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The Shirosama was in a Japanese mental hospital, babbling, incoherent, totally insane. Summer would have thought that was a little too convenient if she hadn’t seen the blank madness in his eyes as he’d rolled on the ground with Taka. The famed Hayashi Urn was on display in Kyoto, and the True Realization Fellowship was in disarray. And no one seemed to know how close the world had come to total chaos.
She wasn’t going to think about Taka. Not for one moment. Peter and his wife never mentioned him, and Jilly must have been warned not to ask her too many questions. Summer would sit in the garden window, looking out over the wintry garden, and learn how to knit.
It seemed a silly thing to do, but it soothed her. While her fingers manipulated the hand-spun wool, her mind began to heal, when she hadn’t even realized she was wounded.
She even managed to tolerate Lianne’s rushed, abject visit. It was easy enough—most of their mother’s guilt centered on Jilly, and she accepted Summer’s calm at face value before taking off to India on her newest quest for spiritual enlightenment. Summer was even able to laugh about her with Jilly. At night, Summer would lie in her big soft bed, dry-eyed, sleepless, her body restless, empty, and she wouldn’t even think his name.
“We need to think about going home,” she said one morning as Jilly was poring over her physics text. Genevieve was in her office, doing some long distance pro bono legal work, and there were just the two of them at the ancient oak kitchen table.
Jilly looked up. “I’m in no hurry,” she said. “I’ve got my books, and I should be able to jump right in next semester. Besides, I like it here.”
Summer looked out at the garden. They’d been in England for almost two months. It was getting warmer now, with a faint blush of color on the trees, in the grass. There were even daffodils out in the sunnier patches. Things were coming alive again. It was time for her to come alive as well.
“I need to find a new job. The Sansone doesn’t want to have a
nything to do with me or the scandal, and I don’t really blame them. But there are a lot fewer jobs than there are qualified curators, and the sooner I get started looking the sooner I’ll be able to get back to a normal life.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she said. As far as she could remember, it was the first lie she’d ever told her sister.
She didn’t want a normal life. She didn’t want a job at an L.A. museum; she didn’t want to head west. She wanted to go east, back to Japan, find Taka, slam him against the wall and find out why he’d lied to her. Why had he told her he loved her and then disappeared out of her life? She wanted him groveling at her feet for forgiveness. She wanted him on top of her, beneath her, behind her, inside her. She wanted to put out her hands and feel him, solid and warm. She wanted his beautiful mouth against hers, wanted his eyes staring into hers, unguarded and wanting. She wanted to taste his tattoos.
She wanted what she couldn’t have. He’d lied. When they were both likely to die he’d lied to her, proving he had at least a kind streak in his cold, beautiful body.
Genevieve breezed into the kitchen, her glasses perched low on her nose. “It’s going to be warm today,” she announced. “Tea in the garden, I think. Peter will come home early, and he’ll probably bring Isobel. We all need frocks.”
“Frocks?” Jilly echoed with a laugh. “You’re not putting me into Laura Ashley—I’m bigger than you and I fight dirty.”
“Isobel’s coming?” Summer said in a neutral voice.
“I don’t know why you don’t like her,” Jilly complained. “She saved my life.”
And ordered Taka to kill me, Summer could have added, but she kept silent.
“Isobel’s okay,” Genevieve said, pouring herself a cup of the coffee she still thankfully preferred in the morning. “Just a bit of a cold fish, but she gets the job done.”
“I don’t think I have a frock,” Summer said, trying to summon some enthusiasm.
“I have dozens,” Genny replied cheerfully. “And I’ll make scones and serve clotted cream and we’ll have a lovely time.”
“Lovely,” Summer echoed. She’d lost another ten pounds since she’d been there, not because of her hostess’s cooking, which was excellent, but because she had no appetite. Any of Genny’s Laura Ashleys would hang on her, but she could always sash one in, play English countryside to the best of her ability, just to make Genevieve happy. More pastels—the funny thing was she’d given up wearing black, at a time when her soul was in mourning. It made no sense, but black depressed her, and she was depressed enough.
Tomorrow she’d get on the Internet, book herself a flight back home and put all this behind her.
Because he wasn’t coming. She hadn’t even realized she’d been waiting for him, watching the winter-dead garden, her fingers busy wrapping yarn around needles.
Genevieve was right, it was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm. She had set a table out in the awakening garden, dripping with country fabrics and beautiful old china, and Summer liked her too much to resent playing dress-up. The pale blue flowered dress she’d borrowed was the very essence of a “frock,” flowing, feminine, discreetly ruffled and laced. She even let her hair loose around her shoulders, deciding she, too, could be a British debutante from the 1930s, or whatever fantasy Genevieve was living.
When Summer walked out into the warm air of the garden, she could see that Jilly had been willing to play as well, though there was a certain goth streak to the black sash against the pale lavender flowers of her dress, and her spiky hair was tipped with the same lavender color. She was also wearing her Doc Martens, but she was bubbling and happy, and for a short while that was all that mattered.
Coffee for breakfast, Hu Kwa for afternoon tea. Summer would have preferred something Japanese, she thought, and then mentally slapped herself as she sank into one of the delicate chairs, her knitting in her lap. She really had to get home.
Peter was the first to arrive. He was barely limping by now, and Summer had refrained from asking what had happened to him. She knew enough from Taka to know how dangerous a profession they had, but she didn’t want to think about that.
Peter leaned down and kissed Genevieve’s cheek, and she looked up at him with such adoration that Summer felt her stomach clench. Not blinding adoration, but a wise, knowing look, as if she’d gazed into the heart of darkness and accepted what was there.
Could Summer do the same? She wasn’t going to be given the chance, she thought, concentrating on the complicated pattern between her fingers.
