The Shape of Mercy (34 page)

My thoughts somersaulted. Tom Kimura wanted to see me. “I … I’ll get there as soon as I can. Later this week, maybe?”

Clarissa began to dance in her seat.

“I don’t think you’ll want to wait that long, Miss Durough. Do you understand?”

I understood. I couldn’t wait until after I’d spoken to Graham. I had to go now.

“I’ll find a way to get there tomorrow.”

“You need our address?”

“Yes, please.” I scribbled the address on the back of a biology quiz.

“Perhaps you could call before you come over,” Ken said.

“Sure.”

We said good-bye and I closed my phone.

“See! What did I tell you?” Clarissa raised her hand to give me a high five. I met her hand with mine. “I can’t believe you’re really going to go there tomorrow. You really think you can get a flight on such short notice? Your dad own an airport or something?”

“Very funny.”

“And you’re playing hooky three days in a row. I must be a bad influence on you, girl.”

I couldn’t think about the classes I was missing. There was too much to do. I had calls to make.

I had to call Esperanza and tell her I wouldn’t be staying at Abigail’s that night and she’d have to find a way to keep Graham at bay until I got back. I hoped he didn’t have a key or Esperanza’s phone number. She would have to stay away from the house so he couldn’t make her let him in.

I needed to call home and make sure Dad was still doing okay. And to tell my mom where I was going. Someone should know.

And I had to call Cole. I had to convince him to let me talk to Raul.

I needed a favor.

I
t was after ten that night when I pulled into Palo Alto. Raul wanted to meet me at the parking lot of the Holiday Inn where I’d hastily booked a room to make sure I made it okay, but I convinced him I’d be fine. He asked me to call him when I got there, and I did.

He told me he’d file a flight plan for as early as he could, preferably so we could leave around seven in the morning, weather permitting. I got the impression that if it rained, he wouldn’t be able to take me. He figured it would take us a little under four hours to get to Portland. Then we’d need to rent a car and drive to the Kimura house on the western side of the city. I hoped to be at the house by one o’clock in the afternoon.

I had difficulty falling asleep. The long drive from Santa Barbara, the stress of my dad’s surgery, the curious pain of my self-discoveries, the anxiety I felt over Abigail’s whereabouts, the safety of the diary, and the strange task that awaited me in the morning—the weight of these things hung on me. I lay awake for several hours before I fell asleep, my mind plagued by too many thoughts.

In the morning, the wake-up call I’d requested split the quiet of my predawn room. I jumped out of bed, afraid I’d overslept even though I’d allowed myself plenty of time to get ready for Raul to come for me. I wore the outfit my mom bought for me, the one he said looked good on me. I hoped he’d notice.

He came at 6:30 a.m., just like he said he would. A few minutes
after he arrived, we were heading toward the municipal airport in the pearly gray dawn.

“I don’t know how to thank you for doing this,” I said, unsure of what to say to him.

“I don’t mind.” His voice was casual, relaxed.

“I really am very grateful. More than I can say.”

He looked at me and smiled. “I really don’t mind. I think it’s nice, what you want to do. I hope it works.”

“Works?”

“I hope it makes your friend Abigail want to come home.”

I peered at him. Stared at him. I wanted so badly to apologize. But how do you apologize to someone who doesn’t know what you’ve done? Unless Cole told him …

He peeked at me. “What is it?”

I looked away.

“What?” he asked, turning his attention back to the road.

“I … I …,” I tried, but the words wouldn’t come.

He stole another look at me. “You all right? You need me to stop?”

His utter kindnesses to me, in so many ways, that day and many other days, tore at me.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked without thinking, not much louder than a whisper.

Raul did a double take. “What was that?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You don’t want to go to Portland? I thought you wanted to go to Portland.”

“Why are you nice to me?”

He gave me a funny look. “You like it better when guys are mean to you?”

I barely heard his question, lost in my own private world of self-loathing. “Why would you want to help me?”

Raul shifted in his seat and looked out his window. “You got a problem with people who want to help you?”

“I’ve got a problem with people like me.”

He laughed. “People like you? There are more of you?”

“We’re everywhere.”

He laughed louder. “And what’s the deal with people like you?”

I inhaled deeply. “We think we know everything. We think we can read people like they are books. We believe whatever we want about people, whatever others tell us to believe, and whatever we tell ourselves to believe.”

I looked at Raul. He stole a glance at me.

“You’ve lost me,” he said.

“I hope not,” I whispered.

“What?”

“I’m as bad as the people I criticize all the time. Worse.”

“Okay. Um. Who do you criticize all the time?”

The truth seemed inescapable. “Just about everybody.”

“That bad, huh?” he said. He wasn’t taking me seriously.

“Yes. It’s that bad. We believe whatever we want! Do you know what I believed about you? I thought you were just another privileged guy, another rich kid flitting around in your own airplane, attending an exclusive school, rolling up the sleeves of expensive shirts like they were hand-me-downs, completely oblivious to real need.”

Raul said nothing at first. “And that’s what you
wanted
to believe about me?”

“No! It’s what I assumed. But I didn’t want it to be true.”

His half smile surprised me. “You didn’t want me to attend an exclusive school and fly my own plane and wear nice shirts?”

