“You’re going to pop if you turn any redder,” she said.
Tak turned so that his lips brushed her ear. “I just keep feeling like he’s…”
“In love with you?” Deena guessed. She couldn’t help the smile of amusement on her lips.
It died when Tyson screamed.
Tak bolted.
Deena knew it would be him, with his constant need for responsibility, with his guilt simmering the moment Tyson went down instead of him.
“Tak!” Deena hollered, but it made no difference, of course. By the time she made it to the door, he was at the bottom of the stairs, wading through waist deep water.
“Do you see him?” she said and started downward, only to have her father-in-law grip her by the wrist.
“No,” Tak said and grabbed the stair railing as a gush of water flashed by onward it its rush elsewhere.
“It’s freezing,” Tak said and the lights flickered, on, then off, on, then off, plunging Deena’s husband into darkness.
“Tak? Are you still holding the rail?”
She snatched from her father-in-law, hissed that he should go back, and took a few tentative steps, stopping when she splashed.
“Tak?” Panic eked into her voice.
“Yeah, Dee. I’m here and I have the rail again.”
Again?
Never had he sounded further away.
“Come back,” Deena said. “Just—come back.”
Icy incisions of rain pricked her arm. Was it possible? Was it raining in the house? Deena knew the answer, but feared it.
She swiped a hand in the air, feeling around for her husband as the storm freight trained through her head. They were in the thick of it now, in the thick of something massive and unforgiving in administering God’s wrath.
Her fingers latched on to fabric.
“Tak?”
Her fingers twisted around cloth.
“Tak?”
“I—I think I found Tyson.” He hesitated. “I need help pulling him up. Hold on to me tight; you’ll feel some resistance. He’s pinned some sort of weird way.”
Deena roped the extra fabric of his t-shirt around her hand and grabbed on to the railing with the other. She listened to her husband curse and splash in the dark, biting back the mounting horror of what would emerge from the dark. Tak twisted under her grip and a reverberating thud sounded on the stairs, just near Deena’s feet.
“Okay, let go. We’re out of the water.”
Like hell she’d let go. Deena backed up another stair to give him space and yanked forward as Tak bent low. She flailed and snatched in a moment of blind panic, before latching onto the banister and safety.
“Dee, let go. You’re choking me. I’m trying to give the man CPR.”
She clamped down tighter even as he lurched rhythmically in her grip, grunting from the exertion of his efforts. He counted out in the dark, jerked, counted out, jerked. Still, she clung to his shirt, not caring how twisted up he felt as he moved from one position to the other.
“Tak?”
Tyson should have coughed by now.
“Nothing’s happening. It’s hard to know if I’m doing it right in the dark.”
His grunts of exertion resumed. Steady, steady, feverish, frantic.
Tak cursed and gave a wild thrust. Then nothing.
Stillness.
“He’s dead, Dee.”
“What? Of course he’s not dead. Tak—”
“He’s dead, Deena.”
Tak was mistaken. There was no way that a man could drown retrieving a bottle of vitamins. There were on vacation, Christmas vacation, for Christ’s sake. In Aruba. He couldn’t possibly be—
“I’ll put him in one of the rooms. I don’t want the kids to see. Or your cousin. I think there’s something wrong with his head.”
They backed up, so Tak could lift him. Even in the dark, his exertion seemed enormous, with each thudding step, each groan sounding off every move.
“Tak, please. Let me help. It’ll be easier if we—”
“No, Deena. Now move.”
She did as he said, slipping her hand from what felt like the collar of his shirt down to the hem when they’d cleared the stairs.
“This way,” Deena said and felt around to fumble from surface to surface, blind on her wide eyed trek to the end of the hall. There laid some semblance of privacy in the smallest guest rooms.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that she led him to a tomb. To a final resting place where they would fold his arms over his chest, whisper Amen and back out.
Dead.
It felt like a lie, a gross lie, soaring on the wings of obscurity.
That was it, she told herself. That was where the truth lie. With light and sound and the abating of this storm. There they would see that Tyson was alright, surely a little injured, but alright just the same.
She pawed her way into the guest room until a bed stretched out before them. Tak slumped and dropped Tyson onto it and a squeak of coils responded.
She felt his absence, before hearing another caustic spring of coils. A hand pressed flat to the small of her back, then found her arm to pull her down. She took a seat on the bed at her back. Ever familiar arms went around her. The lights flashed on.
Deena saw Tyson.
Face ashen, eyes open, staring. And there, above his brow, was a sunken hollow, an indentation the size of a baseball. Tyson’s arms and legs sprawled out in four directions as water fled his body in gross streams. It seeped from his mouth, flooded from his clothes, and already, pooled to the floor.
She couldn’t look away. She didn’t dare look away, making sure he burned into her retinas instead. He was a human being, the man her cousin loved, twisted to the point of grotesque. Deena took it in, took him all in, committing him to memory as a last act of decency.
The lights flickered out once again.
Deena sat there, aware of her husband’s arms around her and aware of her own labored breathing, as images pressed in on her. She remembered her brother, gunned down, left to rot, and her having to identify his remains. She thought of Tyson, of who loved him, of whatever mother and father he’d left behind.
