by Hanna Peach
Oh. God.
What did he know?
“I, er…yes?”
“I just heard about Mr. Blackwell. I’m so sorry for your loss. He was…a good man. I worked with him for many years. And on many deals.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sure you know Mr. Blackwell has no heirs, no other family. Only you. Everything of his now belongs to you.”
“Mr. Stevens−”
“Just call me Ed.”
“Ed. To be honest I haven’t even thought about this. I’m still trying to…”
“I understand. It’s just…you’re also now majority shareholder of Blackwell Industries, which means you have the controlling vote. I’m not sure you wish to take on such a responsibility, do you?”
“Control Drake’s company? I guess not.”
“The Board of Directors wish to make you an offer to buy you out of your majority share. They want to do this pretty soon.”
“Oh. Okay…”
“So you’ll sell your share?”
“Yes.”
“Great. I’ll get the paperwork started. You’re a very rich woman, Mrs. Blackwell.”
A very rich woman. What a joke. I had everything, except for what I really wanted.
I sat on the back porch, one knee tucked up under my chin, on the rocking chair. The lawn of Filipe’s back garden grew in and around several large rocks, creating an irregular shape. Some lavender and wildflowers trimmed part of the edges, but there were mostly patches of herbs – basil, rosemary, thyme, mint – filling the air with their organic scent. Down the back, the garden turned into wild bushes and trees and a small foot-trodden path disappeared through it.
I felt myself on the precipice, swaying between two possibilities, staring at two futures. I couldn’t have one without giving up the other. I needed to make a choice.
A movement caught my eye. I glanced up to see a figure standing just at the start of the path, looking at me over his shoulder.
It was Keir. My heart started to race and my throat became dry the way it always did when I saw him. He was wearing the same dark blue shirt and black pants as the day he died.
Our eyes met and for a moment we were both just suspended there, caught in each other’s gaze. Then he turned his head and disappeared through the thick overgrowth.
With his name stuck in my throat, I launched to my feet and ran after him.
I followed the path, pushing through the branches in my way and stepping over knee-like roots and fallen branches. I couldn’t see him up ahead. A sinking feeling overcame me; perhaps I had lost him.
The path opened up to a flat grassy ledge, a smattering of rocks, a few brave wildflowers in tight low bunches, with a view out across the Pacific Ocean.
Keir was standing there, waiting for me.
I stopped just before him, just out of reach even if I lifted up my arms.
“Hello, Noriko,” he said.
“Hello, Keir.”
He looked so good. So alive. So real. With the wind whipping through his hair, and his strong body silhouetted in the late afternoon sun. My chest tightened as the string that tied us together folded itself into yet another knot.
“Oh, Keir,” I breathed, “there’s so much I want to say to you.”
He remained silent. I knew he was giving me space to talk.
“You were right.”
“I’m always right,” he said with a soft smile and a wink. “You’re only realizing that now?”
I didn’t smile as I continued, “I realize I have a choice now. I could stay with you. I could keep you here, I could keep you with me, even though you don’t belong here. I could be happy with…you. I could keep pretending you never died. But then I’d still be a prisoner…inside my head.”
He nodded. “Or?”
“Or, I could try to move on. I could make something of what I have inherited. I could try to atone. To build something from my life. But then I’d have to face…everything. I wouldn’t have you. I’d never have you again. I’d be alone.”
“What are you going to do?”
My hands itched to touch him. My chest was so tight. He was my oxygen and I was suffocating without him. I was desperate to hold him so I could breathe again. I could take the last step between us. I could close the gap and fall into his safe comforting arms and completely lose myself again. I could pretend that he had never left. It would be so easy. So so easy. It would be as easy as breathing. The easiest and most natural thing in the world.
But…
“I’m sorry,” my voice broke. I couldn’t believe I was saying this. “I have to say goodbye. Even though it may kill me, I have to let you go. Do you understand?”
He rewarded me with a smile. “Of course I do.”
“Could you forgive me for everything I did?”
“Noriko.” He closed the distance between us and wrapped me in his arms. “I love you, no matter what you did. I’d forgive you for everything. But I’m not the one who you need to forgive you, do you understand?”
I nodded as I clung on to him as tightly as I could because I knew it would be the last time. “I love you,” I said over a sob. “I love you so much. I will never love anyone like I love you.”
“I love you too. Utterly. Irreversibly.” He pulled back, his hands cupping my neck and jaw.
His mouth closed on mine. I squeezed my eyes shut and drank him in. He tasted like Keir, sweet and salty. He held my head firmly to his as our tongues danced one last dance. My hands moved across his arms and down his side and around his back, feeling every firm muscle, trying to memorize his body before I lost it.
