But something between us is different. There’s a special connection.
I’m starting to pick up more Mandarin. I’m remembering things that I knew a long time ago. Sometimes I hear something and the translation pops into my mind; I instantly know what it means. Dad’s promised that when we get back he’s going to sign me up for a Mandarin class. The deal he offered: He’ll pay for it if I’ll give therapy another try. I countered with: deal, if I can see someone new, and if he also finds himself a therapist. We came to an agreement.
I’m hoping that by November I’ll be able to actually hold a real conversation in Chinese. That’s the goal—I want to surprise Waipo and Waigong, who are going to try to come visit us for Thanksgiving. It’ll be a tough holiday, but having them as guests will make it better.
Mom won’t be there to make the turkey and her special stuffing recipe with the sticky rice and the mushrooms chopped into ear-shaped pieces. Instead, I’ll be the one cooking. There are a few of my mother’s recipes I’m pretty sure I could make, especially if Axel helps.
Axel. I still haven’t called him. Haven’t emailed, haven’t texted.
If I’m honest, that’s part of the reason I don’t want to go home. There’s still an arrow between my ribs. I’m pretty sure it’ll always be there.
I think of that first message he sent.
Goodbye.
But we can’t just stop being best friends. Axel knows me the way nobody else does. Axel is the only one who gets all my colors.
104
Our plane lands ahead of schedule, but it’s still late at night when we finally pull up to our house. The stars and the crickets are all out and calling us home. Our curtains are drawn, but a soft glow pours around the edges.
A familiar pang hits me. This is how the house used to look when I came home after dark and Mom was in the living room, trilling away at the piano.
If I don’t walk inside, maybe I can just stand out here with my suitcase and feel like she’s still there, waiting for me to go in so she can shout a greeting over the music without stopping her fingers. I can pretend that when she finishes the Rachmaninoff, she’ll swing her legs around the piano bench and leap up to give me a hug.
And in a few days, when it’s Sunday, I’ll roll out of bed and find her in the kitchen making waffles with berries and whipped cream. I’ll hear that sunny voice chirp “Good morning!” to me while I’m still shaking off the fog of sleep, and I’ll grunt back in response, remember to smile at her, offer to help mix the batter.
I’ll do all the things I constantly forgot to, all the things I wish I could go back and add in like another layer on a watercolor painting.
“You coming, Leigh?” says Dad.
Our driver pulls away from the house, and then there’s just me standing in the driveway with my suitcase, staring as Dad fiddles with his keys on the front porch.
I let loose a long, slow exhale. “Guess we forgot to turn off the lights, huh?”
“We didn’t,” he says, and the two simple words send my heart racing. Because what could that mean, except that Mom is actually alive and home and waiting for us right inside?
My heart speeds as I drag my suitcase up to the porch and haul it in, trailing after Dad through the soft yellow light and into our house.
“You’re home! Welcome back!”
Arms wrap around me, and it takes a moment too long for me to process the shoulder pressing into my cheek, the soft shirt against my skin, the smell of deodorant and shampoo all wrong.
“Axel.” I blink quickly so he can’t see how close I am to crying.
“Anything drinkable in the fridge?” says Dad, who’s already kicked off his shoes and is heading for the kitchen.
“I just made some lemonade, actually,” Axel replies.
“Good man,” says Dad. “Come on. Let’s all have some.”
“Of course I knew you were in Taiwan,” says Axel. “Who did you think was going to take care of Meimei?” The cat winds a figure eight between his legs.
Guilt cuts through me chromium-oxide green. How could I have forgotten about my mother’s cat? Of course Dad would’ve called Axel or Tina.
“We’re best friends now, aren’t we, Miss Cat?” Axel says in an adorable voice I’m pretty sure he would never use in front of anyone else. He leans down to scratch behind her ears. The volume of the purring kicks up a few notches.
The phrase best friends echoes around and around, bouncing off the walls inside my skull. That’s what we are, right? That’s what we’ll be, forever?
Dad yawns long and hard. “Thanks again, Axel. It means a lot.” He gets to his feet. “I’m gonna go try to beat the jet lag, but you two kids hang out as long as you want.”
Really? Dad, letting Axel stay at the house past midnight?
We listen to my father’s socked feet padding up the stairs, creaking on the top step, turning down the hall. The door of his office closing behind him.
Too much silence. It crawls between us, digging a deep pit that feels increasingly harder to jump over.
“So,” says Axel. I hate the way that word is a tiny island of thought, packed with questions and expectations.
My brain jumps to a subject to break the weirdness. “Dad should’ve paid you. For cat-sitting, I mean.”
“He tried to,” Axel tells me. “I wouldn’t take the money.”
“Axel—” I start to say, but he cuts me off with a shake of his head.
“Let it go, Leigh. I did it for myself as much as I did it for you. It was nice to be here, alone with just the cat and the memories.”
Memories. I think of the incense smoke, and the flashes of the past.
“How are you doing?”
I know what he means. It’s been about two months now since my mother died.
Died. That word.
I guess she really is gone.
“A little better,” I tell him, and it’s the truth. “You?”
He nods. “Same.”
I draw in a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”
Axel shifts in his seat. “Of course.”
“Those emails.” I pause, because I’m not really sure how to frame my question.
“Emails?”
“Yeah. Um. What was up with those?”
He gives me a funny look. “What?”
“I mean.” My face is growing hot and I’m already regretting bringing them up. “They were pretty weird. Some of them… there was just no context. Not that everything needs context, but just, like. They were kind of random?”
“Leigh,” he says. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about right now.”
I can’t decide if he’s being cowardly or actually dense. “The emails.”
“Right, I got that part. What emails?”
“All of them?” I’m starting to get impatient. “Everything you sent me while I was in Taiwan.”
His forehead scrunches down. “Ah. I see. I don’t know what you’re talking about… because I sent you zero emails while you were in Taiwan.”
I squint at him. “What?”
He looks back at me. Is he joking?
I pull out my phone and open my in-box, jabbing my finger at the screen, growing more furious by the second. My hand pauses as the app works to load— What if those emails weren’t at all real? What if I actually imagined them?
But no. The messages are there, thank god. The anger rushes back, hotter and louder than before. How much more cowardly can he possibly get? “These emails.” I shove the phone in his face. “Do you remember now?”
Axel takes the phone from me. He clicks through them one by one. I watch as his eyes read the words, trace the watercolor brushstrokes. When he gives the phone back, his face is strangely pale.
“Leigh, I need you to believe what I’m going to say, all right?”
Suddenly, I feel oddly calm. If this is the game he’s going to play, there’s nothing to do about it. “You’re about to tell me you didn’t send me those emails.”
“I didn’t send those emails.”
“Even though I have proof of them right here.”
“Let me finish,” he says. He scratches at his bottom lip with one thumb. “I wrote those emails. But I never sent them.”