When You Were Here

walked away.
    Laini left for college two months later, and we barely saw her again, even after my mom got sick a year later. That’s why it’s so strange to me that Laini would have visited my mom in Tokyo. So I keep calling Laini until she breaks her Monday-Thursday rule and picks up.
    “Why didn’t you tell me you came to see Mom?”
    “Why would I have?”
    “Because you never once came home after you left for school. But you came here .”
    “Because there were things I wanted to tell her.”
    “Like what?”
    “Jesus, Danny. Does it ever occur to you to just say hello? To start a conversation like a normal, pleasant person?”
    “Oh, sorry. Right. I’m the one who vacated the family, so yeah, I’m the one you should be berating.”
    She stops, and the silence startles me. We are so good at this, at the cruel back-and-forth. Laini and I have done sarcasm and bitterness, cordiality and fakery, extraordinarily well for years. What we don’t do is real . “I thought I had reasons,” she says softly.
    “For distancing yourself?”
    “Yes. I thought I had reasons,” she repeats. “I was wrong.”
    “About what?” I ask carefully. I’m thrown off by her change in tone, by the thawing of the polar ice caps.
    “This is a conversation we should have in person.”
    “Laini, I’m not flying to China to meet you.”
    “You don’t have to. I’m in Kyoto for the weekend with my boyfriend. He’s here for research for his dissertation. Can you come meet me here?”

    I catch the first train to Kyoto in the morning. It’s Saturday now, and the train is filled with families, with fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, and all I can think is this might have been the very train my father took on his last trip.
    The same train, the same car, maybe even the same seat.
    I switch to an empty seat across the aisle, just in case. I push my earbuds into my ears and zone out to music, letting the songs drown me for a while. I swipe my finger across my phone to switch to a new band, and like someone just jumped out of the closet to shout “Surprise!” there’s a text from Holland staring up at me. The first time I’ve heard from her since I kicked her out of my house nearly a week ago.
    How is Tokyo? We miss you here.
    Even as I think about my family, about the way we all splintered, Holland is still the real shard in my hand, and I can’t bring myself to take it out. I want to shut her out. I want to find the strength to ignore her forever and just let go of the piece of my wasted, ragged, worn-out heart that she irretrievably owns. But my instinct to reach out to her,to talk to her, to hold her tight, is too strong. It overpowers any ability I have to save myself.
    As we wind south through Japan to the city where my sister waits for me, I give in. I’m on a train now to Kyoto.
    Seconds later she writes: I love trains. They are so…
    I know what she wants to say. They are so romantic . Trains make you think of movies and novels and rain. Trains are the last few hours before you’re ripped from the one you love. Trains are all the ways you miss each other—wrong train, wrong tracks, wrong time.
    I know what you mean. I send before I think about it, before I contemplate the sheer stupidity of letting her back in with a bit of banter, because her words on my screen are a purr, sexy and inviting.
    The towns speeding past the windows…
    Why am I doing this? Because it feels so good to talk like we used to, even though I know this is just a shadow of what we had. But I chase it anyway. The rattling of the cars on the tracks…
    I close my eyes and imagine everyone on this train has disappeared and it’s just Holland and me. We ride the train as far as it goes, into the night, an endless night with her.
    Another text comes in from her. Can I call you later? I want to talk to you.
    My phone is a pill, it’s a sweet, seductive pill that’ll trick me into thinking she’s what I need, when she can’t possibly be what I need. I stuff the phone into the bottom of my backpack.
    A red sign flashes above the train doors. First, Japanese writing I can’t read. Then in English: WE WILL SOON MAKE A BRIEF STOP AT KYOTO. The train lets me out at Kyoto Station, and it’s a sleek, metal, modern spaceship. Soon I’m escaping the crowds and the streets jam-packed with tourists who snap photos. I haven’t been to Kyoto in several years, but I studied the map last night, and now I find my way