by Rhys Ford
“No, Jack’s fine.” He snuck another look at Brigid and caught her amused expression. “What? Too early? Am I supposed to be a fucking adult and not—I don’t have any rules here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Well, I think your brother is right. If ever there was a time for a draught of whiskey, it is now.” She patted Damien’s shoulder before she sat down. “Of course, I’m Irish, and I think having oatmeal for breakfast is a good reason to have a shot of whiskey. Quit driving yourself crazy and settle in.”
The first time he’d gotten drunk was on Jack Daniel’s. It’d been after their first gig together, and Damien scraped together a few dollars so they could each have a shot to celebrate. He’d been way too young to drink, much less be in the place, but no one seemed to even notice. The bar had been three deep with people, and the guy behind the counter winked at Damien as he passed a small black-labeled bottle over, refusing Damien’s handful of bills.
“You guys put on a hell of a fucking good show,” the man shouted over the bar’s clamor. “This one is on me.”
The bottle hadn’t come with glasses, so they’d taken turns swigging mouthfuls down. Like all things, the band shared equally, and while the other three were older and much more seasoned drinkers, Miki’d kept up with them, shot for shot. His first gulp was like sipping from an out-of-control fire, its flames eating up his skin and then his bones until nothing was left of his body but the warmth of the Jack’s kiss. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t get sick the next morning, and eventually he learned to love its taste as well as the brief, skittering numbness it settled over his pain.
They’d been drinking Jack the night of his greatest heartache, and its smoky bite would forever remind him of rain and screeching tires. But like many things in Miki’s life, it was complicated with fond memories as well, so it seemed fitting he would have a shot of the same whiskey on the day he would probably see his mother’s face for the first time.
And oh God, did it burn.
His fingers trembled, but only enough to make opening the plump package difficult. He braced himself for grainy copies, out of focus photos and hard to read notes about daily things his mother had shoved into a box and given to her friend to hold. He’d refused to learn her name from Edie, information the attorney’s office had given her about the contents of the original package she’d meant to intercept.
He wished he’d heard her name before he read it as a subject line of a printed report.
“Achara Sangsom,” Miki whispered, his throat catching his breath, turning his words into a staccato beat. His mother’s name was at the top of the page, followed by a cornucopia of information he couldn’t see past the tears in his eyes. “Her name was Achara Sangsom.”
The second shot of Jack went down a hell of a lot smoother than the first.
He felt Damien’s arm around his shoulders and Brigid’s hand on his thigh, but Miki couldn’t do much more than stare at the open package and wonder how his life started without him knowing the name of the woman who’d given birth to him. And whether he could live knowing what she’d done to survive and how she’d died.
“I need Kane,” he sobbed—God, he couldn’t stop crying—and despite the two people he loved sitting next to him, he needed the one who filled his soul, who’d found his heart and healed it—he needed Kane.
Dude whined, pawing at Miki’s leg to get his attention. His hands were still shaking badly as he stroked his dog’s head, smoothing back the terrier’s ears. Brigid picked up the package from where it fell, gathering up contents from where they landed on the floor. Damien was on his phone, but Miki couldn’t hear what he was saying past the rush of blood pounding in his ears; then suddenly he heard Kane’s voice call his name.
“Hold the phone, Sinjun,” Damien ordered, wrapping Miki’s nerveless fingers around the device. “Talk to your man here. Kane’s on the line.”
Miki wanted to crawl into bed and wrap his lover—his soul mate—around him, burying the struggles he’d fought through and the trauma he was living now underneath a blanket of love and warmth, but the truth was, it would be hours before he felt Kane’s touch.
“Mick?” Kane’s voice was as much a hit of lightning as the Jack in his belly. “Talk to me, a ghra. Tell me what’s happening. Damie said you’re having a hard time of it.”
“I thought I could do this without you. I mean I know I can, but it’s hard,” Miki confessed without shame or guilt. It was hard to admit he needed anyone, and he still argued with himself about sharing what he’d always thought was his greatest weakness, a deep-seated longing to be considered special in somebody else’s heart. Hearing Kane’s voice and feeling the joy it brought him, Miki finally understood admitting someone was in his heart was his greatest strength. “I know her name, and I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it right. I wish to fucking God I’d let them tell me it before I opened up this damned envelope. I’m not even sure if this is her.”
“It’s her. There’s things in there—let’s just say that we know for sure she’s your mother. And for the record, I pronounced it Ah-cha-rah Sang-sum when I read it, but I don’t know if I got that right either.” Kane chuckled. “How far did you get? Have you seen her photo? You look like her.”
“No. I dropped the whole damned thing and your mom had to pick it up. Everything’s probably out of order or even if there was an order. I just saw the report and it became so fucking real.” He scrambled for the package, and Brigid passed over the bundle she had in her hands. “There’s smaller envelopes inside the big one and a few pieces of paper from the DA’s office. I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”
“I don’t know how they copied the photos, if they did them individually or if they did several on one page.” Someone nearby called Kane’s name, and he told them to wait in his rumbling Irish accent.
“Do you have to go?” Miki asked.
