Prologue

PROLOGUE

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

Xavier

A finch chirped somewhere nearby. It was a proud chirp, loud enough to channel through the crisp February breeze and announce the bird’s presence over the polluted noise of buses, vagrants, and pedestrians hurrying their way down South End. Right in the middle of Croydon, on the roof of my mother’s flat and above our restaurant on the street, a bloody bird was the loudest thing around.

I took a pull on the cigarette I’d pinched from Emmanuel, the dishwasher, then turned to glare at the bird. It hopped toward me along the rooftop ledge, looking for crumbs, maybe, or seeds like Mrs. Abbott sometimes left on her window next door. Its beak opened again, and out came a song audacious enough to match its orange plumage, the only bright thing in this godforsaken corner of London with its crumbling bricks, deserted storefronts, and tagged signs.

How fucking dare that bird, today of all days?

“Fuck off,” I ordered it, and then, as if to emphasize the point, I stubbed out the cigarette a few inches from the finch and rose to my feet, pinched in the too-tight shoes Mum had bought me last year for a school performance. My feet were so big then she’d had to order them special, save up a month’s wages from selling bentos to the Japanese school downtown. Now my feet were almost a size fourteen.

But who would find me shoes now?

The finch chirped again, took another daring hop, then chirped once more, proud as can be. Cheeky bugger. Couldn’t it recognize a brush-off when it saw one?

“I said, fuck off,” I told it. “No one wants to hear your silly song this morning. We’re busy.”

“Well, I hope you’ve got better manners for the rest of us.”

The bird flew off, and I turned to find Elsie Crew standing at the rooftop entrance, tapping her black patent leather shoe and beckoning me with a gloved hand. She looked as prim as ever in her typical skirt and buttoned jumper. Only this time, everything was in black. And Elsie never wore black.

But we all were today.

“Your relatives are asking for you, boy. I can’t understand a word they say, but I think the one who’s your granddad wants to talk.”

I sighed but obediently rose. Not my style, I know, but I owed her respect, at least. Elsie was Mum’s best friend. Her only friend, really, since it’s hard to make many when you’re dividing your time between raising a kid and running a restaurant. They’d met when Mum first started the izakaya, just after I was born. Elsie was volunteering at the library, and Mum needed to work on her English after she had to drop out of university to have me. She took Elsie’s class, and then Elsie started coming round the restaurant until she eventually started working there too, managing the books when Mum didn’t have the time.

Now we were both out of a job. And out of one Masumi Sato.

Elsie had been taking care of things over the past week. Okay, she’d been taking care of me. Not hovering the way the rest of them did, but really useful things like Mum used to do. Changing bedding or Hoovering the floors. Things I never learned because I was too lazy or stubborn. A bad son.

I’d learn them all now, though. I’d learn every fucking one and wear an apron to boot if it would bring Mum back.

“I’m coming,” I told Elsie, suddenly unable to contemplate what that meant to either of us. A world without Mum. Fuck. It hurt so fucking much.

“Wait, boy.”

I turned to find Elsie extracting a mint and a can of air freshener from her bag. She offered the mint, which I took without argument, and then proceeded to douse me with the spray.

“Elsie!” I protested, waving my hand through the scent. “Christ, I didn’t ask to smell like a fucking rose garden.”

“Watch your mouth,” she said, as always, without a pause. “And it’s better than smelling like a pub, I daresay. You’ve still got relatives to care for down there, and they’ll want answers without thinking Masumi’s son is no better than a common street urchin.”

“Maybe I am a street urchin.” I waved away the spray, though some of it did land on me. Great. I smelled like a bloody flower shop.

“You’re too tall for that,” she countered with another stealthy spray. “You can’t pickpocket when you stand a foot above most people on the street. No way to blend in. Especially with those eyes and that smile.”

I just scowled.

Elsie’s face softened, and it was then I noticed the small lines around her gray eyes and pursed lips had deepened over the last week. “I know it’s hard today, but don’t forget to smile,” she said and reached up to tuck a bit of my black hair out of my face. “Your mother did love it so.”

She turned and dabbed a finger in the corner of her shining eyes. I sighed. I wasn’t the only one struggling in the wake of Mum’s death.

“What about you, Els?” I asked her. “What will you do now?”

