My stomach and chest clenched. It didn’t make sense—Mom had explained why I couldn’t go to Paris then. She’d talked it over with Dad, and they’d decided, together, that I should come to Tokyo instead. “That’s not what happened,” I said.
“Of course it is! God! Do you have any clue how hard this is? Watching you cling to all these ridiculous ideas of him? You want to think he’s this normal dad to us, but he’s not. And if you go there, you’ll see that. You’ll see how little you matter to him.”
I dropped my gaze to the table. I couldn’t believe it—I wouldn’t believe any of it. “It isn’t like that,” I insisted.
“Sophia, I’m begging you,” Alison said, her voice cracking now. “If you go to Paris, he won’t treat you like you belong there. You’re going to get hurt.”
Confusion engulfed me. I wanted to argue with her but didn’t know how. She was lying. She was saying this to scare me out of going.
Wasn’t she?
“Please,” I whispered. “Can we please stop talking about this now?”
“So when do you want to talk about it?” she shouted, a sob breaking through her words. “When you’re boarding a plane to freaking Paris?!”
One of the servers carrying coffee stopped short near our table.
“Don’t do this to us,” Alison said. And now she was crying. My sister was crying. “Please don’t leave us.”
CHAPTER 26
FRIDAY
THE HOTEL HAD A PANORAMIC VIEW OF TOKYO, of gray buildings, red billboards, and a smudgy sky. Alison and I didn’t talk as we dropped our stuff on opposite sides of the room. Probably because everything was broken. Beyond repair. Just beyond everything. My sister hated me, and we were leaving, and this week was catching up with me, grabbing me by the heels.
Alison snatched a key card and left the room again, the door slamming behind her. I let cranky Dorothea Brooke out of her airplane carrier and raced to the nightstand to pick up the chunky hotel phone. I would call Dad. I would call Dad, and he’d tell me that Alison was wrong.
But as I held the plastic handset, I felt something tightening the screws of my rib cage, making it harder and harder for me to breathe. I was supposed to have met Jamie—I was supposed to have met him ten minutes ago. The realization hit me, sudden and sharp, but I couldn’t worry about that now. The only thing I could do was push the thought down as far as it would go and sit on the edge of the bed, the phone cord stretching and uncoiling behind me.
“All?, Philippe Moignard.” It surprised me to hear him answer in French, but I guess that made sense. It’s not like my number would have popped up on his phone.
“Dad,” I said. “Hi.”
“Sophia? Is everything okay?” He sounded harried. I could hear the twins arguing in the background and Sylvie snapping at them. There were other sounds as well—traffic pouring down a busy road, car horns beeping.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was just calling because—”
“Is your sister okay? Your mom?” His voice went distant, and he said something else to Sylvie, something in French.
“Dad,” I said, raising my voice. “Everyone’s fine. Seriously.”
“Emmanuelle,” he said to my half sister. “Calme-toi.”
I pulled my legs onto the bed. All that coffee and sugar from Mister Donut was pulsing in my veins. There was a cardboard sign advertising cheap deals to Tokyo Disneyland on the nightstand, and I reached over to press my thumb into the corner of it.
“Sorry,” Dad said after a moment. “Maybe we can talk later? We’re on our way to the market, and Emmanuelle says she has a stomachache.”
“Dad,” I said. “I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you that—that I’ve decided to move to Paris. I know Mom said I should think it over, and I know it’s a big decision, but I have thought it over. Like, a lot. And I wanted to tell you and Sylvie first.”
Another pause. I heard Emmanuelle’s small voice breaking into a scream, Luc joining her with a scream of his own.
“We should talk about this later,” he said. “When you’re back in America.”
His tone was off somehow—more clipped than usual. Something cold and prickly crawled across my skin. “But you have talked about it,” I said. “You talked about it with Mom yesterday.”
“Sophia.” Dad sounded stern. Almost like Alison actually. “We need to think everything through.”
Think everything through?! “But. Mom said it was my choice.”
“Of course,” Dad said. “But it would be a lot of change, yes? You coming here.”
No, I wanted to say. It would be the opposite of change. It would be the same bakeries and parks I visited every Christmas. The same Metro stops and the same walks along the Seine and the same museums, shoes squeaking on the same glossy floors. It would be the place I’d wanted to live since I was five years old when my dad first explained that he was moving back there.
But I didn’t say that. He didn’t mean it would be a lot of change for me.
“Fine,” I said, embarrassment surging through me, making my face and neck feel numb. “Sorry to bug you.”
Dad said something else—bye, probably—but his voice washed over with static, and the call went dead.
For a moment, I sat completely still. It was like my vision was shifting. It was like, in that moment, I could see things the way Alison must have. The e-mails he’d send a few times a week that felt rushed and superficial. The phone calls he’d cut short because of the time difference. And excuse after excuse after excuse for why I shouldn’t live there.
I put the phone back in its cradle. Then I picked it up and slammed it down, hard. Dorothea Brooke bolted out from under the bed and into the bathroom. I stood up and sat down and stood up again. I leaned against the nightstand, wishing I could do something. Wishing I could scream so loud, everyone in the hotel would hear me. Wishing I could find my mom and put my arms around her neck and sob into her shoulders for hours.