Part Four: A Secret Discovered
Chapter Six: Perfect sense – part one
The door to Kari's bedroom clicked shut and it felt to Tai like a metaphorical one had just closed on part of his life... a part that felt agonising to give up, but one he knew he had to. If his sister was in a bad place now, it would be nothing compared to how far she might fall should he selfishly try to purse their relationship and it go south. He let out a longing sigh. It was better this way. While he could not bring himself to regret what they had done, for it had been something magical, they had chosen to end it. And it would be better for Kari if it stayed that way. Crossing the short distance to his own room, he gripped the handle and turned it. Perhaps his mother was right. Maybe he was nothing but a bad influence on his sister. He opened the door and stepped inside. Only for his eyes to widen and mouth to fall open.
"Have a seat, Tai."
His mom sat on his bed, her gaze locked upon him. How long had she been sitting here? Had she actually been eavesdropping at Kari's door? Mind racing he quickly tried to think of anything said between himself and his sister that might have hinted at their relationship. He found nothing. Not even the brief kiss they had shared could have made enough noise to be discernible from outside the bedroom. So what did she want? Crossing the threshold, Tai slowly closed the door, his eyes fixed on his mom and the spot on the bed beside her, which she indicated with her hand.
"Hi, Mom," he replied with slight awkwardness as he sat down. This felt weird. Heart to heart conversations were not something they did.
Tai studied his mother's expression. Gone was the pre-nuclear anger that had smeared it throughout dinner and in its place a mix of worry and… fear. Save for the Digimon incidents, he could only recall one instance of seeing his mother look afraid; the time when he had almost killed Kari.
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air between them for a moment before his mom spoke. It seemed that she too found this situation... uncomfortable. "Tai," she began before pausing, the difficulty of her next words clearly apparent, "Tai… I owe you an apology."
A stunned expression covered his face as he listened. Whatever he had expected her to say, that had not been it. What on earth could his mother, of all people, have to apologise for? For it was not exactly in her nature to do so. At least not when it came to him. While they had a perfectly cordial and somewhat happy relationship, most of the time, there were occasional moments where he could feel a sort of distance between them. His mind thought back to the last time. It had been in the wake of Kari getting her hair dyed and lasted over a week. However, it was Kari's suggestion that his mom had never managed to completely forgive him for the time he had almost killed her that stuck in his mind.
After a few moments and not really sure what to say, he replied, "what for?"
His mom looked awkward and again, with difficulty, answered, "for how I acted when I saw what Kari had done to her hair."
This proved to be another shock to the system. "Mom, that happened two months ago," Tai said in confusion. "Why are you apologising for it now?" It certainly was belated.
"Because you were right and I was wrong," she almost yelled, her calm demeanour slipping for a moment. That must have been a difficult admission. His mom took a steadying breath. "Sorry, Tai. It's not your fault." She looked away before adding, "it's not easy for a mother to admit that someone else knows their daughter better than they do."
The silence that followed her words was so deafening that you could have heard a spider scuttle across the floor. Had his mother just openly admitted that he knew Kari better than she did?
"Mom…" he said softly his gaze fixed upon the corner of her eye that he could see.
"I don't know what to do, Tai," the woman's voice cracked slightly as she spoke. "Every time I try to talk to your sister, I feel like she slips even further away from me. She kept saying she was fine and even though I knew something was wrong, nothing I said could get her to open up to me. Then tonight, I got so angry with myself for being unable to reach her, that I lashed out at her."
Tai had absolutely no idea what to say. Here was his mother, a strong woman who became this formidable force when incensed, confiding her fears and worries about her daughter in him. They were in completely uncharted territory now. Tentatively he reached out a hand and touched her own. From his recent experiences with Kari and Sora, he knew that physical contact often helped to calm a person… or make them breakdown into floods of tears. He could only hope his mother did not go that route. "She's just going through a rough patch at the moment," he eventually said, feeling a slight pang of guilt for telling a heavily abridged version of the truth. "She'll get through it eventually." He struggled to put much conviction into those last words.
His mother turned to look at him and he could see the first signs of tears that she was desperately trying to hold back. "Tai, when she came home tonight, she said she'd tried to throw herself in the river. Only for someone to stop her before she fell in."
Tai's mouth fell open in horror as his mother's words hit him like a punch to the gut. Having had his earbuds in, he had missed the argument between mother and daughter before dinner. And Kari had said nothing about it during their brief conversation. Was it true? Had she really tried to commit suicide? If so, the situation had just become far worse than he had imagined.
