Chapter 90 THE KOKUS

Chapter 90 THE KOKUS
Mei POV

Packing takes less time than I expect.

This is partly because most of what I packed at the beginning of the week has been living in a state of semi-deployment across the floor of my room for five days and consolidating it back into the suitcase is mostly a matter of accepting that it is going to close under protest and making peace with that. I sit on the lid and get the zip most of the way around and decide that most of the way is sufficient.

I look at the room.

The water stain rabbit is still on the ceiling.

I look at it for a moment.

For some reason the idea of leaving the rabbit behind is briefly and disproportionately melancholy, which tells me I am more tired than I realized and my emotional calibration is slightly off. I pick up my bag. I take one more look at the room, the unmade bed and the nightstand with the ring of dust where the photograph sat for three days and is now somewhere else, the window with its view of the garden where Emeka and I sat in the last of the afternoon light and he gave me a flower and called me the sister he always wanted.

I close the door.

The lobby is organized chaos.

TFP packs with the efficiency of people who do this regularly but with the additional complexity of a week's worth of festival living on top of the standard investigation kit, Declan's liturgical materials and Sonja's cosmetic infrastructure and the particular volume of Xiao Shen's luggage that caused its own diplomatic incident on the first night.

Ren is already moving equipment to the van with the systematic calm of someone completing a task that has a known endpoint and is simply working toward it. Cal is at the front desk settling the room accounts with the specificity of a man who does not allow financial ambiguity to follow him out of a location.

I set my bag down near the door and look around.

Emeka appears beside me.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Almost," I say, which is true in more than the practical sense.

He smiles the warm uncomplicated smile and I think about the garden and the lily and the word sister and I smile back.

Then the sound hits us.

"WELL, WELL, WELL! LEAVING ALREADY, AND HERE I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT STAY FOREVER!"

Mrs. Koku has appeared from somewhere in the vicinity of the dining room, her arms spread wide and her volume at its standard setting, which is the volume of someone who has decided that the world is adequately sized and her voice should fill it. She surveys the assembled chaos of TFP's departure with the satisfaction of someone reviewing the results of a project she has been managing all week.

"COME HERE, COME HERE, ALL OF YOU!"

Nobody runs, exactly, but nobody exactly declines either, and within about thirty seconds the TFP group has been herded into a rough cluster near the front desk with the specific efficiency of someone who has been managing people for a very long time and has never once found it difficult.

Mrs. Koku looks at all of us in turn.

Her eyes rest on Declan.

"YOU," she says, pointing a finger at him. "YOU ATE FOUR BOWLS EVERY MORNING. THAT IS VERY GOOD. COME BACK ANYTIME."

Declan looks pleased in a way that he is trying not to show.

Her eyes move to Sonja.

A pause.

"YOUR FRIEND DOESN'T LIKE ME," she announces to the room.

Sonja opens her mouth.

"THAT IS FINE," Mrs. Koku continues, unperturbed. "I HAVE BEEN DISLIKED BY BETTER. BUT YOU HAVE GOOD POSTURE AND MY HUSBAND SAYS YOUR HAIR IS VERY NICE AND HE HAS TASTE."

Sonja closes her mouth.

Something happens in her expression that is briefly and genuinely touched before it resettles into composure, and she gives Mrs. Koku a short nod that carries more warmth than most of her interactions have all week.

Emeka receives a handshake with both hands and a declaration that he has the manners of a very good person and should visit again, which he receives with his full warmth and a slight blush.

Xiao Shen receives a formal bow that she returns precisely and with genuine respect, and something passes between them that I cannot entirely read, the specific acknowledgment of two composed people who have spent a week in the same building and have taken the measure of each other.

Ren receives a look that lasts approximately four seconds and then a nod of approval that seems, from Mrs. Koku's expression, to be a significant compliment.

Cal receives a handshake and the words you are very serious but your team likes you so you must be doing something right, delivered at full volume, and Cal receives this with the expression that does not change and a slight inclination of his head that is his version of thank you.

Then Mrs. Koku turns to me.

She looks at me.

I look at her.

She takes both my hands in hers, which are small and warm and considerably stronger than they look, and she holds them for a moment the way she held them on the first night, in the room with the ceremony instructions.

Then she says, at a volume that is noticeably quieter than her usual, which means it is still audible to everyone in the lobby but has the quality of something that is intended for me specifically.

"You are a good girl," she says. "A little strange. But good."

My chest does something.

"Thank you," I say, and I mean it in the complete way.

She pats my hands once and releases them.

Then she looks at the whole group again.

"COME BACK NEXT YEAR FOR THE FESTIVAL," she announces. "JASPER WILL BE HERE. HE IS VERY HANDSOME AND ALSO GOOD WITH FINANCES."

