Chapter 40
CHAPTER 40
T akeshi
Hurry home.
Lakeshia’s text has my heart racing. She’s not answering. Neither is Shinji, Riu, or the doula I recently hired.
What the hell happened? I left my wife and husband relaxing a few hours ago to do a task for Katsuo. Although I haven’t officially resumed my duties, he asked me to accompany Portia on a job today. He couldn’t join her while she cleaned his messy crime scene because he’s handling the fallout from dismantling the Giamettis. While he and Gio divvy up the enterprise, it was good to catch up with Portia.
But now I worry. And no one’s answering their goddam phone.
I stop the car in front of the house with the keys still in the ignition and the engine running.
“Lakeshia! Shinji!” I yell as soon as I bang through the entrance.
“In the sunroom!” Lakeshia shouts in response.
I run toward them, my heart doing its best to beat outside my chest. When I get to the doorway, Lakeshia looks fine. Worriedly pacing, but healthy. Not in danger.
I clutch my chest and forcibly calm myself. “What’s wrong?”
She spins around; her face dripping as she says one word and points. “Shinji.”
I follow her finger to Shinji’s huddled form. He’s motionless and staring into the backyard.
“What happened?” I crouch in front of him and hold his hands.
His skin is icy and he doesn’t respond to my touch.
“I didn’t see everything that happened, but a woman showed up while we were shopping. She said some evil shit about our baby. Shinji’s barely said a word since. And he’s been this way since we returned.”
I squeeze his hands. “Shinji, did you know the woman at the store?”
“She’s my mother,” he whispers.
I sit back on my heels, bowled over by his response. “Your mother’s alive?”
Until today, I thought she had died. None of the memories I have when discussing families include a conversation where he said she died. So all these years I assumed.
Lakeshia sidles beside me. “Why does your mother want our baby to die?”
Rage, instant and hot, flares inside me. Maybe this is why he never mentioned her, and if it isn’t I don’t care. She’s lucky I wasn’t at the store or she wouldn’t have walked out alive after threatening our child.
Shinji unfolds himself and scrubs his face. “I never wanted to talk about this. Grrr.” He launches from his seated position to cross the room. He stops at the wall, contemplating it in silence for a few seconds.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He repeatedly slams his fist into the wall, creating a crater that becomes a small hole that grows larger with each hit.
Meanwhile, I stare dumbfounded, grappling with his revelation. Shinji has been my constant for so long. He’s my rock when I have no support, my light when darkness surrounds me, my heart when I think I need to be a stone. Yet all the years of knowing him, he’s still a stranger.
He switches his fist to his head, pounding his forehead on the surface. A red smear appears, and Lakeshia rushes to his side to rub circles into his back. His shoulders slump and he exhales in defeat. “I used to have a brother. We were inseparable.” He slides down the wall to sit on the floor, defeated in a way I’ve never seen him. “Although my brother and I were identical twins, our personalities were like night and day. Even our hairstyles were different. I wore mine long. He wore his this way.” He points to his closely shaven head.
Learning his brother, who he shared a face with, had short hair explains the times I caught Shinji staring at his reflection. Sorrow and regret hung from him, and I mistakenly took his reaction to be from the trauma of having his hair forcibly cut. I can’t imagine looking in the mirror every day and seeing a face I shared with someone who’s no longer alive.
“Was he serious like Takeshi?” Lakeshia wipes the last of the blood from Shinji’s face.
He shifts into a more comfortable looking position. “Believe it or not, I was the one with a temperament closer to Takeshi’s. Fumio was more like the me you know today. I changed after he died. Tried to remember him through being more like him, following his interests.”
Shinji pointedly looks at me. “The music stuff, that’s all Fumio. He loved every aspect of music. Even if he had no vision for his life, he was adamant it would center instruments.”
I swallow, silently thanking Fumio for his impact. If not for Shinji’s desire to honor his brother, I never would have met him, my life would remain colorless and joyless.
Lakeshia pats the blood from his face with the edge of her sleeve.
I join them, wanting to pull Shinji in my arms but understanding he’s not ready for comfort yet. “What happened?”
“He went to a frat party and I didn’t go with him. I wanted to study. Organic chem was kicking my ass, but if I wanted a chance at becoming a good doctor, I had to do well in all my science classes. Fumio…” Shinji’s lips twitch, but any semblance of humor from whatever memory he’s revisiting doesn’t last long. “Fumio didn’t have the responsibilities and expectations I had. We were twins but he was the baby, born fifteen minutes after me. A free spirit no one could contain.”
“I bet he got you into tons of trouble.”
He smiles at Lakeshia’s comment. “Only the good kind. Whatever Fumio was a part of, everyone laughed. But that was when we were in our perfectly protective world. College was anything but, and he learn—we all learned the price of not taking college life seriously.”