“I don’t think we can say anything, yet,” Tak said. “About Tyson. About the condition of house.” He looped his fingers through her, kissed Deena’s temple, and squeezed her hand. “We have to keep calm, no matter what happens. Calm is the only way.”
His words were like a mantra, reminding him more than her.
“The water’s rushing,” she said in the voice of another woman.
“It has power behind it,” Tak noted. “Like a current.”
Deena wondered how much he’d figured out on his own. Judging by his words, the answer was all or nearly all. She decided to be candid with her husband.
“Our walls have been breached,” she admitted. “Water rushes as it seeks a level surface. We are no longer a level surface.”
Tak shifted. “Okay. Then…what is?
The ocean was what she wanted to say; they were practically on top of it as it was. There were other concerns, too. A wall had either been breached or removed. If that wall was load bearing, part or all of the house could crumble. They could drown in a rush of water as it rose, or they could crush beneath the roof itself. Either could happen at any moment.
Tak pulled her to him for a kiss.
He kissed her like the road to hell was through her mouth and he wanted in there first. He kissed her with desperate hardness, with despairing greed, in cloying pain, his embrace crushing as Deena rose to meet him. Tak kissed her as if it were the thing he wanted to die doing, mouth soldered to hers in unchecked need.
Except it was him who pulled away first.
They felt their way back to the linen room hand in hand, only to find it illuminated with two flickering candles.
“You didn’t see him?” Crystal said.
“No,” Tak said.
Crystal stumbled to her feet as if to seek him, when Tak gave
a slow shake of the head.
He wouldn’t permit her to go.
Deena thought she might scream and fling herself at him; but Crystal backed up until she hit the wall, slithered down and remained. She knew the truth, Deena realized, knew it but would make them say it just the same.
Chapter Fifty-One
Tak’s mother sat in one corner, eyes vacant and darting. Eyebrows slick. Silk near transparent. Every inch of her bathed in sweat, with her layered curls plastered to her skull. Her rich alabaster skin had dulled to chalkiness while her hands—wrinkled things—twisted each other as if bent on breaking them both. Her breaths came in steady pants.
“What’s wrong with her?” Tak said to no one in particular. “Am I the only one that’s alarmed?”
Indeed it seemed that while he stared straight at her, everyone else made a point of looking away.
“Can you people not hear me?” Tak shouted.
Daichi and Deena opened their mouths and shut them at the exact same time. Both seemed willing to let the other one explain. Tak looked from one to the other, face raging.
“You,” he said, eyes on Deena. “How about my wife tells me something for a change?”
Deena wished the storm louder in that moment, loud enough to drown out her ability to speak.
Tak waited.
“Withdrawal,” Deena said and felt her stomach fold inward. “I think your mother is going through withdrawal.”
“Withdrawal.”
That look was cold. Bottom of the ocean cold. Abandoned at an ice cap cold.
I hate you cold.
“Tak—”
He turned to his father.
“How long? How long since she’s last been sober?”
Daichi’s lips parted, hovering over the question.
“Years.”
Tak got up and strode for the door.
“Tell him about your mother,” Daichi said and Deena couldn’t hold back the gasp. “Tell him about the phone calls. Get it all out now.”
Tak turned on them, eyes abandoning his head.
“You know about the phone calls?” He looked at Deena directly. “He knows?”
Daichi weathered his son’s scorching stare and his daughter-in-law’s forsaken one. He took it better than Deena, who shrunk under the weight of unspoken accusation.
You trust him with your heart, not me, is what that stare said. I’m your husband and you choose another as confidante.
Her bottom lip moved, as if coerced without her knowledge. Words jumbled in fragments, excuses ran alongside explanations, competing for first dibs out her mouth. She couldn’t bring herself to speak another word. Some part of her knew there’d be no excuse. So, she stood there numb and not moving, withering from his hostile glare.
“Well!” Tak hollered. “You do everything he says. He just told you to tell me. So, of course, you’ll tell me now.”
“Tak—” Deena struggled to her feet and reached for him, only to lose courage in the face of his contempt.
“She’s being released. She’s been released. By the time we get back she’ll be out.”
Nothing.
No reaction to the news. Only the scald of fury, boiling malice in his eyes.
“She—” Deena weighed her words, pressing back on the urge to shield him, even then. “Wants to live with us. She…expects to live with us.”
Gone.
A shove out the door had her husband gone, barreling on into darkness, not caring where he went.
“Tak!” Deena called, only to have John grab a candle and rush after.
****
“Tak!” John called into darkness. “Tak, where are you? Don’t do this. It’s dangerous.”
“Do what? I’m standing right in front of you.”
A whip of the candle brought him into stark relief.
“Do me a favor and go back inside,” Tak said. “I’m not in the mood, okay?”
“In the mood for what? Truth? Reason?”
Tak shot him a blistering look.
“John.”
It was a warning. He didn’t care.
“You act like she’s the only one with secrets. Like she’s the only one hiding shit.”
Tak turned a thunderous black.
“If you believe that crap about Aubree—”
“Mike. What he did to her. Why he’s gone.”
