Unbreak My Heart(34)

The words from the website echo in my mind—very healing cure.

I stare at the teahouse as if secret hatches will open or hidden doors will invite us in. “All right, teahouse, what have you got?”

“There’s a legend that the tea leaves are not ordinary tea leaves. That they have mystical powers.”

Mystical powers. Is that what Ian believed? Was he going for broke and defying all logic . . . fighting like hell to live, no matter what?

“Tell me everything,” I say, sounding desperate to know, because I am.

Kana straightens, spreads her arms as if summoning an ancient spirit, and then begins. “There’s a legend that one of the Japanese emperors a long time ago had a young and beautiful wife, who had suddenly taken ill. He loved her madly and searched far and wide for the best doctors to treat her. But with each successive doctor, she grew more ill. She was hallucinating, talking to people who didn’t exist. But the emperor loved her so, and when she muttered something about the tea leaves in the nearby fields, he went himself to search. And there in the fields near his palace, where only rice had grown before, there was one single row of tea plants sprouting up from the soil.”

Kana gestures slowly, gently, as if she’s drawing up a tea leaf from the ground. She continues in her hushed tone, and for a second I feel as if I’m in a house of worship.

“He gathered the leaves himself.” She demonstrates, as if she’s plucking leaf after leaf off a bush. “And he commanded the royal tea master to brew tea with these leaves. He brought the steaming teapot on a tray to his wife, and he poured the cup. She took a sip, then another, and then she looked at him and said”—Kana reaches out her hand as if to place it on a cheek, like she’s playing the part of the young wife—“my love.”

No wonder Ian was taken with her.

It’s in her eyes, her hands, in the way she recounts her city’s folklore. She’s enchanting, and in this moment, I see her through his eyes: warm, upbeat, outgoing. But also, full of hope and life.

I can see so clearly why Ian was drawn to her.

And to here.

This city is perfectly paired with this woman, even if I don’t believe in the power of a drink to heal. I’m not a practitioner of legends.

She continues, “Every day she drank more, and every day she grew stronger. And then she was cured.”

Cured. Such a gorgeous word, such a painful word. The word I begged for, bargained for, hoped for. The only word in the English language that mattered.

“They were together for many years. They had five healthy children and lived long and prosperous lives. And the wife gave thanks every day for the Tatsuma tea leaves that had grown in the fields when she most needed them.”

I want to laugh. I want to scoff. I want to blow this all off. But something about the way she tells the story makes me want to challenge myself—so I can believe in the tea too. It wouldn’t kill me to believe in something for once. Ian was the happy one, and lately my heart’s been a black hole.

But it’s filling in, little by little.

Not every second, not every day. But here and there—like at the fish market with Holland, like texting with Jeremy, and now.

“Did Ian believe in that story? Because he was the most rational person I knew.”

Kana looks into the distance, a tear welling in her eye. She wipes it away. “For a long time, yes. He believed in the possibility with all his heart.”

Why didn’t he tell me, then? Why didn’t he share that story with me?

I knew he was a fighter. And sure, I know he wanted to live. But I was never privy to these deeper hopes.

Maybe he figured I’d never believe them. That I’d laugh. I want to tell him I didn’t laugh—I listened.

“Can we go in?” I ask instead.

“Yes,” she says and pulls the heavy red door open.

It’s like walking into a shrine. The room is lit only by candlelight. Five low tables are arranged on the stone floor, with only cushions as seats, no chairs.

I slip off my flip-flops and place them in a wooden cubby. Kana removes her red Mary Janes. A woman wearing a green kimono emerges from behind a wood door, and they speak in Japanese. She gestures to a table and we sit.

Soon, the woman returns with a steaming teapot and two mugs. She raises the pot several inches in the air and tilts the spout down, filling the cups.

She looks at Kana, and more words rain down. The woman chatters for a minute, then another, Kana nodding and smiling the whole time. The only words I understand are the last ones that she says to me: “Domo arigato.”

“Domo arigato,” I repeat, wondering what I’m thanking her for.

Kana laughs softly.

“Did I say something wrong?”

She shakes her head. “No. She just said how much you look like Ian.”

“That seems to be the theme lately.”

“But then she also said she was honored to take care of your brother,” Kana says.

“Take care of him?”

“Yes. She served him tea.”

“But how is that taking care of him?”

Kana shushes me and urges me to drink.

I take a sip. It tastes like hot barley. What’s so special about this healing tea?

“How was she taking care of him if he died? There was no cure. The tea wasn’t mystical. He’s gone. Done. Sayonara. The jig is up.” My voice is caustic, the words corrosive, because it’s hard for me to believe when the evidence says this tea does nothing.