____________

Drake

 

 

 

I walked the lonely path from the top of the stairs to my bedroom. Every time I did I had to pass Noriko’s door. As I stepped closer, my heart rate heightened and my palms grew sweaty.

I couldn’t walk past without stopping. The space around her door was like quicksand, dragging at my heels and slowing my steps until I was forced to stop completely, staring at the pale decorative door.

I lifted up a hand and touched the cool surface. Somewhere behind this thin separation of wood was the chalice of my remorse. If I could see her. If I could talk to her…

What would I say?

I said nothing. Instead I grasped onto any sounds of life. Sometimes I heard the rustle of sheets as she shifted in bed. Sometimes I heard her crying. I ran the tips of my fingers along the painted wood and gripped the key in my other hand, leaving marks in my palm.

Eventually, I let my fingers fall and continued my journey, alone, except for all my guilt slung around my shoulders like chains of iron.

I was like a wraith. Functioning during the day, working myself longer hours than ever so I didn’t have to go home and face…her.

To face…what I’d done.

I couldn’t let her out yet.

Because I didn’t know how to force us back together. I didn’t trust her not to find a way to leave me, to disappear back to Japan.

She wasn’t theirs anymore. She was mine. I needed her more than they did. I couldn’t live without her.

If you save a life, you’re responsible for it.

She saved me. She was responsible for me.

 

 

 

Today as I stopped by her bedroom I heard two voices. I pressed my ear to the door, straining to hear.

“Did you make all these?” I recognized Loretta’s voice.

“Yes.” My heart tugged at the sound of Noriko’s voice.

“Wow, there’re so many.” What were they talking about? What did Noriko make?

“Nine hundred and forty-two, to be exact.”

I needed to see. Just a sliver of her. Just a piece.

I slipped the key that I always carried with me into the lock and turned it slowly. Pushing the door open a crack, I searched for Noriko, my eyes hungry for her.

Loretta and Noriko were standing in front of one of the shelves. It had been empty when Noriko moved in. Now it was covered in what looked like…paper cranes, all in different colors, some patterned, some plain.

Loretta picked one of them up, a blue one, and turned it over in her hands. “Why paper cranes?”

I strained to hear Noriko’s answer.

“It’s part of the senbazuru legend,” she said, barely within my hearing. “Legend says that if you fold a thousand paper cranes you are granted one wish.”

“And you’re going to fold all thousand cranes.”

“Yes.”

“What will you wish for?”

“The only thing I want.”

“Which is?”

“I want to go home. Where I’m loved.”

My heart stabbed. She didn’t think I loved her? How could she not feel my love? I’d given her everything to be happy: her own studio, the finest clothes, this beautiful house. What else? What more could I give? Whatever I had was hers.

“Oh, Noriko,” Loretta slipped the crane back on the shelf. “You are loved.”

Noriko’s answer might as well have been a bullet to my heart. “Here, in this mansion, I have everything except love.”

 

 

 

I was drinking again.

The world was fuzzy and my pain blunted when I drank.

No wonder my father did it.

The door to my study opened and Loretta stepped in. I think I had been waiting for her.

“Drake Blackwell,” she began.

“Loretta Stern,” I slurred back to her.

“I have been with you since birth. I have raised you as if you were my own. You have done some questionable things. But this…locking your wife in her room while her father lies dying…this is almost unforgivable.”

I winced as her words dug into my skin. I couldn’t lose Noriko. I couldn’t let her go. Why couldn’t anyone see that? “I don’t pay you to tell me what’s right or wrong.”

“Somebody should! And apparently I am the only one who isn’t scared to tell you. You are being an ass.”

Her words rained against my numbness like arrows. Under the fog, the beast simmered.

“If you don’t let her go back to say goodbye to her father, she’ll never forgive you.”

I slammed my glass down on the table. “If I let her go, she will never come back.”

“Maybe. Maybe she will. If she doesn’t, you only have your terrible behavior to blame.”

“No. She stays.” It was part of my plan. Keep her here. Fix it. Make her love me.

“What are you going to do? Keep her locked up for the rest of her life?”

“I…” Stupid details. “Just until she promises to stay.”

Loretta let out a snort. “Really, boy? For someone so smart you really are stupid sometimes.”

“Are you looking to get fired?”

“Let her go. If she is yours—truly yours—she will come back.”

“I will not lose her. I can’t lose her,” I yelled. “She stays.”

Loretta shook her head, her eyes filling with pity. “I’m afraid you already may have.”