Storm by Amanda Sun Read Free Book Online Page B

had a chance to live. Steven had walked out after the doctors had warned them that I might never talk or walk as a result of the food poisoning.
    Was Diane... Was she talking to my dad?
    “It’s been a year, Steven. Where were you?” she said. “When Katie needed you, you weren’t there.” A pause. “No, I know you didn’t know, but...Yes, I get that, but...” Diane suddenly appeared from behind the corner, the phone clutched to her ear. I stared back into her wide eyes, both of us surprised to be caught out.
    “I have to go,” Diane said. “I have your number...Yes, I know. Okay.” She clicked the off button as the phone slowly dropped from her ear.
    My mouth was dry, my words thick. “Was that...my dad?”
    “Oh, hon,” Diane said. Her eyes crinkled up, the corners of her plum-lipsticked mouth crumpled in a frown. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to trouble you with it.”
    “What did he want?” I asked. “How did he even find you?”
    “He phoned Nan and Gramps. He got my number from them. He found out about your mom a few weeks ago. He didn’t know you were here with me.”
    “What does it have to do with him, anyway?” I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I meant it. He hadn’t been around for me ever. Him surfacing was like someone suddenly digging into the soil of my life and uprooting me, tipped on my side, exposed. Why now?
    “He’ll be in Japan for a business trip in a couple weeks,” Diane said. “In Tokyo. He wants to see you, but I told him I don’t think that’s for the best.”
    I felt like my heart had crystalized. I thought I didn’t care what happened to him, but I could feel the whisper of it circling through me. I did care. I wanted to know why I hadn’t been worth staying around for.
    It would be no good getting involved with him, that much I knew. He’d destroyed Mom’s life; he’d destroy mine, too.
    “Thanks,” I said, my voice shaky. “I don’t want to see him.”
    Diane nodded. “I thought so.”
    But part of me wanted to ask him why he had run off, and why he wanted back into my life now. And part of me wanted to cling to it, because with him, I wasn’t an orphan anymore. I’d have a parent again. But that was too idealized. It wasn’t going to be some kind of soppy reunion. It would be awkward and painful, and I had more than enough of that going on right now.
    Diane rested a hand on my shoulder and attempted a smile. “I picked up some chestnut cakes from the depaato on the way home. Want to have one?”
    “Yeah,” I said, giving her a fake smile back. She nodded and hurried into the kitchen. I could hear the clink of plates and the fridge door opening, the little cardboard flaps on the cake box popping open. Food as a source of comfort—that was Diane’s specialty. But after today, it sounded like the best idea ever.
    I could bury the idea as soon as it had surfaced. I didn’t need to think about my dad right now; I could forget about it, erase it like it had never happened. If only I’d stayed with Tomo a little longer tonight. I would never have known about my dad being in Japan.
    It didn’t matter, though. Steven could be in the same room as me, and it would feel like the farthest corner of the world, a wall of emptiness between us that couldn’t be scaled.
    I sat down at the table, smelling the sweet cream on the chestnut cake as Diane hurried around the kitchen.
    She was all the family I needed now.
    * * *
    The water was black this time, oceans of ink lapping against the stained shore. There was no orange gateway, no rolling dunes of sand. Instead, the ink waters ebbed against an inlaid stone path that trailed upward, toward a towering jumble of angled rooftops reaching toward the sky. On the distant edge of the black ocean, the ink tipped over in a waterfall that encircled the whole island, the spray sending up a fog of clouds. Were we high up in the sky, or on some cliff? I’d have to wade deep into the waters to look, and I was scared the