She turned back to me and straightened her shoulders. “Take care of you, that’s what. I told Masumi I would, and I plan to keep my word. Don’t you worry.”

I snorted. “When would you have told her that? Before or after the car hit her?”

A jerk on my tie forced me to look down again. Elsie was a little thing, but she was strong.

“Xavier Sato Parker,” Elsie enunciated clearly, using all three of my given names, even the last one I hated. “If you think there is any chance your blessed mother would leave you in this world alone and penniless without a single person to care for you, my boy, you’ve got another thing coming. You will absolutely finish your studies, and you will do your very best. You were the center of your dear mum’s world, and the only thing she ever wanted was for you to make something of yourself, more than she could. So I am not going anywhere.”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut, feeling a bit like an awkward crocodile. “W-what—how?”

Elsie sighed, looking a bit resigned. “I didn’t want you to worry about it all just yet. When I started helping Masumi with the accounting, she insisted we set up a separate trust for you. It’s not very big, but it’s enough to give you something, my love. Enough to hold off a disaster.”

She told me how much was in the account, and not for the first time, I thanked my ancestors that Elsie had taught Mum English all those years ago. It wasn’t a fortune by any means, but it was enough to pay Emmanuel and keep the lights on until I took my A-levels and figured out what to do with the place. It was enough to keep my home.

“Ch-Christ on a bike, Els,” I croaked. It was all I could manage. “I didn’t know.”

The hand on my tie reached up to stroke my face again. It was hard not to cry. That’s exactly what Mum did the last time I saw her. Right before she went out for groceries and never came back.

“You weren’t meant to, sweetheart,” Elsie said kindly. “Now come on. Time to return to reality. Can’t sit up here squawking at the birds forever.”

As if in agreement, the finch gave a loud chirp from the other end of the roof, then flew off into the gray.

I followed Elsie down the flight of stairs and through the landing into the living room with its secondhand furniture and cracked tile. I tried to get it as neat as I could without Mum’s help, but of course, Elsie came in with a cart of cleaning sprays to finish the job. I was glad she did. This morning, the place had been packed with neighbors. Now, though, only a few well-wishers remained.

Emmanuel was busy cleaning the kitchen, despite the fact that he wasn’t getting paid for it today. He nodded with a wink, as if to say, Don’t worry, I got this.

I turned to the small sitting room with the old, flowered sofa Mum and I had dragged up here from the curb when I was ten and the furniture she thrifted from the local Oxfam when I was a baby. The only people left were my grandfather, Kiyoshi, and my uncle Ichiro, both of whom had flown all the way from Japan. They stood together near the table I’d used as a buffet, eyeing what was left of the food like they thought it might be poisoned.

As I approached, I offered a slight bow, palms pressed together, just like Mum taught me.

“ Gomen-nasai, Ojiisan, Oji,” I said in my limited Japanese. “Just needed a bit of air. Elsie said you needed something?”

My grandfather nodded with the same tired, bewildered expression he’d worn since walking into his estranged daughter’s home for the first time two days ago. I’d only met the man once before, during a week-long trip to Okazaki three years earlier. To say it was disappointing would be a massive understatement. After being branded a foreigner and a bastard here in England my entire life, I’d hoped for a bit more of a homecoming. But at thirteen, I was lanky and overgrown, already topping six feet with a face full of acne and teeth we couldn’t afford to straighten yet. My height and blue eyes already made me different—then I opened my mouth, and my stunted Japanese, learned from my mother in her few off hours and the Saturday school I practically slept through, earned only snickers and disgust.

Kiyoshi muttered something to my uncle, his default interpreter, once he realized my Japanese wasn’t great. Ichiro turned to me with a mild scowl, which seemed to be his permanent expression.

“My father, he want to know when we will go…” He frowned harder, waving his hand around like he was batting away a fly. “Put the ashes.”

“Put the…” After a second, his meaning occurred to me. “Oh, you mean spread them?”

“No, put,” Ichiro snapped. “In the temple. Where it is?”

I swallowed. “Ah…the temple?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten grief for cocking things up. Both my grandfather and my uncle had been horrified when they’d discovered I’d had Mum cremated days before they arrived instead of waiting for them. Well, it wasn’t like it had ever occurred to Masumi to educate her son about the intricacies of a Japanese funeral. Ojiisan was still a relatively young man, and Mum wasn’t exactly planning to die at thirty-six, was she? How was I supposed to know they wanted to sit in the crematorium while she turned to ash, then pass her bones around with chopsticks? At sixteen, how was I supposed to know how to do any of this?