"Mrs. Koku," I say.

"JUST AN OBSERVATION," she says, entirely unrepentant, and shuffles back toward the dining room.

Mr. Koku appears from a back corridor, waves at us all with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told we are leaving and has arrived in time to participate, shouts something about safe travels and cold weather and adequate footwear, and then disappears again before anyone can respond.

I look at Declan.

He looks at me.

We both look at the door that Mrs. Koku just disappeared through.

"I genuinely like them," Declan says.

"I know," I say. "Me too."

Jasper finds me at the van.

I am loading my bag into the back when I hear my name and turn, and he is coming across the inn's small car area with his hands in his pockets and the easy unhurried movement that belongs to someone who has lived in one place long enough to know they are not going anywhere in particular.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," I say.

We stand for a moment in the morning light with the festival grounds visible behind him, the cleanup crew having finished most of their work, the square returning to its ordinary self with the specific efficiency of a town that has done this many times.

"Thanks for everything," I say, and I mean it broadly, the breakfasts and the warmth and the not-quite-proposal that turned out to be exactly the right thing and the lily ceremony and the complete lack of agenda in every single interaction.

"Thanks for staying," he says, which is a simple thing that lands simply.

He reaches into his jacket.

He holds out a lily.

Not a moon lily. A regular one, white and fresh, the kind that has been everywhere all week. He holds it out with the easy uncomplicated way he does most things, not charged with anything except the meaning of the festival they have both just lived through.

"Friendship," he says.

I take it.

"Friendship," I say.

He smiles the full easy smile and I smile back and it is simple and real and exactly what it is, which is two people who found something genuine in the middle of a strange week and are glad they did.

"Come back sometime," he says. "Hollow Crest is better than it looks from the outside."

I think about the theater and the ghost and the mirrors and the stage giving way and the moon lily on the nightstand and the last night and the circle of thirty witnesses.

"I know it is," I say.

He laughs, which is a good sound.

Then Declan is at my elbow telling me we are loading up and Jasper steps back and nods at the group and I follow Declan toward the vehicle with the lily in my hand and I do not look back until I am in the seat and then I look back and Jasper is still standing there, hands in his pockets, and the inn is behind him, and Hollow Crest is around him, and the morning light is on all of it.

I raise the lily.

He raises a hand.

And then Ren starts the engine and the van begins to move and Hollow Crest starts moving past the windows.

I watch the festival square pass, the clean bare stage, the lamp posts without their lanterns for the first time all week, the corner where the old women sat with their needles and their opinions, the side street where the old outdoor theater sits in its overgrown space.

The road out of Hollow Crest takes us past the edge of Chinatown, the early morning of it visible through the windows, the first businesses opening, the familiar smell that is different from Hollow Crest's lily and sawdust smell, and then that too is behind us and we are on the highway heading home.

Upstate New York in the morning, the sky wide and pale blue, the trees going on and on.

I look at the lily in my hand.

I think about everything we are carrying out of this place, not in the bags and the equipment cases but in the other way, the way you carry a week that asked something of you and got it.

The photograph, given away.

The name beneath the name, understood.

The ghost who chose me, trusted.

The lie told to Cal for five days, forgiven or at least acknowledged, which is the beginning of forgiveness.

The moon lily, still unexplained, sitting somewhere in my luggage wrapped in a piece of tissue because I could not bring myself to leave it in the room.

The thing Cal said, waiting for you to tell me.

The thing I do not yet know what to do with.

I look out the window at the highway and the trees and I let it all sit in me without trying to organize it because some things need to be carried a while before they can be understood.

Declan is asleep beside me in less than twenty minutes, his head against the window, his breathing the steady rhythm of someone whose body has decided it is done working and is taking the time.

On my other side Emeka is quiet, looking at his phone with the mild attentiveness of someone doing nothing in particular.

Behind us Sonja has arranged herself in the corner of the back seat with the specific territorial efficiency she applies to everything, and I think I hear her say something to Ren in a low voice, but I cannot hear the content and I decide not to try.

Cal is in the other van with Xiao Shen.

I think about this briefly and then I stop thinking about it because I am tired and the highway is long and the morning is very quiet and the lily from Jasper is warm in my hand.

I close my eyes.

Just for a moment, I tell myself.

Just for a moment.

The motion of the van is steady and the sound of it is low and consistent and I am more tired than I have been all week because last night took everything and the morning asked for more, and I am so tired that the edge of sleep comes up to meet me faster than I expect, and I am already most of the way there when I think about the dream.

The room. The fire. The chair.

Whether tonight there will be another one.

Whether he will come back.

Whether Ethan will finally—

I am asleep.