When he failed to muster any sort of response, his mom then said, "Tai, I need you to talk to me. You know something about what's wrong with your sister and you have to tell me..." his mother sounded almost desperate as she spoke. Then, in an almost pleading voice that he had never heard her use before, she uttered, "...please."
Crap, Tai moaned internally. How had he found himself in this impossible position? He could not possibly tell his mother the truth, but here she was, almost begging him to tell her what he knew about Kari's troubles. He looked into chocolate eyes, the same colour as his but with the shape of Kari's. It was clear to see just how much this situation pained her. And he found that he could neither lie to her or refuse her an answer. What could he do? He turned away to stare at the opposite wall, his brain working overtime as he tried to come up with a solution.
"Tai, please," his mother repeated softly. "I know Kari probably told you not to tell anyone, but this is serious. She needs help, Tai."
She was right, he realised. His sister needed help, but for once he could not be the one to provide it. But his mom would not be able to do it if all she had were whatever lies he could spin. She needed the truth and he was going to give it to her, except for one minor detail. "I don't know when exactly, but a couple of months ago, she started dating someone," he began, tweaking the timeline slightly so it lined up with when she got her new hairdo.
"She never told me that she had a boyfriend," his mom said with a hint of scepticism.
"She didn't tell me either," Tai asserted. "In fact, she didn't tell anyone. I only found out because I saw them together from distance and asked her about it. After she told me, she swore me to secrecy."
"Why did she keep it a secret? Is he a delinquent?" she asked sharply.
"He's not a delinquent, though not that it matters anymore. And I think she kept it a secret because she was scared.
His mother looked at him suspiciously. "If he was not a delinquent, why would she be scared to tell me?"
Tai sighed lightly. This was the part of his story that he would need to fabricate based on his sister's history. "Kari got hurt in the fallout of her breakup with TK. Then made a huge mistake in going out with Davis so soon afterwards." He paused to allow his words to sink in. All this was true, meaning he only needed to make a plausible extrapolation from these events. "The whole affair left her feeling burned and I think she's been really scared of opening up to anyone since. Hence why she's not had a boyfriend since she broke up with Davis."
"Until now."
"Yeah… until now. I don't know the details, so please don't ask me for them. Kari didn't want to talk about him beyond confirming that she had been seeing him. Hell, she wouldn't even tell me his name."
His mom looked quizzically at him but said nothing.
"I think she was trying to keep it casual, which included not telling people about it because she was scared about it becoming serious in case she got hurt again." As he spoke, Tai started to become increasingly impressed at how much of the truth could be given a slight twist in order for it to fit the idea that Kari's boyfriend had been someone other than him. "Unfortunately, it quickly did…"
"How serious?" his mother asked with a slight edge and he knew exactly what she was implying.
"She didn't sleep with him," Tai replied firmly, images from the intimate moments he and his sister had shared floating through his mind. He brushed them aside for now. At some point, he knew he would turn to them for some small comfort, even if they would remind him of exactly what he had given up. "However, she was in love with him. And I don't mean your average teenage romance love either." He had to turn back and face the wall to avoid her seeing the sadness that he desperately tried to keep from his own eyes. "When I eventually got the truth out of her, she told me that she had fallen for him two years ago. And that actually being with him had only deepened her feelings." This last part he felt it necessary to tell, otherwise his mom might raise an eyebrow at how Kari could have fallen so deeply in love with someone in just over two months.
"What happened?" his mother asked, still with the edge to her tone. However, Tai knew that it was now the sort you would associate with a mother wolf trying to protect her cub.
"They had to end it and it broke Kari's heart. His too if she was being honest with me." Saying it out loud to someone, even if they were oblivious to the whole truth, hurt Tai deep inside and he struggled to maintain his composure. He took a few slow breaths in order to steady himself. If he broke down when talking about his sister's relationship breakup, it would arouse far too much suspicion.
Tai chanced a glance at his mother and he could see the mixture of shock and hurt on her face. Shock, at the fact something so big had occurred in her daughter's life without her knowledge. And hurt, because she could empathise with Kari's pain as though it were her own. However, there was something else… a sense of failure. She thought she had failed as a mother. He could not help but feel guilty. His mother had become the collateral damage of his incestuous relationship with his sister. The thought of how she might feel if she knew the whole truth chilled him to the bone. Just another reason why ending things between himself and Kari had been the right thing to do.
A few moments passed in a chilly silence before his mother composed herself enough to say, "why did they break up?"
