No, it is amazing. It’s just too short of a trip. There are a million things I want to see. A lot of what I know about Japan is from anime, and yeah, that’s a lot of wild fantasy that says more about the culture and history than actual life, but I also have a thing for high school dramas with characters going about their normal days. They wander around Tokyo and visit natural spas. They take bullet trains to Hokkaido to see snow-capped mountains and run beneath cherry trees as blossoms rain down. I want to do that stuff.
Instead, I tour a stadium, which is different from any stadium I’ve been in before but still a stadium, and drink sparkly whiskey. I bow to a lot of businessmen and do my best to speak Japanese. Their English is way better than my Japanese, but they understand me and praise me for puttingthe effort in, and that’s nice. But the whole time, I’m thinking I wish I could have come when I had more than two days.
I wish I could have brought Tilly and Donovan with me.
I get him too many toys. The airport has a display of gifts themed for the Year of the Dragon, and that’s Donovan. A dragon. So I buy a couple of those. There’s a Totoro I nearly pass on even though I’ve watched it with him a couple times and he seems to like it, but then I realize it’s got crinkle fabric for the belly and a rattle inside. That’s a no-brainer.
The officials at the stadium must get wind that I’ve bought baby toys because they give me a gift basket of Japanese baby stuff, and it includes a fox — the stadium’s mascot — holding a football.
A lot of Donovan’s clothes and toys are hand-me-downs, which I don’t mind. I wish Tilly would just give up and admit she has my money so we can get a proper house, but he’s growing so fast that new doesn’t seem worth it. So there’s a mix of stuff for boys as well as girls and neutral, and I like that. I figure the fox holding the football is pretty masculine, so I balance it with some Hello Kitty stuff.
But Chococat, obviously. Chococat is the best.
I’m feeling pretty ridiculous as I’m standing in the pick-up lane at the Wilmington airport with a pile of stuffed animals overflowing the basket, though. Worse, I’m stuck on the phone with Andy while I wait for my ride, and my voice is just recognizable enough that I think some people are seeing through the glasses and hat.
It’s the Wilmington airport. Of course Blaise Sinclair is going to be here, talking directly into his phone because his headphones died somewhere over the Midwest.
“You didn’t have $700 for this flight,” Andy chastises me yet again for taking an earlier flight back. That’s not even howmuch I spent, but it sounded better than $1,100. “And I had a whole day scheduled for you in Kyoto.”
“But I didn’t need to do that stuff, right? I didn’t lose my sponsors?” Fuck, I hope not.
“No, no, nothing like that, but dammit, this is not the time for this stunt.”
“This isn’t a stunt! The Jugs gave me four days to report back to camp,” I remind him, probably too loudly. More people are staring at me. They must have heard me say Jugs. “And I did everything I needed to already. I have one free day, so what if instead of spending it in Japan, I spend it with my f—”
I cut myself off, but not soon enough. “If you’re not about to say son — and you’re not, I heard that — I don’t want to hear it.”
Andy’s angry. The day I told him I figured out who my blackmailer is, he was happy, but every decision I’ve made since then has pissed him off more. But this is my life. He just got a bonus for the sponsorships. He’ll get another big check when one of my big payments from the team drops. I’ve had to let five people from my crew go so far, and they have every right to be mad, but Andy hasn’t lost a cent yet, so I don’t want to hear it.
I want to hear Tilly admit that she’s my blackmailer, and I want her to tell me what’s been done with the money. I need that. But the money was never really real to me, if I’m being honest. Yeah, I’m back to starting from scratch, and it sucks that I had to let so many people go, but the money itself was just a number, a number I only know because I was the one getting her blackmail letters. Until then, my money manager knew the number way better than I did.
So it’s hard for me to care about that number when it’s easier for me to just accept whatever’s gone as a trade-off for thefamilyI have now, if she just tells me.
I just want the truth from her, and she’s given me everything except that.
And I want her to be safe and do what she needs to do to take care of herself, and some days, that’s an even bigger ask.
Denny picks me up and gives me a ride to Joss’s, since it’s on the opposite side of town and I really can’t use a rideshare without sparking a lot of interest. He doesn’t even mind when I continue to bicker with Andy the entire drive up.
But when we get there, Tilly’s car is gone.
Denny parks out front of the quilt shop and offers to run in and ask the workers where they are, but I stop him.
“I bet Joss went into labor.” Now I’m not going to get any time with Tilly, but at least I’ll have a good excuse to have Donovan all to myself for a couple hours. I check my phone for messages, figuring that even if everyone thinks I’m in Japan until tomorrow, they’ll still tell me when Joss is having the baby.
No messages. Irritating.
“What’s going on?” Andy asks, still on the other end of my phone line.
“They’re not here,” I grumble. “Tilly was supposed to stay with Gabe’s girl. She’s expecting any day now. I guess they’re at the hospital.”
“Oh, hold on a sec.” I hear him typing away on his computer, humming like he’s trying to find something. Finally, he says, “Hey, so, remember when we were discussing ways to keep track of Tilly in case she runs with your baby, and we decided the most obvious place to start was an app on her phone, but then she wasn’t in any shape to run, so we never went anywhere with that?”
“Yes?”
“I did actually go somewhere with that, and I just tracked her. But you’re not going to like this.”
The drive is three hours. I promise Denny I’ll pay him whatever he wants for this, but he just has me pay for gas.
