The Crane Wife(61)
Author: Patrick Ness

Amanda had already been looking forward to finding ways to fire him within the month, but for now she just sat back in her chair and said, ‘Do you love anyone, Jason?’

He looked surprised for a moment before the smirk returned. ‘Careful there, Miss Duncan. You could have a sexual harassment suit on your hands.’

‘Love, Jason. Not sex. Which depressingly explains so very much about you. And I know you were being sarcastic, but it’s Mrs Laurent. I never officially changed it back.’

He looked impatient now. ‘Will that be all, Mrs Laurent?’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘Because it’s none of your damn business.’

She tapped her lower lip with a pen, an implement Felicity Hartford was trying to ban from the office, ostensibly because all work should have been entirely electronic by now, but really to see how irritated everyone would get. It had been Amanda’s idea. ‘You see, Jason,’ she said, ‘it’s okay to think people are idiots. Because on the whole, they really, really are. But not everyone. And that’s where the mistake is easy to make.’

‘Amanda–’

‘Mrs Laurent. You end up hating so many people that without even noticing, you start to hate everyone. Including yourself. But that’s the trick, you see? The trick that makes everything survivable. You’ve got to love somebody.’

‘Oh, please–’

‘It doesn’t have to be everybody, because that would make you an idiot, too. But it has to be someone.’

‘I really have to–’

‘I, for instance, love my son, my father, my mother, my stepfather, and my ex-husband. Which hurts a little, but there you go. I also loved my father’s fiancée, but she died, and that hurts, too. But that’s the risk of loving anyone.’ She leaned forward. ‘I also love my friends, who at this moment consist entirely of the scariest human resources woman in the history of scary human resources women, and Mei Lo. Now, she’s not much, I’ll give you that, but she’s mine. And if you ever talk that way about her again, I’ll pound your no-doubt-entirely-waxed little ass into the carpet so hard you’ll walk funny for the rest of your life.’

‘You can’t talk to me like–’

‘Just did.’ She smiled. ‘Get out. Go find someone to love.’

He left with an angry sneer. Maybe she wouldn’t fire him. It might be more fun to keep him around and make his life miserable.

Oh, God, she thought. I’m going to be a terrible boss.

But she didn’t stop smiling.

She opened her drawer and took another look at the tile. It moved her, still, with the same fresh strength as the first time, when Kumiko had handed it to her in the park as a most impossible gift.

Kumiko, she thought, and put her hand on her stomach.

Her still flat stomach. Her non-pregnant stomach.

Because of all the important things that could have been discussed, that had been the first thing Kumiko had said to her in the midst of the inferno.

The smoke, when Amanda entered George’s house, was a monster. It was like drowning, if the water you were drowning in was not just boiling hot, but also alive and aggressive and angry, water that wanted to murder you, water that was, in fact, smoke from a raging fire and like nothing but itself.

‘GEORGE!’ she had cried, but didn’t get much past the first G before the coughing took over. Two steps beyond the front door and she was choking, a third and a fourth and she was as good as blind. And now that she was inside the house, she didn’t know what to do. This was all ridiculously heroic, but she was scared out of her mind, not only for her father and Kumiko, but for JP, back there without her. She couldn’t leave him, but she couldn’t leave her father either, not to die like this, not to burn up in agony. The indecision was paralysing and was seconds away from being deadly.

And then the ceiling caved in.

A beam struck her on the head and knocked her to the ground. The world disappeared into blackness.

Some time later, a time which would forever be a hole in her life, she felt a hand take hers to get her to rise. It was gentle but firm, and there was no resisting it. She rose unsteadily, her head hurting, her body covered in soot and smoke but, remarkably, without burns, despite the fire raging around her.

She looked up into Kumiko’s eyes.

They were golden. And sad beyond the birth of the world itself.

Kumiko reached out and touched Amanda’s stomach. ‘You are not,’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’

‘I know,’ Amanda replied, surprised. ‘I took a test.’

The fire and smoke roared, but seemed to do so slowly now, in a way that allowed them this pocket within the maelstrom.

‘You thought it would give you a connection,’ Kumiko said.

‘I did,’ Amanda said, simply, sadly. ‘I really did.’

‘You already have connections. So many.’

‘Not so many.’

‘But enough.’

Kumiko turned to the body on the floor. Amanda looked with her, knowing who it was, who it must be, but feeling for a moment that it was maybe not so important. The fire still raged but was receding somehow, blurring into a slow smear.

Kumiko reached a finger over to Amanda’s chest and drew a line down the jumper she’d thrown on. The fabric parted, as did Amanda’s skin and tissue beneath it. Her heart was exposed to the light.

It was no longer beating.

‘Oh,’ Amanda said. ‘Damn.’

Kumiko didn’t respond, just reached in and grasped it, holding it in her palm.

‘This is a ritual of forgiveness,’ she said, closing her fingers over Amanda’s heart. A light came from behind them, and when she opened her hand again the heart was gone. ‘And so is this.’ Kumiko made the same line on her own chest, her flesh opening to reveal her beating, shining, golden heart. She reached in and removed it, bringing it slowly towards the darkened opening on Amanda’s chest.

Amanda caught her by the wrist. ‘I can’t. You can’t.’

‘And yet we will. Take my heart. Forgive it. By doing so, you forgive us both. And there is nothing more that either of us needs.’

She moved her hand again, Amanda no longer resisting. Kumiko placed her heart in Amanda’s chest, its golden light shining even through the scar as Kumiko closed the wound.

‘But you,’ Amanda said, looking into Kumiko’s eyes.

‘It is done,’ Kumiko said. ‘At last. I am free.’