No. They couldn’t wait.
“Where are you going?” Owen asked. “We need to talk about this.”
Sean faced the evening air, the chill he let into his lungs slowly before he spoke. “I’ll talk when you’re willing to listen.” He closed the door, jumped down the steps and headed to his car.
Owen was right, they did need to talk about it.
However, Sean needed to stop himself from telling them all off. He was talking himself into getting Sang and just dragging her out.
He wasn’t sure that was entirely wrong. The more he pictured it, the more it made sense to do it. On paper, it was the wrong move. Carol might call it kidnapping. Mr. Sorenson...he’d freak out. Who knew what he’d do to spare himself? Run off and leave Carol to handle it? That seemed to be his style.
But for Sang, leaving now seemed the only way to prevent her from losing herself in that place.
If no one on the team managed to come up with a reasonable answer that accounted for Sang’s health and mental stability, instead of just her discovery, he’d take her himself. He’d take the favor hit with the Academy. He’d give up all his favors for her.
He knew he was right. They were killing her. They were killing each other spending all this time running in circles.
Kintsugi
––––––––
Sean stopped by the hospital, sleeping in his office for a couple of hours while waiting for Sang’s bloodwork. He’d had it prioritized, offering a favor to the lab people.
He didn’t need to, but he wanted to do something for her.
When the results finally got to him, he took them to his car, intending to take them home, but before he turned over the engine, he had the paperwork out and checked her file.
High triglycerides. Anemic. Her cortisol levels were through the roof. He’d guessed right.
Too much sugar, not enough good food—her stress levels were too high. They knew all this. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Everything she was going through was completely stress-related.
She was sleeping now, and he hoped she’d continue to do so. Still, even as he calmed down from the argument and considered if Owen might at all be right, and maybe being hasty wasn’t going to work in this case, he couldn’t agree with it. Sang might be telling people she was fine, but she wasn’t. If she continued like this, she’d get something worse. Something life-threatening and unfixable.
He returned home just as the sun was coming up. Bleary-eyed. Unshaven. A complete mess.
Sean dropped everything he’d been carrying onto the floor just inside the door.
There had been no word from the others, except the cross texts to everyone saying the thing to do now was to let her sleep. Don’t wake her. Don’t text her. Let her sleep.
Beyond that...they didn’t know. Come up with another plan. Perhaps Kota could talk to Jimmy and get Carol to relax.
No one was happy with any of it. No one was really talking to him, but Sean sensed no one was talking at all. Like him, they needed to calm down.
This whole situation was going to pull them apart, and not how he’d thought it was going to happen. Trying to decide what was best for Sang was driving them crazier than trying to figure out their relationships.
His head felt heavy, full of sand. He needed sleep, too, but he doubted he could get any right now.
If he’d never introduced himself to Carol, he would have never been invited. Sang could still get out on occasion at least.
This was his mistake. Owen might have been wrong about keeping her in that house, but he was wrong for pushing his way into the house and causing trouble.
No one had to tell him. He’d pushed and made them all follow his plan because he was frustrated. He couldn’t wait, like Owen had wanted to do.
Now they were forced to wait it out. Perhaps longer this time. Instead of making it easier, they’d made it more complicated.
Sean leaned against the wall in the hallway.
Breaking down on the floor in a heap seemed like a fair option at the moment.
Her sweet face swept into his memory. Her pulse under his fingertips had been fast.
Fast for him, or so he liked to think.
That smile. Her kiss. It made him say stupid things.
Now she was trapped.
He sucked in a heavy breath through his nose and tried to hold it, trying to gain control. Focus, or more mistakes might happen.
What could be done?
His shoes and other items he’d tossed onto the floor when he left had been picked up. Owen hadn’t returned. He was still down in the security trailer.
His mother had to have gotten up. It was still a little too early to be awake, even for her.
There was a very tiny sound of glass scraping glass coming from the kitchen.
A heavy, alcoholic scent carried to him. Or was it lacquer?
Sean shuffled across the house quietly, listening.
The kitchen door was wide open. The island was clean with the laptop they’d left closed on top of it. A dull yellow glow illuminated the space.
Sean stepped into the doorway.
His mother sat at the kitchen table. The window blinds had been readjusted to let the natural rising sunlight to come through. Sean’s desk lamp he used for making paper art was sitting on the corner, next to his mother’s arm.
She was hunched over, focused on where the light was shining on the table.
They hadn’t closed the laptop before they’d left, had they?
Did she see the camera windows? Would she know what they were?
Sean sighed. He’d been dodging his mother the last couple of days and being very short and snippy, or simply not being available.
It wasn’t her fault he was screwing up. Again.
He circled the island to go to the far side of the kitchen table. “Good morning,” he said quietly.
“Ohaiyo,” she said in a soft voice. She was dressed in a crisp white shirt with a pair of khaki slacks and wore a hair band, the strands shoved away from her face.
A towel lay flat in front of her over the table. On top were pieces of the bowl they had broken. She had a vial of gold flakes, a mixing bowl, and a small jar of lacquer.
She mixed clear lacquer with the tiny flakes of gold until they blended. The result was a very small dollop of gold. With a thin cotton swab, she picked up a piece of the bowl and used the swab like a paintbrush, tracing the edge of one of the broken bowl pieces.
Sean sat down in a chair across from her. The smell of lacquer was stronger here, and it stung his nose. “What are you doing?”
“Kintsugi,” she said quietly.
He wasn’t familiar with the word and tried to piece it out. “Gold?”
“Golden joinery.” She picked up a second piece of the bowl and pressed it to the first, making a golden seam between them. The effect was creating a golden vein, accentuating the crack.
“We can just get another bowl,” he said. “We don’t have to repair them.”
She spoke without raising her gaze from her work. “I’ve never known you to give up just because something was broken.”