The Memory Painter

The team had stopped talking to each other. All communication had broken down, and even Conrad had vanished. The state of Michael and Diana’s apartment now rivaled Finn’s. The dishes hadn’t been washed for days and no one had done laundry or taken out the garbage. Michael had not showered or shaved. He felt like a survivalist—he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had anything to drink.

He began to review what had happened before he’d fallen asleep. Finn had called and begun questioning him about Lord Asano’s death in formal Japanese. The stilted questions had been asked with probing politeness, but they had shattered Michael’s psyche. It didn’t matter who Finn had been in that lifetime—too many people had been affected by Lord Asano’s mistakes. Michael had replied in Japanese with the etiquette of a lord from the seventeenth century. “I remembered Asano Naganori’s life. The fall of his house rests on his shoulders alone.”

Finn did not speak. Michael felt karma hanging between them like a deadweight and didn’t know what to say.

“Finn?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s unbelievable.” Finn stammered, “I-I don’t know what to do.”

“Do what? You’re not making any sense.”

Finn started to babble, saying that it was worse than he thought. It took ten minutes for Michael to pry an explanation from him.

“Conrad is Lord Kira. He wants us all dead.”

Michael sat down on the sofa and tried to stay calm. He could not give in to Asano’s rage. The minute he allowed himself to be ruled by the emotions of these memories, he would go truly insane. He told Finn, “I’ve already decided to take Conrad off the team.”

“It’s not enough,” Finn argued. “We have to leave. You don’t understand how dangerous he is.”

But Michael did understand. He had gone to the lab and found three bottles of Renovo in Conrad’s desk, and one bottle only had two pills remaining. Michael did the math. Conrad had been double dosing and lying to them all. He knew he had no choice but to shut down the study and extricate Conrad from their lives.

Now that Michael was awake, he wanted to get the confrontation over with, and only hoped that he was well enough to drive. He’d been feeling very out of body for the past several days.

He knocked on the bedroom door but Diana didn’t answer. She was still trying to come to terms with Juliana’s memories from ancient Rome. She had also remembered Natalia Pushkina’s life and was struggling to assimilate it as well. Michael felt helpless, but he still wanted to do something to ease her pain. Maybe they could go to Nantucket for the weekend and rent the old beach house. It had been years since they’d gone, and the place held only happy memories—a rarity these days. Michael wanted joy back in his life.

When he got back from Conrad’s, he would sleep in their bedroom again. He would hold Diana in his arms, pull her out of her depression and together they would talk about the future.

A car blared its horn, jolting Michael out of his thoughts—he was driving on the wrong side of the road. He swerved back into the right lane and tried to focus, reciting the mantra he had begun to say more and more lately, “I am here now. I’m here now. I’m here now…” Sometimes it helped.