Why couldn’t he take me seriously? “I didn’t want you to be oblivious to real need. And the funny thing is, that’s the one thing that is least true of you, Raul.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Lauren, I don’t want you to say another word until I say you can, okay? I want to show you something. Look, we’re almost there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shhh.”

We pulled into the little airport and Raul parked the car. We got out and Raul pointed to the same plane I had seen two days before in Los Angeles. “I’ll meet you right over there.”

“But I want to pay for the fuel,” I countered.

“Hush. And you can’t. Cole and I already took care of it. I’ll be right back.”

He returned from the clubhouse with a large bag. I watched him silently as he walked around the plane for the preflight check. When he was done, he placed a finger against his lips, letting me know I wasn’t free to say anything yet. Then he helped me into the plane. I had never flown in anything so small. Nervous anticipation gripped my stomach.

Raul must have seen me pale.

“You okay?” He handed me a pair of earphones from inside the bag.

I nodded. I started to say something about being nervous, but he pressed a finger gently to my lips and said, “You’re not supposed to talk.”

Seconds later he was beside me in the cockpit, turning the ignition. The noise of the plane’s engine filled the tiny space that surrounded us. Raul spoke into his mouthpiece and a conversation between him and the municipal airport’s ground control began. They spoke English, but I understood little of what they said. I tuned them out and focused on settling my nerves while the plane shuddered to life.

Raul asked for permission to take off. Moments later we were taxiing down the small runway, and I could feel the air wanting to own us, wanting to lift us up from the ground and hurl us heavenward. The plane released its grip on the Tarmac and the propellers sent us to the
sky. Inside, the cockpit rumbled with power, noise, and intensity. I leaned back in my seat and concentrated on breathing.

The flat world fell away and the rounded horizon took shape. A fat stretch of pinkish blue shimmered in the distance on my right, as the bay brightened in the morning light. Cars below us on the 101 inched along an asphalt necklace, and brown hills to the east looked caramel-topped in the breaking sun. We lifted higher, and I was never more aware of how tiny and insignificant I was, sitting in that tiny plane, a speck of metal in a shining sky.

It wasn’t until we had passed Oakland that Raul finally turned to me.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice sounded strange through the earphones.

I nodded, my mouth slightly open, my eyes taking it all in.

He must have felt I was sufficiently awed by our surroundings. “Now you can talk!”

Words failed me for a moment, not because I hadn’t been in a plane before, but because I’d never bothered to truly consider what existed beyond me.

“I’m so small!” I gaped at the vastness that lay below us.

He laughed and shook his head like I had missed the point completely. “The world is so big!”

I blinked at him.

“It’s not always about you, Lars,” he said lightly, like he didn’t want me to take offense.

I didn’t.

“So what are you going to say?”

Raul sat next to me in the Honda Civic he’d rented since he was over twenty-one. I held the directions Ken Kimura had given me over the phone.

“I don’t know exactly. I know what I’d like
him
to say.”

“What’s that?”

I’d rehearsed the scene several times as we flew over northern California. I pictured myself going to Tom Kimura’s bedside and having him reach for me while he said over and over, “Does she remember me? Does she remember me?”

I pictured myself taking Tom Kimura’s wrinkled hand and telling him Abigail did indeed remember him. Every day she remembered him. I even imagined telling him she was haunted by her memories of him. Of what she had turned away.

“I want him to tell me he’s never forgotten her. That a day hasn’t gone by in the last sixty years when he hasn’t had at least one fleeting thought of her.”

Raul was thoughtful for a moment. “Tom Kimura married someone else. Had a son.”

“I know. I’m not saying I wish he’d never loved anyone else. I just want him to remember her. I want him to ask me if I can bring her to him before … before it’s too late.”

We were quiet for a few minutes as we drove down a wide tree-lined boulevard.

“What if you can’t find her in time?” Raul looked at me.

I knew this was probably how things would turn out. I had no idea where Abigail had gone, and Ken Kimura made it sound like his dad wouldn’t last through the week.

“I’ll ask him to tell me what he would say to her if he could see her again. And then I’ll tell her. When I find her.”

“Okay. So what if he says he has nothing to say?”

Tom Kimura’s street came into view. I was through with believing the worst about people I didn’t even know. “He has something to say to her. He loved her. Besides, he asked me to come.”

We pulled up to the curb in front of a cedar-paneled house flanked
by a row of pines. Several cars were parked in front, silently attesting to an event taking place inside. For a moment I just sat in the car and looked at the house, preparing myself to meet the man who lay inside it, inches from another world.

God, do something nice for Abigail. For all of us.

Raul looked at me and the corners of his mouth rose slightly. “Ready?”

I started to get out of the car. Raul didn’t move.

“Aren’t you coming?” Alarm whispered through me.

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course!”

“Then I’ll come.”

We walked up the imbedded-stone path. Carefully manicured shrubs and rows of purple flowers lined the walk. A wind chime fluttered in the breeze, announcing our coming. A row of shoes let us know how many people were inside the house, waiting. When we stepped onto the porch we could see that a man stood at the screen door, watching us. Ken Kimura. We had called from the car rental agency.