’s, or anywhere. Ever.
In the end, it was the keys and that single, unforgiving word that brought her to her knees. Never would she see her brother again.
Ever.