Although he may not be ready for comfort, I pull him from the wall and loosely hold him. His ominous tone portends something difficult, maybe dark, but definitely traumatic for him.
“Campus security found his body the next morning in the Quad. He’d been beaten to death because not everyone knew we shared a face.”
“Are you saying you were their intended target?” I ask. “Did they catch the people who did? They confessed?”
“Not even. The university worked hard to suppress everything related to Fumio’s death.”
“Then how do you know you were?—”
“Because,” Shinji interrupts Lakeshia, his emotions growing more bleak. “I’ve been openly bi my whole life but Fumio was as straight as they come.” When Lakeshia and I give him equally blank stares, he pulls out of my arms to hug himself. “The assholes who murdered him brutally sodomized him and they left a flute inside him.”
“Is that why your mother blames you for his death?” Lakeshia covers her mouth to silence a sob. This entire time, silent tears have dripped down her chin, but with everything Shinji has gone through getting worse the more he shares, she can’t hold back any longer.
I’m also having trouble controlling the warring instincts inside me. I want to find and destroy everyone responsible for my husband’s current state, even if everyone includes his mother.
“That and I was the older brother. One of my responsibilities was to protect him, and I failed.”
Lakeshia wipes the moisture from her face and squares her shoulders. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Takeshi is going to run you a hot bath. Then, we’re going to discuss how your brother would be so proud of the present you.”
I arch my brow at her take-charge tone. I like it. And the sexy aura surrounding her. But now’s not the time to dwell on my constant need for my wife.
She snaps her head toward the door, glaring me into action.
Before leaving them, I grip Shinji’s face between my two hands and wait for him to meet my gaze. “I’m the last person to criticize you for holding this in all these years, but now that you’ve spoken your truth, I won’t let you carry this burden alone.”
He breathes in a shaky breath, and I press my lips against his open mouth. Now’s also not the time to linger so I head to our bathroom to fulfill my duties.
When steam fogs the mirrors and the scent of eucalyptus and pine fills the air, Lakeshia leads Shinji into the bathroom. They stop before the tub and our wife begins to disrobe Shinji. With each article of clothes she removes, she kisses his bare skin and whispers praise. The kisses are innocent, yet the intimacy of the act is rife with sensuality.
I hold out my hand, glad when he accepts the gesture, and I lead him into the tub. He rests his head against the lip and closes his eyes while Lakeshia and I bathe him and wash his hair. I kiss his forehead, his closed lids, and his nose. His lips remain untouched because the second before closing the gap, he grabs me and Lakeshia and buries his face in my neck. Violent shudders rack his body while he saturates my shirt with tears.
In all our years together, I can count on one hand how many times Shinji was reduced to crying. I was always the cause, and I could always patch him back together. Now that his mother has resurfaced, I don’t know if I can undo the years of harm she’s done. However, doing nothing is not an option.
Shinji is always the first in line to defend. He thinks I’m the strong one, but I’ve always known he epitomizes true strength with his flexibility, his joy, and his willingness to stand in front of any danger, especially when the danger is me.
Lakeshia and I hold him while he pours out his pain.
“Don’t hold it in,” she whispers. “Let it all out. And when the pressure builds up again, we’ll be here for you to let it out again. However, often, however long.”
I don’t know how long we stay huddled by the tub, but time is meaningless in the face of Shinji’s mourning.
The water chills and Shinji’s skin begins to wrinkle, but his sobs soften. I kiss his ear and readjust his hold.
“Get the towel.” I point Lakeshia toward the pile of linens I placed by the tub.
Once she returns, I lift Shinji and allow her to dry him off before entering the bedroom. I place him in the center of the bed and we join him on either side.
As shadows crawl up the walls, he breaks his silence to share the joyful childhood memories of his brother. At first, he stumbles over them, but with each addition he grows more confident in his retelling, even allowing himself to smile over the pranks they played on each other and their family.
We lie there, in bed, listening to him heal a part of his soul by reliving the good days with his twin. With his voice hoarse from hours of speaking, he slurs his speech until he finally falls asleep. I kiss his temple and leave the bed.
Downstairs, the quiet does nothing to soothe the rage inside me. I turn on the computer and begin my search. A glass thuds next to my arm.
“What have you found and when do we leave?” Lakeshia asks.
I rub my eyes and sip from the glass of water. “One lead. The name of the fraternity the school protected. Seems they’ve covered up a lot of scandals for that fraternity over the years.”
“Okay, so we dig until we discover who the members were that year. Then we get Shinji the closure you both gave me.” Lakeshia takes my glass and drains the rest of my water, her gaze never wavering from the screen.