I poured all my love and longing into him and I felt his love filling me back up in return. One last time.
Goodbye, Noriko.
He faded into nothing and I was left holding the wind. I inhaled his scent of smoky wood and of wild grass before it, too, blew away.
When I opened my eyes I was staring at the sun, just starting to dip below the edge of the ocean. My first ocean sunset.
I cut myself on the glassy sea and spill my heart onto your sky.
I stayed there watching the closing of the day until the sun finally slipped down under the horizon and disappeared.
No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
~ Matsuo Basho
45
Several weeks later…
The passenger seat of the black sedan was soft underneath me. The rest of the interior was a faded cream and matte silver. Hanging from a thin strand of red silk from the rearview mirror was a small royal blue origami chocho, a butterfly.
Outside the autumn colors of fire and earth flashed past, one last gasp of passion before the silent winter. The small vibrant yellow heads of the ominaeshi flowers pushed up through the light frost covering the ground. My favorite season was almost here.
Soon I would start my atonement. It would be a long and difficult path. But before I set out on that journey there was one place I needed to go.
The car windows were opened slightly so I could smell the fresh, crisp air. My hands were gloved and folded in my lap, but they came out occasionally to punctuate something I was saying to Aki, the driver who picked me up from the airport. He was a young man, only twenty-two, but he already had a wife and a new baby.
“Satsumi, her name is,” he said to me in Japanese and showed me a photo of a chubby grinning baby in his wallet. He glanced briefly from the road ahead to me, pride beaming from his face. “She looks like her mother.” He grinned. “Thank God.”
I laughed. “Well, she’s just beautiful.”
We neared our destination and the sedan finally stopped, the gravel crushing underneath the tires. I pushed open my own door and stepped out. The path from here was too narrow for the car to go down, so I would walk the rest of the way.
Aki helped me with the small suitcase from the trunk. I thanked him again and slipped him a wad of cash. “Think of it as the start o
f your education fund for Satsumi,” I said with a wink.
He accepted it with a stunned look on his face and bowed low, almost with his head to his knees, thanking me over and over before he disappeared into the car.
I began the final walk down this worn earth path, alone, pulling my suitcase behind me.
Back in California, I had sold off Drake’s company to the shareholders. I sold the mansion and everything in it. I gave all of Drake’s staff generous severance packages and references. Everything I physically owned was now contained in this one small suitcase. It felt…liberating.
The only ones it had been hard to say goodbye to had been Filipe and Marina. They had insisted I stayed with them until I left. Their warm hugs and comfortable silences and endless cups of tea helped to nurture me back to myself.
I wondered if they found the gift I left them yet, slipped under my pillow in the guest bedroom. An envelope with a brochure and this note:
Dearest Filipe and Marina,
I can’t thank you enough for the kindness you have shown me, a practical stranger, in these last few weeks.
I could never pay you back for what you did for me. But I will try.
I enclose a brochure of California’s finest in-vitro clinic. If you decide to proceed your bill would be fully taken care of by me.
I can’t imagine any two people who would make better parents.
Love, Noriko.
PS. Keir would make a wonderful name if it were a boy.
As I neared the house, the familiar low, small, square building with pitched roof, I could see a woman sweeping the small front porch. All my memories of this place and of her came flooding back.
She looked up, saw me and froze. “Noriko?”
I lifted up my hand in a wave, tears already clogging up my throat so that I couldn’t speak.
“Noriko!” Her broom fell from her hands with a clatter and she ran towards me, her hands holding up her skirts. I started to laugh. I had never seen her move that fast before. I dropped the handle of my suitcase and ran forward to meet her.
When I fell into my mother’s warm arms, the dam inside my heart burst and I started to sob.
“It’s really you. Is it really you?” she said, over and over again, her slim yet strong arms crushing me to her.
“It’s me, mama,” I whispered. “It’s me. I missed you so much.”
I heard the sound of the front door creaking and curious voices of my sisters turned to excited shrieking. I felt us jolt as my sisters threw themselves at us one by one to wrap around us tighter into a knot that could not be broken.
As we stood there hugging and crying, I felt the loving presence of my father wrapping around us all. I could almost hear him whispering in my ear,
Welcome home, hime.
46
Six months later…
I walked alongside Kaiya Enomoto, the headmistress of this brand new school in Shibetsu. Our heels clattered along the polished floors as she led me through the hallways and empty classrooms. The building was silent except for the clack of our heels. There were no children running around or filling the air with their chatter yet. But soon there would be.