Tak stopped. He shot a look at the door they’d emerged from, then looked back to John.
“Are you crazy? Why would even say that out loud?”
“How else would you like me to say it? In my head?”
“Preferably!”
Tak started a truncated pace. To and fro, to and fro, in steps clipped by a narrow walkway.
“Tak,” John said gently. “She has a right to know.”
He couldn’t put a name to the sound Tak made.
“What she has a right to,” Tak eventually spat, “is to not be hurt by her husband’s family under her own goddamned roof. And don’t tell me about what my wife needs. Worry about your own.”
John watched him pace.
“Oh? Well, you’re all self righteous,” he said. “Demanding truth, no matter what. Why don’t you deliver some truth? Why don’t you go tell her that Mike waited like a vulture for her to pass out, felt her up and—”
“What did you say?”
Deena.
Deena. Deena. Deena.
John cursed. Cursed the mouth that opened and said too much, cursed the brother that made this mess, then ran..
“Nothing,” Tak said. “He—”
“Liar,” she hissed and shoved her husband aside, taking off to disappear from their flicker of candlelight.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Outside the storm raged, a beast of injustice hell bent on righting perceived wrongs. Deena listened in the dark, glad for the thing that gave voice to her feelings. When her bedroom door opened, she turned away from it, facing the boarded patio doors instead. The eternal darkness beyond it howled.
Tak stepped in, illuminated by the glow of a slim white candle.
“Deena.” He said as if her name as if it pained him. “Deena, please don’t—”
“How far did he go?” she said, jaw tight. “How much did your cousin do to me against my will?”
Her skin tried to flee her body at the thought.
“He touched you.” Tak said. “He…kissed you. I swear, if he hadn’t tried to kill—”
“You didn’t tell me,” she cried. “Why? To protect him?”
“What? No! Baby, I—”
His hand found her shoulder. She shrugged it off. No one could touch her just then.
Tak drew back, pain painted in bitter swipes across his face. Life drained from him like the color from a picture set to sepia.
“All this time,” Deena said and felt the rage rise like high tide. “All this time, you’ve been giving me hell about every little thing. And you—you with your house from your lover, with your cousin you’ll protect at my expense. To hell with you both.”
“Deena—”
He reached for and she gave him her hardest shove. He stumbled back a step and righted, more incredulous than anything.
“I’ve made my own way and forged my own life. I have never asked for anything from you. Yet, you stand here, stand here knowing what he did…” She shook. Shook with the rage of uncertainty, shook with range of possibilities. She could have been violated in any number of ways.
“And what?” Tak whispered. “Say it.”
“And you decide what he deserves? That he should just go? No input from me? It was me that he touched! Me that he hurt! Maybe I want vengeance. Maybe I want to see his pain. Ever thought of that?”
Tak looked weak just then, as if wrenched in a dozen different directions, and succumbing to the notion that he would be unable to keep his body intact.
“I kept things from you because I didn’t want to burden you or see you hurt,” Deena said. “But you, you kept things from me because it
was the neatest and most convenient of options. Or because you didn’t want to see your grandmother, aunt, and uncle hurt.”
There was the truth. Deena saw it in the pinch of his face, in the way he went inward, as if retreating from accusations he wanted no part of.
She realized it then as she thought back to Daichi’s words. “Your question is not one of Aubree Daniels or not. It’s of Deena Tanaka or not, isn’t it?”
Or not. That was what he’d chosen when he took the only weapon she valued. Choice. Choices were what took her from the ghetto to where she stood. Choice was what made her her.
He’d delivered a final kick to an already crumbling marriage, a marriage heavy-laden with secrets.
A marriage, Deena realized, that had finally found its end.
The wild look in his eyes said he knew this. She side stepped him amidst a clamor of protests.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Tak told himself that she didn’t mean it. That it was anger talking, an outrage that she had every right to feel. He had deceived her—about his one-time relationship with Aubree and about Mike. He’d wanted to protect her, to free her from the onslaught of pain that followed wherever she went. But all he’d done was wound her again.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
He wouldn’t let her scorch the earth like this, or smite everything like some vengeful god. They had years together, flawless years and memories still to be made. If anything, she had to see—he’d make her see that innate protectiveness of each other was to blame for their downfall, not some purposeful malice.
Tak thought of God while he sat there alone in their room. God with a little ‘g’ and God with a big ‘g.’ Maybe the years had been too good for someone who could never conjure more than a disinterested nod in spiritual matters. The wooden butsudan at home saw only rote ministrations; unlike his father, he neither prayed to deceased family members nor expected their intervention. Tak envied his wife in that way; envied her unwavering faith and resolute belief that her murmurings to an unseen god would be answered. How she, of all people, managed that was but a testament to the fire within. Interesting, he thought, how the thing that should have divided them irretrievably, was what drew him irretrievably. She had something to believe in, to draw strength in, to move mountains with…still. He saw strength in her when she didn’t and knew that strength intimately. It was what led her to protect her husband instead of confide in him, to shield him instead of lean on him. His wife would have to change all that.
Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale Page 20
