Chapter 1
Patrick Walsh waited outside, tired of the cold, of the dark, thinking it through, worried that the key wouldn’t work.
In case it didn’t, he’d brought along a mini cordless drill, three sizes of drill bits, a screwdriver, a pick, and needle-nose pliers packed into a drawstring bag. He’d watched a few online videos on how to ream out a lock.
He keyed in the passcode at the entrance of his Azabu apartment building—it still worked—and rode the elevator to his floor. He kept his head down under a cap and resettled his mask, protection against cameras, as much as against viruses.
He’d almost never met anyone in the hallway and no one was there now. That’s what you paid more for in the middle of Tokyo—few neighbors, silent hallways, extra rooms.
And cleaners. There were always cleaners. The hallways gleamed.
He slipped the key in, held his breath as he twisted, and the deadbolt fell to the side. With the drawstring bag back over his shoulder, he twisted the door handle, stepped in, and toed off his shoes in the genkan.
In the room to the left, his mother-in-law was sprawled in her regular spot on her tatami chair in front of the TV. She kept the TV blaring 24/7, but she was out cold, as usual, stoned on a mix of sleeping pills and glasses of shochu she hid on a shelf above the refrigerator.
He tiptoed over and turned off the TV. Her cosmetic-smeared wrinkles and thinning hair were just the same, but she was a bit pudgier, eating well on the money he sent while she filled Miyuki’s ears with invective against him. She must have smoked inside too, or the smell just oozed out of her.
Patrick turned off the lights in the small tatami room and slid the door shut. She was supposed to be at her weekly mahjong game, but maybe the others had kicked her out for cheating.
After Miyuki’s father died and her mother and multiple TVs moved in, the house resonated with the inane patter and forced laughter of quiz shows, travelogues, comedy routines, and program after program about food. Everything was oishii, sugoi, or yabaii, the exclamations silly and senseless. She demanded the most expensive tatami mats, but filled their home with drivel.
The living room looked smaller than he remembered, but that was because the rooms in Wyoming were so large. For Tokyo, their place was huge for a family of four, plus grandmother. Until Wyoming, it was the largest place he ever lived in. Miyuki had been overwhelmed to silence when they first looked at it. The living room alone was bigger than their entire former apartment in Monzen-Nakacho.
They’d paid for it in cash, so much cash even Miyuki had been startled when they hauled it to the realtor. After they paid, she collapsed weeping in his arms, surprised at how their happy their life had turned out.
Patrick had just started at Nine Dragons and Miyuki had been promoted after her bank merged with two others. They set up savings, investments, even college funds, and still had more than they knew what to do with. But it wasn’t just the money then. It was being together about everything.
The sofa was where they’d curled up every night during her pregnancy, both of them worn out from work, Miyuki doubly tired with the pregnancy. She took leave as late as she could before Jenna arrived, and again, a couple of years later, when Kiri arrived. Miyuki had kept working at the same bank as accounts manager even while taking most of the burden for the girls.
Through it all, their large multisectional sofa served as nursery, game room, study center, work station, bed, table, and, occasionally after the girls went to sleep, the spot for a quick one. He called it “the whale,” as it became piled with games, toys, study books, sports equipment, cats, caged bugs, and work files that Miyuki and Patrick carried home to finish up side-by-side.
After nine months away in Wyoming, those times seemed farther away than ever. Patrick looked down the hallway toward the bedrooms.
The cats came out and eyed him suspiciously, but he was too tired from the long flight to re-friend them. The support group advised staying flexible and flowing, without getting stuck on any one task. Now, all he needed to do was gather the girls and get out of there. The support group advised him on all the details of what to do, since they’d been through it all before.
Behind him, the front door creaked open and a man’s voice echoed into the entryway. “Dare desu-ka? Miyuki? Ano, dareka iru no? Miyuki?”
Patrick tiptoed back to the front wall half-expecting to see Miyuki’s next conquest. Was this the next one? What man would be coming into the apartment?
He waited behind the wall.
The soft thud of shoes being removed and the crinkle of a plastic bag was followed by silence. Patrick knew this was what the support group meant when they said, “Remain flexible.”
A young man, twenty-something, gangly and tall in loose clothes, stepped into the living room. He was carrying a plastic bag weighed down with small cartons.
