Sisters of Heart and Snow (32 page)

“Well.” He draws in a breath. “I had to try. One more time.” He kisses her forehead, softly, and he gets up.

“Leave the contracts,” Drew says. “I'll sign after I look them over.”

He nods once, places an envelope on her table, leaves.

Drew sits motionless for a minute. Waiting for her morass of self-doubt and second guessing to kick in.

Nothing. She feels peaceful. A bit sad. She blows her nose, then gets an empty box out of the closet and begins cleaning up the mess.

•   •   •

I throw a change of clothes
and my toothbrush into a small bag. I use my iPad to find a flight. Bam. Purchased, just like that. My anxiety's gone. Excited, that's what I am.

“We're home!” Tom yells from downstairs. I take my bag and go to see him. He won't stop me now that I've bought a ticket.

Chase and Tom stare up at me and my travel bag. “Hey.” I look down at my hands, expecting them to shake, but they're as steady as a surgeon's. “I have something to tell you.”

•   •   •

The cab takes me
into the depths of the Strip. Past the small-scale Eiffel Tower. The faux verdigris Statue of Liberty. The huge water fountains spurting up twenty stories in front of the Bellagio in a multicolored light show. Christmas decorations on acid. The pulsing lights make my eyes ache. The sidewalks are jammed with tourists walking around in everything from shiny cocktail minidresses to Hawaiian shirts, teetering on platform spikes or trudging in Birkenstocks. It's been years since Tom and I came here, and Vegas has exploded like a giant boozy piñata. The driver stop-and-goes through the slow red lights all the way along the Strip, turning at last down a side street.

The flight to Vegas took only an hour; driving conservatively, it takes five. More if there's snow in the Grapevine, the long mountain pass on the I-5. It's ten o'clock. Quincy should have only just arrived.

Circus Circus, with its white plaster clown statues and giant archway of throbbing red and yellow lights, shimmers into view. The Little White Chapel, which looks like a sweet steepled white clapboard country church set down improbably in Vegas, is across the street. I pay the cabbie and head into the lobby, with its polished cream and black floors. I fully expect Quincy will not be pleased to see me.

The front desk clerk rings their room. “No answer,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say, my phone already to my ear, calling Quincy's cell. She doesn't pick up. “What room is that?”

“I'm sorry, I can't tell you.” He smiles apologetically, answers another line.

Well, I suppose I don't want any hotel telling a stranger what room I'm in. I sit in the lounge so I can see the front door, the bank of elevators, and the entry into the casino. I either have to find her in person or hope she answers her phone. My plan B is nonexistent. I rub the chair's arms with my fingers. From the adjacent casino floor, the smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol drifts in, along with the clang of slot machines and tipsy, overly loud conversations. If I leave my position, I may miss them. I wipe my brow. I'm getting more and more nervous. Maybe this is a stupid plan. For a second I wish Tom had stopped me, but he didn't say a word.

“At least you'll get to go to Vegas, even if you can't stop her,” he said on the way to the airport. He was trying to not be worried. He reached over and patted my thigh. “Play some blackjack.”

“I'm not good at blackjack,” I reminded him.

“You can still have fun,” Tom said.

An hour passes. I reread Tomoe on my phone.
Ichi-go, ichi-e.
I never thought I'd welcome those words, not after my father said them. I look up at the clerk. He's bent over the desk, writing something. He's a bit older than me. Balding, reading glasses. Maybe I can talk him into it.

I go up to him again. “Hi there. I'm sorry, but I wonder if I could ask you again for Quincy Perrotti's room number. You see, I'm her mother. She's here to get married.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am. I really can't do that.” He looks at me over his glasses. One hand, no doubt probably getting ready to push some hidden red button.

He has a wedding band on. I lean over. “Do you have any children?”

He nods. “Two. Boy and girl. Nineteen and sixteen.”