Especially without her?

My grandfather laid a hand on Ichiro’s arm and murmured something in his ear.

Ichiro turned back to me impatiently. “My father wants to know if you have a box for the ashes for us to take. Yes?”

I swallowed. Shit. “Ah, no.”

“No?” Ichiro repeated like he was parroting an idiot bird.

“Mum didn’t want that,” I said. “In her will, that’s what she said.” At least she had that. “She does want to go home. But she asked that I bring her back to Okazaki so she could rest in the river.”

With every word, a fist seemed to close itself around my heart. I didn’t want to talk about this. Fuck, I didn’t even want to be here. I was just a sixteen-year-old kid, for fuck’s sake. I should have been at the park kicking the shit out of a football. Maybe getting stoned in Jagger’s attic or trying to score with the girls at Croydon High. Literally anywhere but in this room, talking about this subject with these people who so clearly hated me.

My uncle’s face turned red, and he looked like he wanted to punch me, but he dutifully turned to his father and translated. Instead of mirroring his son’s rage, though, Kiyoshi, a slight man with hunched shoulders bent by years of work, appeared thoughtful and eventually nodded.

“ Hai ,” he agreed before making a fluid response I couldn’t for the life of me understand.

Ichiro looked like he wanted to argue, but he turned back to me. “My father says this is acceptable. We will take my sister’s remains with us tomorrow when we return.”

The fist around my heart tightened. “What? No.”

Ichiro’s eyes narrowed. “No?”

I shook my head. Why was it so hard to talk at moments like these? “I—no.” I cleared my throat. “I want to bring her.”

Immediately, my uncle shook his head. “We are her family, and we go home. You—who knows if you can?—”

“No,” I interrupted, clearly shocking him with my rudeness. I knew enough to understand that in Japan, my insolence would have never been tolerated. Well, too bad, Oji. You’re just going to have to deal. “Mum wanted me to finish school, and I know she would want me to be the one to bring her home. I can come at the end of term, to have some time to save for the trip, but not before. That’s all.”

With another sharp scowl, my uncle translated my reply. Kiyoshi just looked at me for a long time while Ichiro muttered something to himself that I would have bet was the equivalent of “this sodding idiot.”

Unable to help myself, I rose to the challenge. “What’s that, Oji?”

“I say,” Ichiro snapped, “this food is wrong. We should have fish.”

I glanced at the table, with its picked-over menu I’d prepared that morning with Emmanuel. All Mum’s favorites, ones that had earned us a fair number of regular customers and reviews in the local papers over the years. They were her legacy, really. The only thing she left behind other than my sorry self. I wasn’t going to let this arsehole shame that.

“I made them in her honor,” I told him. “I know it’s not fish, but perhaps you’d like to try the inari? That’s the closest to sushi we’ve got.”

I picked up a tray of rice-filled tofu skins off the table and offered it to my relatives. I was a lousy waiter, but I could hold a damn tray. My uncle scowled at the platter and shook his head. My grandfather, however, removed one from the platter and took a small bite.

His features were transformed with surprise, and his dark eyes popped open. “Not inari.”

I closed my eyes with dread. “No, technically, it’s not. I’m sorry, Ojiisan. It was Mum’s favorite, though.”

I turned to replace the platter, not wanting to see the look of disapproval I knew would be there. This time, I couldn’t quite bear it.

I was maybe ten when I combined the traditional tofu skin with the risotto I made from Mum’s secret dashi, shitake, lion’s mane mushrooms, and the best black garlic in her kitchen. It was an expensive mistake that forced her to remove her black garlic miso soup from the menu for a week. But she was so happy with the new recipe that she served it instead. And once a week, I’d make it just for her so that, for once, she didn’t have to cook for anyone else and could be the guest.

I turned back to take my seat only to find my grandfather watching me while he finished the inari.

“Who make?” Indelicately, he polished off the final bit and reached around me for another.

I watched warily. Did he actually like them? “Uh, I make. I mean, I made them.”