“I don’t care if the sun is burning up in the sky right now, you are much more important,” Kane told him. “Do you want me to tell you what you’re going to find?”
“No,” he grumbled back. “It’s stupid, but I wanted to hear your voice. I needed to have a part of you with me right now. I’ve got your mom and Damien here, but I think I just needed to hear you.”
There was a brief bit of silence that Miki guessed was Kane absorbing the fact that Brigid was in their home while Miki was tearing open his past. Then he heard a resigned sigh, and Kane cleared his throat.
“How about if you put me on speakerphone and go through the rest of it?” his cop suggested. “Or you can wait for me to come home and I’ll do it with you, but I don’t know how long that’s going to be. I’ve got an interview coming up with an ex-cop who IA suspected of working with Wong back then. With any luck, Wong contacted him. I’m hoping once we find Wong, we can end all of this.”
“I want to go through the rest of it,” Miki admitted softly. “It’s going to eat at me, knowing that it is sitting here, and eventually Brigid and Damien are going to lose interest in watching me stare at it, and leave. If I don’t do this now, I don’t know if I’m going to be strong enough to do it later.”
“You be as strong as you need to be, Miki boy,” Brigid said, rubbing his cold fingers between her hands. “And you have the two of us here for as long as it takes.”
“Yeah,” Damien agreed. “Besides, I’ve been watching you stare at things for years now. It’s become like a hobby, almost.”
“K, hold on. I’m going to put the phone down.” He fumbled with the device, fighting with the screen to find the button, then just handing it over to Damien, who managed with a few flicks of his finger to turn it to speaker mode. Miki was trying to decide what he needed more, a steadying breath or another shot of whiskey, when he heard Kane call his name through the phone. “I’m here. Just deciding whiskey first, then breathing. I think I need booze more than air right now.”
“Are the three of you getting drunk in the living room?” Kane said over
the speaker. “I’m stuck here at work with bad coffee and Kel.”
“Just your Miki, and I’m sure Damien will be joining him in a little bit.” Brigid tsked. “None for me. I’m driving.”
“I’m not getting drunk. Just a little… Irish,” Miki muttered back, then took a short swig of Jack. The numbness remained, the fire was a bit dimmer, but his hands finally stopped shaking. Sucking in that steadying breath helped, but not as much as Kane’s laughter, a soft roll of heady pleasure brushed with affection and amusement. Leaning over the phone, he whispered, “I’m glad you’re here with me. Even if you probably already know all of this shit, I’m just really happy.”
“I love you, a ghra.” Kane’s words seemed a little thick with emotion, and they lightened the weight in Miki’s chest. “Go as far as you need to, and if you find that it’s too hard, put it aside and wait until I come home. Okay, Mick?”
“Yeah, okay. Honestly, I kind of have to do this, and I know it.” Miki let go of the breath searing his lungs. “You needed to go through all of this because it’s for your case against Wong, so you couldn’t wait on me. And we’re doing the one thing that we promised we wouldn’t do, and that’s talk to each other before we both knew what was in this thing.”
“Like I’ve already told you, Mick,” Kane laughed. “Some rules are made to be broken.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you, Sinjun, but either you decide to open this thing now, or I drag you up to the rooftop and we get drunk.” Damien scratched at the dog’s shoulders. “It’s just like going onstage for the first time. At some point you have to commit or decide to come back to it.”
“You shoved me onstage the first time,” Miki accused him. “I was standing there under the lights all alone, remember?”
“Not for long,” his brother reminded him. “And just like now, I’m right here with the promise of Jack when we’re done.”
“Take your time, Miki.” Brigid sounded cool and calm, but she had a hint of steel in her voice for Damien. “Don’t rush things if you don’t want to.”
“No, this is stupid. Let’s do this so I can get on with my damned life.” Miki fretted, working off a rubber band holding a sheaf of papers together. “But I’m not going to say no to the Jack later. Hell, not like I’m saying no to it now.”
Someone at the DA’s office had taken great care with his mother’s memories. The photos were so clean and crisp, Miki wasn’t totally convinced they weren’t the originals. The paper cutouts were thinner, odd lines here and there around the edges of the images leaving a white frame around the copied photos. But suddenly there was no doubt in Miki’s mind that he was staring at the woman who’d been taken from him.
“Fuck, you look so much like her,” Damien whispered. “She’s so damned beautiful, she makes my teeth hurt. And it’s kind of weird seeing your mouth on a woman’s face.”
She was Asian, but Miki wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone what kind just by a glance, with something else in there, too, or maybe a genetic oddity cropped up once in a while, because her eyes were so much like his, a tumble of citrine and peridot hammered into a coppery brown. Her gaze was sad, a recurring theme in every single image taken of her, even the ones where she stood with a group of people, a smile plastered on her face.
A smile that never ever seemed to reach her hazel eyes.
Judging by the images, she led a life of parties filled with men and alcohol. Her hair was dark, nearly black, but dyed blonde or auburn in some of the images. He definitely hadn’t gotten his height from her, because she barely came up to most men’s shoulders, but she held herself like a queen, regal and charismatic with her spectacular face and stunning figure. And while Achara’s stunning beauty was captured flawlessly in the top stack of images, so were the bruises on her wrists and arms and the occasional swelling around her haunted eyes.