"I don't know," Tai said flatly. Electing to leave the details up to his sister; it would make things easier for her if she had less to remember. "Kari didn't want to talk about it. In fact, I'm lucky she even told me this much."
His mom raised a hand to shield her eyes, shook her head and sighed. "Thank you, Tai," she said softly, her voice carrying an undertone that told him that her battle had only just begun. Then, much to his surprise, she reached out and gave him a hug. "You're doing so well, Son, and no matter what the outcome of your admissions test, I'm proud of you."
"Thanks, Mom," he replied as she let go and stood up. His mother took a few steps towards the door and just as she was about to reach for the handle, a thought struck him like a jolt from the mains socket. "Mom," he said quickly.
The woman's hand froze and she turned back to look at him. "Yes, Tai?"
"Can you maybe wait a little while before you go talk to Kari? I think she could really use a little bit of space and time to calm down just now." In normal circumstances, he would expect his request to be ignored. However, given his mother's earlier admission, he hoped she would agree. Otherwise, he would be unable to warn his sister that their mother was coming and that he'd had to semi-fabricate a story to explain her current state of unhappiness.
A few seconds of agonising silence passed and he could see his mom internally wrestling with the suggestion. Eventually, just as a few beads of sweat had begun to form on the back of his neck, she replied, "ok, I'll give her an hour. Hopefully, I can get her to talk to me this time."
Tai nodded his thanks and watched her go. When the door closed behind her, he let out a breath he had not realised he'd been holding. He too hoped that Kari would talk to her. His sister needed someone to be there for her and this time it could not be him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and started composing a message to his sister.
"Ok, so mom just interrogated me about what's wrong with you and I had to tell her something. I'm really, really sorry, but I had no choice. She knows something serious is bothering you and it's cutting her up inside that you won't talk to her. I told her that you had been dating someone that you'd fallen for two years ago and that it broke your heart when you had to break up with him. I gave her no details other than that. She's going to come talk to you in an hour. I'm really sorry, Sis."
He hit the send button and crossed his fingers that Kari would check her phone. Rising from the bed, Tai walked over to his desk and looked down at the physics textbook that sat open on the wooden surface. There was no way he would be able to get back into the mindset required to study tonight. Shaking his head, he gently closed the textbook and his notepad. He would need to try and make up the time at the weekend. Picking up his earbuds, he popped them into his ears and flicked through the albums on his music player until he found Space Ritual. He seriously needed something to take his mind off-world and Hawkwind would do just that. Returning to his bed, he lay down and stared up at the ceiling as the album kicked into gear.
After almost fifty minutes and with no reply from his sister, Tai was starting to get worried. Surely Kari would have sent a reply, even if she was seriously pissed off with him. If she had not seen his message, it could cause her serious problems when their mom went to talk to her. Either that or the woman would think he had lied to her and give him a rollicking. Pulling out his phone, he sent her another message. "Ok, I know you're probably mad at me, but please let me know if you got my last message."
No reply. The minutes ticked away and Tai quickly reasoned he only had two options; phone Kari and hope she answered or physically go to her room. The latter would be a bad idea. If their mom caught him doing so, she might immediately become suspicious about whether or not he had told her the truth. No, there was only one possible solution. Scrolling to Kari's name on his phone, he hit dial and waited with bated breath. It rang out; shit. Feeling a slight panic set in, he hurriedly tried again. Come on, Kari, he whispered to himself as he listened to the ringer.
Barely seconds before her voicemail kicked in, he heard his sister's voice say, "Tai?"
"Kari," he breathed in relief, before quickly dispensing with the pleasantries, "Kari, did you get the text I sent you about an hour ago?" He kept his voice low so as to try and prevent it from travelling out with the walls of his bedroom.
"No," she replied, sounding slightly confused. "Tai, what's…"
He cut her off, "I don't have time to explain and I don't want to say it over the phone, just in case Mom overhears. You need to read that message now before she comes to talk to you. If you have any questions, text me."
"Ok…" Kari said, her confusion having kicked up a few notches. "Tai, what's going on?"
"Kari, I'm really sorry, but I didn't have a choice. Just read the message, " he said sombrely, knowing that his sister might well soon hate him. "I going to hang up now, just know that I'm sorry."
Tai hung up the phone, feeling like he had just hammered the final nail into the coffin that contained their forbidden relationship. Popping his earbuds back into his ears, he hit play on his music player. Wanting nothing more than to forget the entire evening had ever happened.