I nod slowly back at him. “I understand your policy, and I think it's a good one. But understand this—my daughter is twenty. She's here getting married. She just called me and told me over the phone. What would you do, as a father? Would you sit there and wait, or try to find her?” I let this sink in as he considers. I think about bribing him, but figure there are too many security cameras and it might get him into trouble. “Please. Help me out. As a parent. I can show you my ID. We have the same last name.” I look at him pleadingly.

He nods once, his glasses sliding down his nose, and writes a number on a Post-it. He sticks it on the desk in front of me.

S
HINOWARA
T
OWN

C
ENTRAL-
N
ORTHERN
R
EGION

H
ONSHU,
J
APAN

Early Winter 1183

P
erhaps this will be a new beginning,” Yamabuki said from her bedroll. She and Aoi were supposed to be napping. Yamabuki's third pregnancy had taken its toll. She was nearly eight months along, and Tomoe thought—as always—that she needed to eat more. Yamabuki's face was thin and tired. She wore an old kimono of Yoshinaka's, baggy and stained. There was little resemblance to the girl she had been when she arrived.

They had moved out of Miyanokoshi to Shinowara Town last month, in late November. There were no memories of Yoshitaka here. Shinowara was closer to the western shores, not up in the mountains, not far from the ocean. They could get fresh fish. Life felt more possible, Tomoe thought.

“We will finish off the Taira, and everything will go back to normal,” Yamabuki said. “Cousin Yoritomo will make Yoshinaka a lord, and we will get little Yoshitaka back.”

Yamabuki moved her legs restlessly. “I want to get up. There are chores to do.”

“No. You rest.” Tomoe examined the woman's appearance with concern. Yamabuki grimaced as she turned over. “Remember when you couldn't even wash a kimono?” Tomoe said abruptly, hoping to distract Yamabuki from her pains.

Yamabuki nodded. “How far I've come.”

“And you have been blessed with children,” Chizuru said, entering the house with a jug of water in her liver-spotted hand. “You have enough children for both you and Tomoe.”

Tomoe frowned. Her mother should not speak like that. But Yamabuki laughed. “If only Tomoe could carry this child for me. I'm sure she wouldn't have to stop riding horseback or fighting. I'm afraid I'm not made for these burdens.” She lifted a leg. “Look at my ankles.”

Tomoe and Chizuru gasped. Yamabuki's ankles were swollen to twice their size, laced with bulging blue veins. Even her toes were swollen, like the daikon roots. She couldn't bend them. Clucking, Chizuru rolled up a blanket and tucked it under Yamabuki's feet. “No more chores for you until after the baby,” she said sternly. “Keep your feet elevated.”

Yamabuki struggled to sit up. “I will not allow these ailments to trouble me.”

Despite her outwardly weak nature, Yamabuki could be very stubborn. But she needed bed rest. All of them had seen pregnancies where swollen ankles led to swollen limbs, sweating, a high pulse, and a terrible headache. The woman and baby both died.

“There are times when being strong means you must accept your weakness.” Tomoe put her hand on Yamabuki's forehead. She had a fever. Tomoe and her mother exchanged a concerned look.

This life was too difficult for poor Yamabuki.

Yamabuki's face softened. “I hope one day I can watch over you as you have me.”

From outside, loud men's laughter rang out. Yamabuki sighed. “I wish they would be quiet. All they do now is drink.”

Tomoe's stomach knotted. “I'll speak to them.”

She left the house. A campfire crackled in a stone circle in the clearing. Yoshinaka, Kanehira, and about twenty other men sat around the flames, drinking.

Yoshinaka looked a wreck. He wore pants and a kimono jacket in material too light for the cold weather, the ends of the pants caked in mud. His hair was filthy and matted, and Tomoe could smell him from yards away. He raised his sake cup in salute.

“Tomoe! About time. Guess what? Yukiie lost Muroyama.” His tone was gleeful. He stood and waved his clay sake cup. “I am the best general the Minamoto have! A toast. To me. The only one who can win.”

