Riki steals another glance at Sana, surprised. He doesn’t know much about investigative reporting or true crime podcasting, but what he does know is that they tend to get a bad rep for poking around sensitive spaces and brashly ignoring the need for privacy. He’s impressed that despite Sana’s need for information, she’s so respectful of Julia’s privacy. Surely that’s very rare.
Unless . . .
The little voice in his head whispers, Unless Sana is hiding something too, just like you.
Riki almost snorts out loud at that. Ridiculous. His stupid mind is grasping at straws, clutching at anything or anyone that might take the spotlight away from himself. And yet.
And yet he can’t stop his mind from barreling backward and studying everything that Sana has said. He thinks back to that first morning he went to Vera’s teahouse, just mere days after Marshall’s death. With a start, he recalls now that he bumped into a girl on his way out. He was so spooked by Vera at the time that he didn’t give the girl a second thought. But now, walking down the street with Sana, he looks at her, and the sunlight, streaming at just the right angle, low against the steep San Franciscan hills, hits her just so, turning the edges of her skin and hair golden, making her deep brown eyes a honey shade. She looks so beautiful. And also undoubtedly like the girl he bumped into outside of Vera’s teahouse that morning.
Something turns inside Riki’s chest, something sharp and ugly and full of fear. Who is Sana? What does she know? He thinks back to how Vera insisted that one of them is Marshall’s killer. He dismissed Vera’s ridiculous accusations because that seems to be the sensible thing to do when it comes to Vera, but now he has no idea what to think. He goes over what to say to Sana, and now he’s no longer nervous because she’s so attractive, but nervous because he has no idea what her connection is to Marshall, but there must be a connection there, and when it comes to Marshall, chances are, it’s not going to be anything good. Careful, Riki.
“So, ah,” he begins, taking painstaking care to keep his voice casual, “what did you say the name of your podcast was?”
Sana glances up at him, and he realizes he’s completely failed to sound relaxed. It’s clearly not an innocent, throwaway question, but a loaded one. Oh crap, what does he do now? He needs to think of something quick.
But even as Riki quietly panics, his phone buzzes with a text message. He grabs it, practically yelping out loud with relief. “It’s Vera!”
Sana raises her eyebrows, her eyes still wary. “What did she say?”
Riki swallows before reading the message out loud. “She says ‘Stupid case is over. Marshall die from allergy attack to duck. You are no longer suspect, but you should still come by for tea.’ ”
Sana’s phone beeps and she takes it out of her bag. She reads the message and laughs. “I got the same exact message from Vera. I think she just copied and pasted.”
Relief and confusion surge through Riki’s entire being. Wait, what just happened? Marshall died from an allergic reaction? To a duck? What?
“So that was weird, huh?” Sana says. Her voice is slightly shaky. “A duck. Huh.”
Riki nods slowly, his head spinning. So he was worried about Sana for no reason? But when he looks down at her again and their eyes meet once more, he can see the walls clapping back into place behind her eyes. Her chin lifts, her jaw squaring, and she says, “Oh yeah, my podcast. I’ll tell you if you tell me where your office is. Was it Buzzfeed you said you work at?”
Cold crawls down Riki’s spine. No, despite the strange but seemingly innocent way Marshall died, there is something that Sana is definitely hiding. And maybe, worse than that, she knows about him and Marshall. Riki’s throat is so dry that he coughs a little before he speaks. “It’s cool,” he says, trying to emphasize with each word that he’s on the retreat, that she doesn’t have to worry about him, “I just remembered that my friend recommended another podcast to me, so I won’t have a chance to listen to yours for a while yet.”
Sana’s chest expands as she inhales deeply, her eyes softening. Message received. As long as Riki minds his own business, Sana will mind hers. He can just about live with that.
SIXTEEN
SANA
Sana knows the bitter taste of unfulfilled expectations very well. After all, it’s basically what she is, isn’t it? She sees it in the mirror every morning, smells it in her hair, her natural musk, sees it on her skin like a stain that refuses to be scrubbed away. She wears it on her entire body; it’s become such a huge part of her identity she doesn’t quite know who she is without it.
Now, as she stares at the big and overwhelmingly huge blank canvas in front of her, the heaviness of all that unfulfilled expectation smothers her. It crushes her under its weight and fills her throat and her nostrils and chokes her entire body. She looks down, paint palette in one hand and brush in the other, both hands frozen, the brush hovering just inches from the pristine canvas.
“Just fucking draw, damn it,” Sana hisses at her hand, but still it won’t move. Her teeth are gritted. She feels a trail of sweat rolling down her temple, past her cheekbone, tickling like an ant, and she shudders, wipes it off with her arm. Just one brushstroke, she tells herself, if you do just one, the rest will come easily.
It has always been this way from as early as she can remember. Her parents told everyone who would listen that Sana learned to paint before she could walk, or even stand. There are countless photos and videos of chubby little baby Sana on her hands and knees, dipping her hands into puddles of paint and smearing them across drawing paper, an expression of intense concentration on her face. At every family gathering, her mom would brandish these photos on her phone at their relatives and do that deep-throated laugh of hers that goes: Oh ho ho, but like a middle-aged woman in a Japanese anime instead of Santa Claus.
“Oh ho ho!” she’d say. “Oh, my Sana has taken after me. So creative, isn’t she? She’ll be an artist, you’ll see. No, not a writer, oh, publishing is so volatile, no, I wouldn’t want her to be a writer. She can follow her own path, of course, but just look at her, she’s got that je ne sais quoi, doesn’t she? An artist from birth.” She’d give a pointed pause and say, “Of course, if she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer I shan’t stop her, but let’s face it, art runs in our family.” This latter part would be said very meaningfully, with a little sweep of her long-lashed eyes, to drive home what a uniquely open-minded mother she is, especially within the Asian community, which is well-known for driving their children to study medicine or law or business. Who’s ever heard of an Asian parent wanting their offspring to pursue art? She’d remind Sana of this every chance she got.
“You’re so fortunate, my dear. You can do anything you want, anything at all! I’m not stuck in the old ways. If you don’t like science? Who cares? Not good at math? Why, I myself failed elementary math, and look where I am now.” A multimillionaire whose books are basically a household name. She was so proud of not having the stereotypical Asian expectations of Sana, of telling everyone that Sana is a natural artist and that she’s so proud of her artist daughter. When Sana got into CalArts, her mother threw her a huge bash at the Fairmont, renting out the ballroom to fit three hundred of her relatives and friends.