Patrick stepped out. “Who are you?”
The boy’s handsomely chiseled face looked half Japanese, half Western. His hair was longish and dyed in streaks.
“I’m Taiga…the…the babysitter…” he sputtered, in English. “Who are you?”
If he was the babysitter, why was he calling Miyuki by her first name? He was a decade younger, more, and an employee. Babysitter? Did he mean home tutor? What was he doing here this late?
Instead of asking, Patrick swung the drawstring bag full of tools.
The kid ducked but slipped. His head hit the edge of the sideboard and his body crumpled to the heated flooring.
Patrick waited for him to get up, but he didn’t. A trickle of urine spread from his crotch and blood oozed from below his spiky, streaked hair. That was a bad sign. A very bad sign. He’d swung the tool bag too hard.
Patrick slung the bag over his shoulder and leaned over to pick the scrawny kid up from under his arms and drag him to the tatami room. He slid open the door at the opposite end from where his mother-in-law slept and wrestled him inside as quietly as he could. Blood dribbled out and quickly soaked into the finely woven igusa rush straw of the tatami.
“Remain on task and in motion,” the support group had advised. They had done all the recon for him, after he told them the details of their daily life. They were good at what they did. They found the right time, and helped plan it all. All except the babysitter.
He followed the rest of their advice and pulled out two plastic ties for the boy’s wrists and ankles. He went for towels from the kitchen, set one under his head where it was bleeding and tied the other across his mouth. The wound didn’t look too bad, just a scratch.
He stared at his mother-in-law, stepped back, and slid the door shut. He got some paper towels and wiped the drips of blood from the floor. He rinsed the towels out, threw them away, and washed his hands.
He hurried into Jenna’s room and tears sprang to his eyes. Draped in Disney princess pajamas, her limbs were splayed out in all directions, half in and half out of the covers. She’d grown and her hair was longer.
Beside her, Kiri slept in a fetal ball with her fists on her cheeks. She slept that way when she crawled into bed with Miyuki and him. When he left for Wyoming, he’d told her she had to start sleeping alone. At the time, she’d nodded seriously, but she must have started sleeping with her older sister instead.
Their hair was strewn in long tangles over the menagerie of stuffed animals sleeping beside them. He could smell the warm scent of their bodies and hear the little snuffles of their breathing, soft as waves. Watching them sleep was the most beautiful experience in the world. Now, he’d have them every day, and they’d be safe.
He sat down on the bed and jiggled Jenna’s leg, but Kiri opened her eyes first.
“Daddy? Is that you?” Kiri wrapped her arms around his neck.
Jenna rubbed her eyes, startled, and sat up before burrowing in beside Kiri, pulling on his shirt and hugging him and trying to wake up all at the same time. “Is this a dream?”
“The best one ever.” Patrick held them against his chest, looked at Jenna’s mirror, and choked back tears. “Can you two get up and get dressed?”
“Is it morning?” Jenna asked. Her voice had become a little husky.
“We have a plane to catch. To America. We’re going to ride horses.”
“Horses?” Jenna’s face lit up with excitement.
“Where the wild things are?” Kiri asked.
“No, the wild things are here. We’re going where they aren’t.” Patrick hugged them tight for a minute and then set them loose to fill the fold-out vinyl bags he brought for them. They started snatching up their favorite clothes and dolls, and everything they loved so far in their short lives, everything they couldn’t live without, and put it in the bags.
“Isn’t Mom coming?” Jenna asked.
“Of course she is, but it’s a surprise.”
Jenna and Kiri looked at each other. “Like a surprise party?” Jenna asked.
“Exactly.”
Kiri set one of her dolls back. “Is Taiga coming too?”
“He’s coming later with Mom, if he can get away.”
“And what about school?” Jenna put her clothes into her bag. She seemed very awake. Patrick wasn’t sure if that was good.
“Just a short vacation. Mom will call the school. You’ll be back before you know it.”
“Before I know what?” Kiri asked.
“Before you know where the wild things are.” He checked his watch. They could still make it to the airport, get checked in, and be gone, if they hurried.
Kiri giggled. She was on the borderline of believing in impossible things. But then again, so was he, things like getting away safely.
