46. Hotaru
I stand on the balcony of my childhood home and barely remember the incident that started the chain of events that have amounted to my life. Instead, I remember taking tea with my mother in the mornings. I remember sitting on the lounger, playing my Game Boy, while she relaxed on her lounger with a book.
I remember feeling loved.
The sculpted iron balustrade is unchanged. As are the matching dining table and loungers.
No, the only thing different out here is me.
The guilt I carried for my mother’s death has faded. My worth has grown. I know what I deserve. I deserve to be loved unconditionally and I am. My family, Hailey and Arlo, wait in the sitting room for me to collect myself.
My grandparents are dead. Long gone.
Emi said my grandmother died less than a year after I was shipped off to boarding school. I don’t know if there’s a correlation between those two incidents, and I don’t know if I want there to be or not.
My grandfather succumbed two years later, though she said his mind gave up long before his body did. And again, I don’t know if that is an effect of my grandmother’s passing or not.
There is so much I don’t know.
What is wrong with my father?
What does he want from me? Forgiveness? A relationship, as long as it could last?
Can I give it?
Whatever the case, it’s time to find out.
I return to the sitting room and find them standing at the window, holding tight to one another, looking out at Regent's Park. It was my favorite thing about this place, besides my mom.
“I’m ready.”
They turn at the sound of my voice and hurry to my sides, bracketing me and fortifying me as they have since Friday when I made the call.
Only two days have passed, but it feels like a hundred.
Emi rises from her seat in the corner. She is a petite woman with delicate features and a steel straight spine. “Great.” She bows only to me. “I will escort you to your father’s bedchamber.”
“You will escort all of us or none,” I challenge.
“Your father does not wish to be seen in such a state by strangers,” she pushes back.
“They aren’t strangers. They are my family,” I snap.
Her gaze darts back and forth between Hailey and Arlo, and then me, measuring my resolve.
My jaw tightens and lifts.
“He won’t like it.” Her head shakes. Miraculously, I hold my tongue. “This way.” She turns and heads down the corridor toward the stairs.
As if I don’t know where my father’s bedroom is.
Turns out, I don’t.
She bypasses the curved staircase and stops in front of the smallest bedroom in the place. One that was reserved for guests. One that my father thought too small for adults.
“He is hooked up to several machines,” she warns. “A nurse cares for him morning and evening.”
A lump forms in my throat. I nod.
Emi knocks, waits a moment, then opens the door.
Somehow the room seems larger than I remember. Or maybe it’s the horror of staring across the distance at a man I’ve only known as fierce and wholly capable to find his skin sallow, his cheeks sunken, and his body frail. The span seems impossible to navigate with my shoes suddenly turned to cinderblocks.
“Watashi no musuko,” he calls to me.
My son.
I haven’t been his son for twenty years. Possibly not a day in my whole fucking life. Yet…Those two words pull me in.
His arms rise slowly, beckoning me.
Slowly, I close the space between us. My gaze marks a large machine near the bed. It whips and whirs, creating the only sound in the room. Two red lines from the catheter protrude from my father’s arm. They are taped to him in several places and connect in two separate places to the unusual gadget.
I’m only a step away when realization nearly takes me off my feet. The lines are not red. The red is his blood being pumped through them and the machine.
My stomach flips.
“Anata ga koko ni ite kurete ureshīdesu.” His thin fingers urge me closer.
I’m glad you’re here.
Beyond the dark circles under his eyes and the odd tint to his skin, I see the man I knew once upon a time.
My heart drops into my stomach. My skin goes tight, and I swear I might freeze from the sudden drop in my core body temperature.
When his arms wrap around me, I don’t feel familiarity or comfort.
He never hugged me as a child.
He never comforted me.
Before I can become truly secure in his arms, he releases me. Relief and disappointment war in my hollow chest.
I thought I had so much to say to this man. I was upset I couldn’t confront him about his actions with him in such a state. Now, I just want to know what he wants from me. Nothing more.
“You wanted to see me?”
His head shakes once. “Nihongo.”
My instinct is to fight him, especially with Hailey present. I want her to know what’s being said. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like the battle to fight this second.
“Naze motto hayaku watashi o tazunete kurenai nodesu ka?” he asks.
Why didn’t I come sooner?
Ha! Why not call me sooner? Like when I was a kid who needed him?
