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How I begged for self-discipline that I’d never touched her. How I wished I could undo the fact I’d manipulated her into talking to me and giving me things she’d wanted to keep private.
Her embrace by the submarine.
Her confession of liking clouds over stars and rain over sun.
How she hated toast—
They were things I hadn’t earned. Things I’d stolen.
I had to get out of there.
Immediately.
I never spoke in my mixed heritage. I chose English over Japanese as a way to honour my father rather than my mother. But in that moment, English seemed woefully unable to convey just how damn sorry I was.
It wasn’t enough.
The English language only had one way of apology.
Japanese had over twenty.
I’d use all of them if it meant the heaviness in my chest would ease.
I would murmur them forever if I could somehow find redemption.
But for now, all I could offer was one.
Kissing her again, I breathed into her hair, “Owabi shimasu.”
The translation: please accept this apology from the bottom of my heart.
“El…” Pim reached for my neck, but I swooped back, bowed low and sweeping to the woman I loved more than anything, then stalked from the room.
I didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-Six
______________________________
Pimlico
WHO KNEW FIFTEEN minutes had the power to completely change a person, a life, a relationship?
Stepping into that room, I knew it would be hard and emotional, but I had no idea I’d run the gauntlet, dredge up every agony, and swim through so many historical and present wounds.
I’d done that.
No one had forced me.
But as I touched my mother after a lifetime of shoulder pats and cool nods instead of hugs and kisses, everything I’d been harbouring, everything I didn’t even know fermented deep inside me, gushed forth in noxious honesty.
I didn’t do it to hurt her.
I didn’t say such things to be spiteful or cruel.
In fact, I’d made a promise not to mention a thing about it.
I just…couldn’t stop.
My childhood desires rose from nowhere, impulses took over, and I spilled things I never dreamed of spilling, especially to a mother who’d killed for me in front of a man who’d killed for me, too.
Two people who’d willingly stolen a life so I might live.
Two people who had a stain upon their souls for eternity.
I owed them more than I could ever repay.
I should protect them from unneeded memories and be ever so grateful.
They didn’t deserve to hear what I’d endured before their sacrifice made my existence better.
That was my cross to bear—they had far too many others and all because of me.
I knew all that.
I hated myself that it hadn’t stopped me.
And bringing forth such evil, spreading its darkness to the people I loved the most, hadn’t made any of it easier.
It didn’t make me better. It didn’t cure me. Purging myself in such a way didn’t release the filth still wriggling deep inside me like a snake I couldn’t catch.
It only made me sad and mad and tired.
So, so tired.
And when Elder murmured Japanese into my hair then bowed as if he was a knight laying his sword at my feet, my heart had fallen upon his blade in terror.
I didn’t understand what he said, but by the anguish on his face, it wasn’t good.
I’d tried to grab him…to ask him to explain…to introduce him to my mother now that dirty laundry had been aired, washed, and hopefully clean enough to fold away, but he’d kissed me and bolted from the room as if he would die if he stayed another moment.
If my heart had impaled itself on the hypothetical sword he’d laid at my feet, then it well and truly ran itself through in misery as the door closed on him, shutting us apart.
My insides curled up as horror splashed through me like sour wine.
What have I done?
How had I forgotten that he was listening too? That everything I’d tried to hide from him just vomited into reality and tarnished everyone in the room.
I wanted to chase after him.
I wanted to console him.
I wanted to erase that crucifixion in his beautiful black eyes.
Unthinkingly, I untangled myself from my mother’s embrace and climbed unsteadily to my feet.
I took a stumbling step toward the door, my mind consumed with fixing what I’d just broken, but then I looked back at my mother. At the way she drank me in. At the way she kneeled on the prison floor with such love and admiration and awe—three things I’d longed to see on her face since I was born—and no matter what I’d just ruined with Elder, I couldn’t ruin this.
Not now.
Not when it was so brand new.
I slowly sat back down again, nodding at my mother to join me on chairs instead of dirty linoleum.
She stood with a wince and sat, planting her hands in the middle of the table, her fingers waggling for mine.
