Crimson Footprints Part 40

Daichi faced him.

"I loved your mother. I loved your mother more than anything. She was beautiful, smart, compa.s.sionate-she was everything I wanted in a woman. I worshipped her."

Tak's eyes narrowed. "So what the h.e.l.l happened?"

Daichi sighed.

"When I met your mother she was a freshman at Harvard while I was in the last year of my graduate studies. She was curled under a tree, reading Emily d.i.c.kenson. Back then, Emily d.i.c.kenson consumed her. I walked up to her, took the book from her, and recited Lord Byron's She Walks in Beauty."

Tak blinked, trying his best to conjure an image of his father, underneath a maple, wooing his mother with poetry. The image never came.

"We dated for six months and then married. At our ceremony she was already six weeks pregnant with you."

Daichi slipped his hands in his pockets, leaned against the edge of his desk and sighed. "She left school to marry me and to have you. She was so full of potential and so brilliant, the guilt from that plagued me. I wanted so badly to give you both a better life that I lost sight of what const.i.tuted better. I thought that 'things' meant better. So, I pushed for bigger contracts and worked longer hours. And by the time I accomplished what I set out to do, well, your mother and I were strangers. The distance brought the alcohol, and the alcohol, animosity."

Tak lowered his gaze. "And what about Kenji? Most days it seems you can hardly stand to look at him."

"I don't know. When I look at you, there is so much of me, and of my father. But when I look at Kenji, I just see-your mother-timid conformist, crestfallen wife, adulterer."

"She had an affair?"

Daichi waved a tired hand. "It was a long time ago. Nothing for you to be concerned about."

"You don't-you don't doubt that Kenji's yours, do you?"

Daichi smiled. "No. Of course not. We had not decimated just yet."

He rubbed his forehead. "Kenji was conceived in a time when our marriage was difficult, whereas with you, it was a time when I was full of optimism and hope, joy and love. By the time your brother was born, your mother and I were divorced in all but the most literal sense. Through no fault of his own, Kenji symbolizes everything that has gone wrong with my life, and you, all that has gone right."

Tak chewed on his bottom lip. "Do you-still love mom?"

It was a question Daichi had been asking himself for two decades. He and Hatsumi had shared so many years, more unhappy than happy, but he'd remained with her nonetheless. In fact, he'd never considered leaving her. Not on the countless occasions he'd found her too inebriated to care for their children and not when he found her in the arms of one of his interns eighteen years ago. But he wasn't sure that his reluctance to abandon her was tantamount to love. Perhaps it was the guilt and self-loathing he felt whenever he saw her presented in exquisitely perfect fashion, with her makeup and hair in place, as though nothing were more important. He'd look at her and think of that beautiful freshman, hair slightly disheveled as she read Emily d.i.c.kinson. He'd think of the bright future she must've had before Daichi Tanaka derailed her. Perhaps the guilt kept him there.

"I don't know if I love your mother. But I do know that I love you and I'm willing to say it until you believe it."

When Tak returned home that evening, he exhibited signs of forgetfulness, confusion and disorientation. He put things down and forgot where they were, faltered midway through sentences and stumbled over words.

Since Tak's accident, Deena had delved into medical journals and self-help books in an effort to monitor and a.s.sist in his recovery. His behavior was symptomatic of head trauma, something that could exhibit symptoms immediately or over a period of time.

So she followed him around, asking probing questions about sensitivity to light and headaches until he turned to her quite suddenly, as if noticing her for the first time.

"Did you know that my mother was already pregnant when my parents got married?"

Deena froze, a copy of Treating Trauma in her hands. "No."

"Oh. Okay."

With a shrug, he took a seat on the couch and began untying his sneakers.

"He told me he loved me today."

Deena's eyebrows shot up.

"Who did?"

Tak grinned. "My dad."

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE.

Daichi entered the master bedroom and cast off his plush robe and slippers. He changed into a pair of silk black pajamas and slid underneath the covers next to his wife. She lay on her side with her back to him. Daichi, taking in the slow rise and fall of her body and the otherwise lacking motion, determined she was asleep.

He put on his wire-framed reading gla.s.ses and delved into the latest issue of Architectural Digest. He fully expected to enjoy it, the last of the season, as it featured a retrospective look at the year's innovations. But his mind was on Tak.u.mi and the conversation they'd had. Never had he spoken to someone with such candor, with such vulnerability. Never had his son seen him cry.

Sighing, he set the magazine back on the nightstand. There would be no Architectural Digest tonight.

"Hatsumi?"

She turned to face him. How many nights had they shared like this one? With her back to him, never speaking, never interacting, just him reading until he fell asleep and her simply listening?

"Yes, Daichi?"

He'd always thought her voice beautiful. As a foolish young man, he'd imagined that if something as sweet and pure as fruit could speak, it would have the voice of Hatsumi. How was that young man defeated? And better yet, why hadn't he put up a fight?