Kiyoshi’s surprise deepened. “You make?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I thought?—”

“Ichiro,” my grandfather interrupted, then rattled off something I roughly translated as “eat this now .” That I knew. I’d heard it enough from Mum growing up.

My uncle frowned and shook his head, not even sparing a glance at me. But Kiyoshi snatched the tray and jabbed the inari at him until Ichiro had to take one.

“Mmmph,” he grunted. But then he took another bite. And another.

Kiyoshi smiled, then broke into another string of exuberant Japanese. Begrudgingly, my uncle nodded back. And then, almost as if he didn’t want to, he popped the last bit of the inari into his mouth and swallowed.

I frowned at both of them, wondering what the hell had just happened. Kiyoshi caught my bewildered glances, and his worn face softened.

“I say,” he offered in stilted English. “Best inari I eat.”

I blinked, unsure if I’d heard him correctly. “Thank you,” I stammered. “ Arigato , Ojiisan.”

“Now. When you come?” He snatched the last inari, took a bite, and waited.

Watching him eat my food relaxed me enough to respond. I never understood it, but there was something satisfying about watching someone enjoy dishes I’d cooked. I wasn’t worth much, but I could make things taste all right. It was the one thing I could actually add to this world that was any good.

“Well, term ends in June,” I told him. “But I’ve got a break mid-April. If I can save up enough, I could probably bring Mum then, if Emmanuel and Elsie can run the restaurant without me. So long as I’m back before the twenty-fifth of April, I think it will work.”

I waited for Ichiro to interpret, but before my grandfather could reply, another voice interrupted.

“It will need to be a bit after that, unfortunately.”

The three of us swung around toward the unfamiliar voice. Well, unfamiliar to them. Though I’d only heard it a few times in my sixteen years, I would have known it anywhere.

A boulder-sized pit grew in my stomach as I turned. “Dad?”

My voice emerged about an octave higher than its normal level, like I was again that scrappy thirteen-year-old skulking after his mother, trying to be a man before he could quite get there.

Rupert Parker stood in the doorway of the flat, gazing over the scene before him like he was surveying newly conquered territory. At the six feet, five inches that matched my own, he was one of the few people I’d ever met who could look me in the eye. That and his blue eyes were the only things I’d inherited from him.

His skin was fair, his hair an ashy, graying blond, his clothes designer and tailored—a far cry from my own lightly tanned skin, black hair, and the badly fitting suit Elsie had forced me into this morning. Nothing about him belonged in this flat. This scrappy little life that had belonged to Mum and me. He’d never wanted anything to do with us at all.

My father’s steely eyes hopscotched over each remaining person in the room—Emmanuel, Jagger, Elsie, my erstwhile relatives—before landing on me.

“Hello, Xavier,” he said in a voice that was low but still channeled around us. He turned to my grandfather and uncle and nodded politely the way certain men do to the help. “Gentlemen. You must be Masumi’s relatives. Rupert Parker, at your service.”

Behind him, someone cleared his throat, and my father stepped into the flat, revealing my other uncle, Henry Parker. My uncle was maybe an inch shorter but shared the same pale features and long nose as the rest of the Parker dynasty. His eyes, however, were slightly kinder than my father’s steely blues.

He nodded at me. “Hello, boy.”

I just nodded back.

“I’m afraid my son’s trip to the Far East will have to wait,” Rupert reiterated as he eyed the refreshment table skeptically. “He is due to start Eton next week.”

My mouth fell open.

“What?” I demanded, finding my voice at last.

“Oh,” Elsie gasped from the sofa. “My…goodness? Eton College ?”

“No, Eton primary,” Rupert answered sarcastically. “What other Eton is there?”

“Don’t talk to Elsie like that.” I stood up a little straighter. “And I have a school. I don’t need to change now. I’ve only a year left after this.”

“Orchard Park is hardly an acceptable institution for a Parker,” my father stated while he studied the room.

“Well, I’m not the bloody Prince of Wales,” I argued back. “I’m not going to any Eton fucking College.”

My father’s blue eyes, as unfazed as the sky, glanced at his brother, who only shrugged, before turning back to me.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said. “Now, I regret very much the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves. As I regret we have not had time to become properly acquainted before now. But that is not your choice to make. You are my son, Xavier. And you are my responsibility now.”