“Kanpai!”
the soldiers shouted.

Yoshinaka took another swig of sake. “I will show him what poor old cousin Kiso can do.”

“To Yoshinaka, our new shogun!” Kanehira cried.

Yoshinaka turned with a smile. “That is right, Kanehira. The Taira have abandoned Miyako and taken the child emperor with them. This means the retired emperor is the acting emperor again. If we go to Miyako before cousin Yoritomo and receive the emperor's blessing, I will become shogun!”

“You cannot hold off the entire Minamoto army and the Taira. You'll lose.” Tomoe planted her feet. Somebody had to tell Yoshinaka the truth, and it seemed it would be her.

Yoshinaka scowled. His hand tightened visibly around his sake cup. “When I'm shogun, my cousin Yoritomo will do as I say.”

“No. He'll kill you and take over. And he'll kill your son.” She tasted copper in her mouth, rising from her throat. If this threat did not reach Yoshinaka, nothing would.

The men went still. They looked from Tomoe to Yoshinaka. Yoshinaka appeared to be holding his breath, his face turning a peculiar combination of red and blue. “I will have the support of the emperor,” Yoshinaka said in his deepest voice. “If Yoritomo kills Yoshitaka, I as shogun will have the authority to execute him.”

Tomoe stepped closer to Yoshinaka. “You bluster and bluster, but you will not take good advice when it is shoved in your face! I say we stay here, show cousin Yoritomo that you are trustworthy.” She looked around at the gathering, at the houses beyond. “Join forces with him and conquer the Taira for good.”

Yoshinaka put his face next to Tomoe's, his hot and sour breath on her. She stared directly into his swollen eyes, eyes that had once been more familiar than her own. But not today. Today they were strange. Cold. She tilted her head up. “Be reasonable,” she whispered, so close that her lips brushed the coarse hair of his beard.

Yoshinaka didn't blink. “I want revenge.”

Tomoe heard her heartbeat pound in her ears. Ever since Kurikara and the taking of Yoshitaka, Yoshinaka had become more and more unstable. Perhaps this had all pushed him into some wild territory from which he, the real Yoshinaka, was unrecoverable. There was only the beast Yoshinaka in his place, like some shape-shifting
obake
monster out of Japanese legend.

“Revenge will not solve your problems,” Tomoe said, her voice loud.

Yoshinaka walked away. She thought he was going to the house, but instead he turned suddenly and pitched his sake cup at her. Tomoe held up her hands, deflecting the blow with her forearms. The cup bounced with a sound like sword hitting bone, and it stung as badly as the stick Yoshinaka had hit her with when they were small.

“Your father should have told me!” he shouted. “He should have told me the truth about my cousins, instead of letting me think the Taira were the real enemy! Yoritomo will kill me now or kill me a year from now. It makes no difference. He will never trust me. With good reason! I will kill him!”

Tomoe rubbed her forearm. Heat exploded over her, inside her. “My father wanted to protect you from exactly this type of madness.”

Striding forward, Yoshinaka grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. Her neck made a snapping noise and she let out a cry. So let him hurt her, if it came to that. If he could. Tomoe hit the wrist of the hand holding her hair, forcing him to release it, ducking under his arm. Then she shoved at his chest with her foot. Yoshinaka staggered backward and nearly fell into the fire, landing in a heap of ash piled next to the stone ring.

Yoshinaka lifted his broken face to Tomoe. “You are nothing but a woman,” he said, his eyes watering. “I only keep you because your cunt has not been stretched by children.”

Tomoe's face burned. “My father,” she said, “would be ashamed of you. The only reason I stay is that he told me to watch over you. Let me have Yamabuki. I will take her and my mother and Aoi and leave.”

“You want Yamabuki?” Yoshinaka spat at the ground. “Have her.” He threw down his sword and walked off toward the center of town. Kanehira cast his sister a desperate glance, and then followed his foster brother into the maze of streets.