“I am here now.” I swallow the bile rising in my throat.
His lips purse, but he says no more about his language.
“What is going on with your health?” I urge.
He explains in labored breaths that his kidneys are failing him. They’ve been struggling for a few years now, but now he’s on dialysis around the clock. He is on a transplant list but may run out of time.
That’s when I know what he wants from me.
A kidney.
“How long ago did you begin twenty-four-hour dialysis?” I stuff my hands into the pockets of my trousers to keep from forming fists.
“Kagetsu mae.” He pats the mattress harder than necessary. He continues to talk about how horrible it’s been to be stuck in bed for a whole month. How he hasn’t been able to work.
One month ago.
Right when the calls began.
Right when he got desperate enough to reach out to his last remaining blood relative.
“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” My words are quiet.
He must mistake the volume for sorrow. “Shinpai muyō. Mata kenkō ni nareru yo.”
Not to worry. I can be healthy again.
“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” I say finally zeroing in on his dark eyes. “Why didn’t you call me decades ago?”
“Please, son.” His head shakes, speaking English as though it’s enough to placate me. “Let’s not bring up the past. Let us leave it where it lies.”
My past lies in the bed in front of me.
His gaze goes wide for a split second, and then narrows. He gestures behind me. “Who are these people you bring to my bedside?”
“ These people are my family.” I keep from growling, but just barely.
“I’m your family, son.” He flicks his wrist, dismissing them immediately.
I turn and extend my hand to Hailey. “This is my wife, Hailey Judge.”
She offers a sunshine smile for me, not for show, and steps forward to take my hand. I kiss her lips, and then turn to my father. His lips are tucked between his teeth, as though it physically pains him to keep quiet. After all, I was to marry a simple Japanese woman and not follow his mistakes .
Then I turn and hold my hand out for Arlo. “This is my husband, Arlo Judge.”
Arlo strides toward me with all the confidence a dragon could possess. A smirk pulls at his mouth as he stops in front of me, grips my chin, and places a sweet kiss on my lips, before stepping out of my father’s line of sight and by my other side.
“What is this?” my father spits. The tendons in his neck strain. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this is my family. The family who doesn’t turn their back on me. Not when things get hard. Not when we disagree. Never.” I square my shoulders and gesture to my loves. “This is the family who is there for me through all things. The family I am there for through all things. The family that deserves every piece of me.”
My father scoffs.
While his hug is unfamiliar, that sound brings back so many memories. All of his disappointment in me.
“He is the weak friend who got you in all that trouble at Willoughby Ridge? And you, what? Made him your lover?” He sneers at Arlo.
Arlo mutters with a grin. “You have no idea.”
Otherwise, he and Hailey keep their thoughts to themselves, letting me decide for myself.
I take a step forward, barring them from his sight. “Arlo is my husband and the bravest man I know. He is loyal and loving in a way you’ll never understand. And my wife is strong, intelligent, and caring. Things you know nothing about.”
“Shorui wa motte imasu.” Emi sails into the room carrying a stack of papers.
“What paperwork?” Arlo hisses.
“Concerned for his inheritance?” my father snarls, speaking to Arlo for the first time.
He simply arches a brow, and then slowly shakes his head.
“Good because it’s contingent on him filling out this donor packet, submitting to testing, and if he’s a match, supplying me a kidney.” My old man smirks.
I clamp my lips tight, draw a cleansing breath through my nose, and motion Emi over. She hands me the paperwork and a pen.
Hailey toys with her wedding rings. Something she’s prone to when nervous, which doesn’t happen often.
Arlo throws an arm around her and pulls her to his side while I move to a small desk in the corner and sit.
My pen works furiously over the pages.
I pour every hurt and disappointment he’s ever caused into the margins. I explain how he hurt me and how I overcame them. When I reach the back page, I’ve run out of things to say.
My complimentary close is epic.
Fuck you,
Hotaru Judge
When I stand and approach the bed, my father’s smile is brighter than the moment I stepped into the room.
I hold the papers and extend my hand.
He snatches them. “I knew you’d want my money.” He smirks.
My smirk is bigger.
His jaw unhinges a moment later. Then he’s flipping and scanning page after page. “How can you do this?” he bellows. “A Kido would never do this.”
“It’s a good thing my name is Hotaru Judge.”