Lee’s father didn’t believe him. Even with all the sedatives in his blood, Lee wasn’t stoned enough to miss this.
Lee turned away so his father wouldn’t have to look at him anymore, then dug into the box on the counter. “Do you want coffee?” Lee said, already pulling out the hand grinder, the beans, searching the drawers for a measuring spoon.
“The day I turn down coffee is the day I die,” Lee’s father said with a smile. He walked around the counter and pulled out a drawer, then handed Lee a tablespoon and patted him too hard on the shoulder before going back to the couch.
When his father turned his back to him, Lee pulled out a bag of decaf from the cabinet. It was supposed to be for Hina—his dad’s girlfriend—but his father wouldn’t know the difference. Lee opened the bag of coffee beans and scooped out a spoonful.
It smelled of clove and tobacco, dark chocolate and roasted hazelnuts.
Lee made coffees for both him and his father, but he found himself dozing off on the couch before he’d finished even half the cup. His father woke him up half an hour later, and Lee knew he needed to take a walk in the sunlight or he’d ruin his sleep schedule. He felt hazy, like he was looking at the world through a screen of tulle.
He cast one last look at the stain in the kitchen, then forced himself to head into town even though he felt like a splinter was jammed into his brain. He could see the stain’s strange oblong shape even as he walked up the long ribbon of driveway, past his father’s black rental car, which was already gathering pollen. The taste of salt and chemicals still stung the tip of his tongue. His father had said the town center was a straight shot down the road, ten minutes away.
He swung the gate open with one hand and began to step through.
“Lee?” called a voice from the house.
Lee turned, but there was no one there. It had been a woman’s voice, but there were no women here, at least none that knew his name. He looked to the horizon, as if the voice had tumbled across the sea. But the sea had retreated far away, leaving nothing but bone-white sand baking in the summer sun.
He turned and stepped through the gate.
Pain burst inside his skull.
At first, he thought someone had struck him in the back of the head with an iron bar. His hand cramped up where he clutched the gate, church bells tolling inside his head. It was as if he could hear the heartbeat of the earth, the screaming magma below the surface. Every sound that ever was and ever would be was echoing inside his skull. The flowers just beyond the gate shifted in and out of focus—white mountain hydrangeas, then clovers, then dandelions, then dead weeds, then nothing but dirt. Lee’s entire body was a key jammed into the wrong lock, and the world was forcing him out.
A wave of vertigo echoed through his body, making him clamp his teeth into his lip, drawing more blood, more salt, more vividness to the surface.Let me out, Lee.His mother’s voice pealed through his brain.
And even though his head felt cleaved in half, he could see the stain on the wall of the kitchen, echoed a thousand times across his vision. The dark, narrow line that was all too much like a stain he had seen before on a day that felt so far away.
A man, a murderer, a stain.
A man, a murderer, a stain.
Lee was twelve, sitting in a hotel room in Cambodia, staring at a stain by the door. His mother hadn’t come back from her walk on the beach, and his father was still trying to call her, muttering about contacting the police if she didn’t come back soon.
The trip was supposed to fix everything. That was what his father had told his mother. Lee had known he was lying, but back then, he’d thought lies were mostly harmless.
It was all because of the games.
His mother liked them too much, and Lee liked them too, but his father didn’t. On nights when his mother wanted to play, she’d give him a glass of warm milk that tasted bitter, and he’d wake up in the back seat of the car, under a different sky. They were going to the North Star, his mother said. Or maybe the catacombs of Paris, or the Egyptian pyramids, or the lightless underworld of Japan. She’d crashed the car once, swerving to avoid an obstacle Lee couldn’t see and veering off into a ditch, but they’d both walked away with only bruises.Close your eyes, Lee. We’re almost there.
Every time they played after that, Lee’s father found them within an hour. Lee didn’t ask, didn’t know at the time what his father was doing about it other than whispering sternly to his mother when he found them. He would never yell, because she was the kind of woman you married. She had bright blue eyes and looked beautiful in lipstick and even if she cried all night, it didn’t matter.
So when his father said a trip would help them relax, Lee knew the trip was for his mother, not him.
When she walked out to the beach and left the door open, Lee had a strange, vivid dream.
First, the porch door closed. Something thumped on the ground, reverberated against the glass, but Lee didn’t open his eyes.
Of course you don’t care!his mother said in his dream, her voice muted and far away.You never even try to take care of him! If you won’t look out for him, I will!
You’re insane!his father said.You’re lucky I haven’t put you in a padded cell!
Jim, please!
Something thumped against the glass again, and maybe someone was locked out and knocking on the door? But Lee was half asleep, so he lay still until the sounds went away.
He dreamed that his father took out the trash, even though the maids would have done it in the morning. He dreamed that the air stung with the scent of cleaning chemicals. He dreamed that he cracked open his eyes and saw a black suitcase on the porch, heard weak scratching from inside as his father wheeled it away.