Kaiya led me finally out to the schoolyard through the back door. It was a flat grassy area that stretched out to a wire fence lined with maple trees, starting to sprout green tips, and cherry blossom trees in partial bloom, the air filled with the invigorating sweet smell of spring. In the distance Mount Unabetsu watched over us.
Kaiya turned towards me. “The absolute generosity, Mrs. Blackwell. To fund this school−”
“Please.” My cheeks burned as I lifted a hand to stop her. “Don’t thank me. It was…”
How could I explain to her? How could I explain to anyone that this was something I should not be thanked for?
After what happened with Drake and Carter I was finally freed. Only to find my soul, the most important thing of all, was imprisoned in a cage of my own making.
This school, the first one I had built, I had named Juishiro, after my late father. There would be many more to come, all across Japan.
Japan had public and private education, but neither of them were free. The schools and universities I commissioned would always be free for those who needed it, funded indefinitely through the investment trusts I had my own stuffy-suited lawyers and investment advisors draw up.
These would be my paper cranes. One by one, fold by fold, my soul was lifting. Maybe one day I could get my wish, a wish I made all those months ago.
“It’s nothing,” I said to Kaiya. “I came from here with nothing and…I have been lucky. Very lucky.” And I meant it. No more would I lament the things I had lost. I would see them for what they really were, birds returned to the wild where they belonged, their distant calls reminding me to focus on what I still had. You would not find a martyr in me anymore. “I’m just giving back to the country that raised me.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s just wonderful what you’re doing.”
The breeze blew my way, tousling my long hair. Suddenly I could smell the scent of smoky wood and cut grass on the wind.
In the distance I spotted a familiar figure standing there watching me. I couldn’t see his face from here, but I could almost imagine that he was smiling. My chest filled with joy and love and for the first time in a long time I felt a kind of peace.
“Mrs. Blackwell?”
“Yes?” I turned back to Kaiya.
“I want to show you our gymnasium now. The one you specifically asked to be built.”
“Of course.”
She went inside and I followed. At the entrance I paused and glanced back.
He was gone. But I knew he would never be too far away. He was irreversibly tied to me. And I kept the piece of him that he gave me, here in my heart.
THE END
Author’s Note
I know. You probably hate me for what I did to Keir. Unfortunately no other ending felt right for this story. Not all love can last. Not everyone gets a happily ever after even though they deserve it.
If you read on a little further you’ll find a little surprise from Keir…
Noriko’s Japan:
Sadly, I have never been to the island of Hokkaido or the town of Shibetsu in Japan. Although I researched this beautiful island and coastal town extensively, there is only so much I can glean without actually going there myself. Noriko’s Japan is partly fact, partly fiction. To those of you who are familiar with these places, I apologize for any factual errors in my description.
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Turn to the next page for Keir’s surprise…
Utterly Irreversibly: A Girl Wife Prisoner Novella
(A Good Wife #1.5)
By Hanna Peach
What if…
Noriko and I.
You already know our story. So you know how it ends. I’m sorry. Some things are irreversible.
But others things, things like dreams for example, are not. Dreams are fluid as water, as changeable as the memory of the dreamer. Perhaps, then, I may be given license to re-tell our story the way I dreamed it. The way it should have been…
This novel is Girl Wife Prisoner told from Keir’s alternative perspective. Please finish Girl Wife Prisoner before reading this novel as it contains spoilers.
For ages 18+.
Available now at your retailer for $1.99
Or subscribe to my romance newsletter (http://hannapeach.com/subscribe) to get your FREE copy as a thank you (limited time offer)
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Paper Dolls
By Hanna Peach
The rest of my
life came down to this. One choice. Two faces.
Salem is my twin sister. She’s my best friend and my other half. She protected me when the devil came to visit. She forgave me, even after I failed her.
Clay is the love of my life. He’s my redemption and my soulmate. Sweet yet intense and nursing a dark past of his own. He saved me from the nothing I had become.
But I can’t have them both.
My name is Aria. And today, I must choose. One of the two people I love has to die.
TRIGGER WARNING: This books deals with some very dark matters. If you have any trauma triggers, please consider carefully whether you wish to read it.
For ages 18+.
Out Jan 2016
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Books by Hanna Peach
Fantasy
The Dark Angel Saga
Angelfire (Dark Angel #1)
Angelstone (Dark Angel #2)
Angelsong (Dark Angel #3)
Angelblood (Dark Angel #4)
Angeldust (Dark Angel #5)
Books 1-5 available in a box set
Afterlife: A Dark Angel Novella (Dark Angel #5.5) ~ out Nov 2015
Contemporary Romance
Paper Dolls ~ out Jan 2016
A Good Wife Series