“She was so young,” Brigid remarked, taking the photos as Miki handed them over. “Barely more than a baby herself. Ah, look at this one. I think she’s pregnant here. You can’t see much of it, but right there.” She pointed to the rounded line along his mother’s abdomen. “I suppose that’s you.”
A photo at the bottom of the stack was so different from the others it stole Miki’s reason. It had been taken down by the wharf at a spot Miki recognized so quickly it made his head spin. Finnegan’s sign was visible over her right shoulder, and a crowd of people gathered around a fire swallower performing for tips. Her face was bare of makeup, but her eyes were lit up, a genuine grin on her full mouth. From what he could see, she wore a tank top, exposing an all-too-familiar tattoo on her shoulder, and a strong breeze caught at her chin-length hair, whipping it away from her face. Achara was turned toward the camera, caught in midmotion as she was saying something to the chubby-cheeked wide-eyed toddler she held in her arms.
The smile missing in the other photos now shone as bright as the sun in her eyes as she cradled what was obviously her child.
As she cradled Miki.
It could have been the only moment she ever held him tenderly, but it was enough for Miki’s heart to break for a woman he didn’t remember. The tears came again, and he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes to push his sorrow back, but they flowed too hard and too quickly for him to catch. Bending over, he held on to his knees and prayed he could breathe again, could stop the pain in his heart from tearing him into tiny pieces, but the tears still wouldn’t stop coming.
“Fuck.” Miki swore into the shadows he created, into the small dark space he’d made by curling up onto himself. “This hurts so fucking much. Why does it hurt so goddamned much?”
“I think she loved you a lot, Mick,” Kane said gently. The noise of the bullpen was absent, replaced by an echoing silence Miki guessed belonged to one of the interview rooms nearby. “Kel and I are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb right now, but from what I can see, she loved you. And I think she loved your father too.”
Miki sat up, passing over everything in his hands to Damien and Brigid before he soaked the papers with his tears. Sniffling, he asked, “Is his name in here too?”
“No, but Wong’s sister told us who she suspected got your mother pregnant.” Kane cleared his throat. “I can’t confirm or deny his involvement with her just yet, but as soon as I know, we can figure out what to do with that information. I can tell you one thing. Her name is not the only one in there.”
“What other name do I have to know besides hers?” Miki bit at his lip, his thoughts running crazily through the possibilities. “Her family? Did anybody give a shit about her being with Wong? About him using her? Do you think I should give a shit about their names if they didn’t stop him?”
“I don’t have any information about any of her family except you,” his cop replied with a sweet tenderness as poignant as when Miki saw his mother’s face for the first time. “I want to say something.”
“Say what?” Miki bent forward and growled into the phone. “I’m so pissed off right now about Wong, I’d kill him if he was right in front of me. He fucking took her from me. Just because he could. It’s not fair, Kane. And I know life isn’t fair, but the son of a bitch needs to die.”
“I know, and if it wasn’t my job to make sure that that didn’t happen, I’d let you, but you and I both know I can’t,” Kane counseled. “And before you snarl at me again, listen to me, because I am going to be very selfish right now, because I want to be the first one to say this to you. I love you, Micah Liam Sangsom, and I will do everything within my power to bring your mother’s murderer to justice.”
Chapter Eighteen
A word from you opened a window
A window in my soul
It showed me a way out
Of the prison I had made
I couldn’t let go of my past
Forged the bars myself
Carrying every blow
Coloring in every bruise
Gripping my wounds tight
Until I bled out inside
A window in my soul
Painted over, hammered shut
This window in my soul
A word from you opened it
A hug from you gave me the sky
And your love gave me wings
—Talking to Dad
“SO LET me get this straight: you’re Thai, Irish, and Scottish? That’s wild. I mean, there was definitely Asian in there because, well, you look it, but the rest of it is kind of a surprise. Like a Kinder Surprise.” Rafe nudged at Miki’s shin with his bare foot. “And Kane knows who your father is?”
“Maybe,” Miki countered. “He says he has a name and it jives with some of the case notes, but it isn’t enough to say for sure. I don’t even know what to think about knowing who my mother was right now, so I can’t deal with the maybe-this-is-your-dad thing. But he did say he suspects something and needs to chase it down first before he talks to me about it. I don’t even know if they’re going to let him talk to me about it, but, shit, there’s a lot I don’t know.”
He’d taken an hour to go through the photos and a few of the papers, but most of it was indecipherable to him, either in Thai or receipts for things his mother’d purchased, including a white wooden crib, a couple of pieces of jewelry, a gold band, and some slender jade bracelets, much like the kind sold in Chinatown’s storefronts. Except for his birth certificate and a couple of birthday cards addressed to his mother, there was nothing personal in the package, nothing to connect Miki with a woman whose name he wasn’t even sure he was pronouncing right.
In the movies and the occasional book, the deceased left touching letters proclaiming their undying love and exposing their great sacrifices. Miki didn’t get any of that. Instead, he got a name—his own as well as hers—and a face so much like his own it broke his heart.