"May I speak with you for a moment?"

Hatsumi drew herself up on one arm and Daichi frowned at her attire. He was certain what she wore const.i.tuted negligee-black satin and lace cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hugged her mid-section, held up by only the slimmest of straps.

"Why are you wearing that?" he demanded. "It's much too cold for that."

He kept their home as cool as possible to ward off bacteria.

Hatsumi lowered her gaze. "You wanted to speak with me about something?"

Daichi looked away.

"Yes. I uh, wanted to ask you something. Ask your opinion, rather, on something." He took a deep breath.

"Do I love you, Hatsumi?"

She frowned. "I'm not sure I understand what you're asking."

She shifted in her chemise, the cool air upon her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Daichi's gaze faltered momentarily.

"I want to know whether or not I love you," he said simply.

Hatsumi hesitated. "I don't think so."

He blinked a few times and nodded to himself. When he turned to her once more, she shifted again, her nipples pressing through the lace of her chemise.

"You're cold," he observed. "Allow me to get you something."

He was out of bed and searching for a robe before she could object.

The last time he'd volunteered to do something for her was two weeks before Tak's accident, when he offered to pour a bottle of alcohol directly down her throat, thereby dispensing with the constant refilling of her gla.s.s.

The robe Daichi handed her was his own. Standing to take it, she revealed the full cut of her nightie-the sheerness of material, the slight curve of her slender body and long bare legs. He was rendered breathless where he stood, recalling a time when his lips would trace the length of those legs, delighting in the sweet fragrance he found there.

"Thank you," Hatsumi said, tying the straps of the oversized cotton robe about her waist.

"You're welcome," he said quietly. When he looked away, it was in frustration.

"I uh, spoke at great length with Tak.u.mi today," he said.

Hatsumi blinked.

"We talked about many things, Tak.u.mi and I. This is why I asked if I loved you, as it was the question posed to me by him."

"And what did you say?"

"The truth. That I didn't know."

Hatsumi walked to the large window facing the foot of their bed and gazed out at the bay, and beyond it, the Atlantic Ocean.

"When we were younger you looked at me and you saw a beautiful woman, an intelligent woman, a woman you were honored to have by your side. But as time went by, that vision deteriorated. I became a woman who sacrificed a promising life, foolishly according to you, to have your child and be your wife. Quite simply, I became a fool."

She turned to face him. "But where is it written that I can't be all those things-beautiful and intelligent, wife and mother? When you look at me, you do so with regret. You think of what I could've become. You measure greatness by outward appearances and superficialities."

She swallowed. "No, there are no monuments erected to pay homage to my ego, and no, I don't grace the covers of magazines, but I have two beautiful sons and a family that I love. So, I do not meet your standards of greatness, but I am no one's failure."

Hatsumi turned away from her husband.

"Why do you stay, Hatsumi? Why do you stay in this empty, hopeless marriage?"

She sighed. "Because...we can find each other again."

Daichi stared at her back, pained by the temptation her words afforded him. Suddenly, he knew why he'd never, why he'd never leave. Daichi, like his wife, had held out hope that love would find them again. Each in their own way longed for something, anything to rejuvenate the pa.s.sion they'd once shared.

Hatsumi took a step towards him and allowed her robe cascaded to the floor. She revealed deliciously subtle curves under dark and yielding fabric. Daichi stared, his thoughts imbued with images of long pale legs and the delectable enticements he'd once savored.

Aroused to the point of madness, his hands, his mouth, his body found hers before his mind could convince him otherwise.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR.

The library still plagued Daichi. True, once completed it would be the largest in the state, shared by four colleges cl.u.s.tered in Broward, but it was just a library. He'd designed facilities for some of the largest companies in the world. His work donned the covers of magazines and the glossy pages of books in cities all over the earth. Could a library really be such a challenge?

At four o'clock, exactly six hours after entering his study, there was a knock at the door. Absentmindedly he told whomever it was to come in.

Kenji stood with a hand in the pocket of his relaxed jeans, head down, voice soft.

"Mom wants to know if you're hungry."

"Perhaps."

Daichi frowned at the computer-generated renderings of his flawed vision.

He grunted. "I just can't..."

Kenji took a step closer and frowned at the screen. "You can fix it if you make your promenade wider. And put reflecting pools on both sides."

Daichi looked up. "What?"

Kenji faltered. "I said you should make your-n-never mind."

Daichi stood. "You understand what you're looking at?"

Kenji's gaze returned to the floor. "I guess so."

Daichi frowned. Suddenly seized by an idea, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a pencil and sheet of paper from his desk and drew frantically. When finished, he held the sheet up before Kenji.

"What's this?"

He looked from the paper to his father's expectant face.

"A column."

Daichi pursed his lips in impatience. "What kind?"

Kenji looked again. "Tuscan."

Daichi allowed the paper to fall as he s.n.a.t.c.hed another. He sketched frantically, then wielded his work once again.

"And this?"