Unbreak My Heart(25)

The worst case is . . .

I curse, grab my phone, and call Holland. It goes straight to voicemail. She must be down for the count.

I sink onto the couch so I can talk myself off the ledge, and a yawn seems to overtake me out of nowhere. I rub my eyes, and I turn, looking for the familiar face—black fur, curious brown eyes, a soft snout. Sandy always knows how to talk me down with her silence.

But my shrink isn’t here.

Closing my eyes, I try to imagine she’s here, and I present calm, logical, rational answers to her.

But even as I voice them—just friends, just hanging out, just a group thing—another voice gnaws away at my gut.

Is this why she stopped us from going further the other night? Is my brother’s death hitting her more than she let on because they were a thing? Is that why she was out here working then came back to Los Angeles? Is Kana a fucking cover-up? Has it all been one massive secret between the two of them?

“No,” I mutter, trying to calm my tired and racing brain. “Just fucking no. Don’t go there.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, hard, to push the dangerous thoughts away.

But it’s too late. They’re boring into me, drilling their awfulness into my skull with cruel jackhammers.

I need to focus on what matters—why I’m here.

I stand, roll my shoulders, exhale.

Shake it off.

I stalk to the bathroom and yank open the medicine cabinet. Jet lag is kicking in quickly, threatening to smother me in sleep. Bleary-eyed, I reach for a prescription bottle. It’s a cancer drug, and it’s barely been touched. There’s another kind next to it. This one was marked “open” on Kana’s list, but it looks like nearly all the pills are still in the bottle, like Ian hardly took any. I know these drugs by heart, know their side effects and their benefits.

What I don’t know is why they’re full. Is it door one, two, or three? I imagine a logic problem, and I try to puzzle it out, but the answer is still blurry because there are pieces of my brother I don’t know.

I grab another bottle. It’s Percocet, and it was filled by a pharmacy here several months ago. But even in my sleepy state, I can tell that none have been taken either.

My pulse spikes. My mouth waters.

My brain begs me—please turn me off.

I don’t want to go there, but I don’t want to stay in this threadbare state. Logic has flown the coop and left only a dark wasteland in its place.

Besides, perhaps this is a gift from beyond, a beautiful parting gift indeed, because these work wonders on the living. I open the cap and free one of the beauties. I put the pill on my tongue and it feels like blasphemy—taking my brother’s painkillers when he was in real pain. But I do it anyway, swallowing it dry. Once it’s down, I take another. Two will work faster.

I return to the living room, flop down on the couch, and let sleep pull me under.

When I rise, I check my phone, and a message from Holland tells me she’d love to meet me at the fish market.

I don’t reply. I don’t know how.

I don’t know if I really want to anymore.





16





Andrew



The doctor is in.

Or the doctor isn’t in.

Or the doctor isn’t in yet.

See, I don’t know, because there isn’t any sign on his door. There isn’t an open or closed sign. Or a back soon sign. Or a Post-it note letting the next-of-kin of his former patient know where to find Dr. Takahashi, the doctor who gave orders to drink tea.

I tracked down his number and called his office before I flew here. I left a message and asked for an appointment three days ago.

It’s past nine, so I knock harder, as if the answers will come when it hurts enough. My knuckles are red and worn now, and still, no one opens the door.

Once again, I find myself without a decoder ring, same as last night with the letters, and the mementos, and the photos.

Ian left a few clues behind, like at a dinner-party murder mystery game. But without the official answer key, I’m jumping to conclusions.

I wince, remembering last night and the terrible ones I jumped to.

I lower my fist, sigh, and leave the doctor’s building with no more information than I had when I started.

This is getting to be a pattern with me.

I catch the subway and walk along the edge of the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest fish market in the world. I can hear the merchants inside, sloshing around in their knee-high boots in the fishy water that puddles on the concrete floor as they peddle everything from mackerel to eel to shrimp to salmon to tuna.

In the light of day, the things I thought last night so clearly can’t be true. I feel ashamed and disloyal for even going there.

I reach the block of food stalls on the outskirts of the market and easily find the one my brother and I went to. I grab a stool and order a bowl of tuna and rice.

As I wait, I realize this much. My brother took me here—this very place—for fun.

He flew me across the sea to hang out with him for the weekend. There’s no way those photos of Holland mean there was anything between them.

I grab my phone and finally reply to her, telling her I’m at the food stalls.

Then I let last night’s nightmare go, as a hunched-over Japanese woman slides a bowl in front of me. She returns to stirring a vat of miso soup.