6 Weeks Later

We decide the new Washington property  is going to be called Sunset Landing and I’m building it in a development outside of Ft. Perch.

I want as much of our childhood home in it as possible and hire a small team to comb through the remains of Dad’s house for things we can keep.

I’m surprised Angel and Atsumi want to come along  with me to visit the remains while the team is working. Through weeks of therapy and medication they both surprised me everyday with their strength. Atsumi was already back at school, Angel has started making affectionate jokes about Mom and we could all laugh at their memories. It was hard some days but most days it felt survivable.

“I want to see the pool,” Angel says as we get out the car at the wreckage site we once called home. “It was the last place we were all together.”

It’s my first time seeing the house like this and it stills my heart a little. The entire thing had come down with the bomb and more than half had been charred to nothing.

“I doubt there’s much  pool left,” I warn her.

“I just want to see,” she persists.

We walk around the edge of the wreckage and to my surprise the pool area looks mostly the same, except the water was murky and gross and all the cherry blossom trees were dead stumps.

“They could probably take some of this stone work to the new house,” Angel says squatting down to look at it.

“Maybe. We should also plant more cherry blossom trees--,” I add.

“I think Dad said those were from Shinjuku. We’d have to have them imported--”

“I’ll ask Kenji about it--,”

“HEY!,” Atsumi shrieks from the distance.

I reach for my gun, the small pistol I couldn’t let go of, and run towards Atsumi’s voice

Her shriek isn’t one of fear though--it’s one of utter delight.

And when I see the cause for her shriek I don’t know whether to cry or laugh.

Sitting in what was once the manicured backyard are three dust covered BMW 12 coupes; red, gray and sparkly purple.

Three cars for the three carefree silly girls we’d once been and could never be again.

Or could we ?

I have no idea when they cars had been dropped off, but I walk up to the gray one and dust it off to look in the window and see the access key in the cup holder.

I open the door and take the access key out of the cup holder and wave it up so my sisters can see.

Angel skips over to the red one and pulls out it's key too, Atsumi does the same to the purple car.  

“How about a race ?,” I challenge them. “From here to the road. We stay on the property and keep it under 100 per hour ?,”

“Winner picks lunch ?,” Angel says.

“For a week,” I up her stakes.

“Okay, girls...on three,” Atsumi says.

She taps her syn and it projects an oversized countdown above our heads.

"1"

"2"

I swing open my car door, touch the access key to the ignition and, with my sisters behind me, take off.

The End

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A/N

I don’t have much to say about this. This was a fun timeline to visit and we’ll visit it one more time with the Lucely short story that was originally a prequel but I rewrote into a sequel. I stopped talking about this Lucely sequel because I realized it spoiled the ending and that everyone survives. Thanks for coming along on the ride!

Also...I'm mildly obsessed with this CRJ song.