A Cat-alytic Taxi Ride | ✓

Chapter 12.1 | What Is Love, And What Isn't?

This face does not feel familiar, yet I doubt if it could be her. 

So I ask, "Is this . . . Heron's house?"

I had a hunch deep in my mind, but I didn't imagine that Mr. Taxicat's human puppet taxi driver will actually bring me to the doorsteps of my blood sister. The sister I've never met. The sister I chose to erase from my mind instead of trying to find her, simply because anything and everything associated with her was an excruciatingly painful memory for me.

"Heron?" The woman blinks at me, her long lashes fluttering prettily. "Oh . . . oh yeah, it is. Who are you?"

"I'm-"

"Honey, who is it?"

A man walks up behind the woman, drying his wet hair with a beige towel.  The moment I meet eyes with the man, I know it immediately. And seemingly, so does he.

"Jade . . .?" he whispers, loud enough for me to hear, loud enough for the intensity of that one word to strike a tender flesh in my heart.

It's her. Or rather, him.

This could make my father die right this moment.

The towel drops from his hand. He slowly walks over to the door. When the woman moves away, he stands in front of me, and his hands come up to cup my cheek. The hands are cold and wet, yet I feel like a tiny duckling being warmed in the cradle of palms bigger than my body. An immediate wave of vulnerability washes over me from that one gesture alone, and I realize from deep within my heart that I can tell this person anything, even if it is the first time we have ever met properly.

"Heron . . ." I croak out, finding my vision begin to blur.

"Heron." He smiles. "I haven't heard that name in a while." His voice is trembling.

It's a different voice than the one in my once-deleted memories, the voice that called out to me, Please open your eyes, baby, please. This voice is more masculine, more firm, yet it somehow carries the same tenderness, the same affection. So much love. It's as though God sucked out every bit of love I was capable of giving and handed it to him, perhaps because he would know what to do with it.

He lets go of one of my cheek and turns to the woman. "Sherry, didn't I tell you? Didn't I tell you that I see in my dreams- that I saw so many dreams that one day my little Jade will come and find me? Somehow? That day has finally come, honey. I knew it, I always did."

The woman smiles wide and nods. The happiness on her face shocks me, because it is so pure and intense despite it not belonging to her. She is just happy, selflessly and innocently, because someone she loves is happy. 

As I'm standing there in a daze, Heron turns to me again and says, "Are you gonna stand there forever? Come in, Jade."

He is taking this a lot more easily than what's normal. It's almost as if he was expecting it, or rather, he knew all along that one of these days the sibling he hasn't met in 29 years would come walking to his doors for a fateful reunion.

I nod and enter the house. I look at his face once more. He must be in his mid 40s now, yet at first glance people would think the two of us are the same age. He looks so young, perhaps because he is happy. Because he is him.

I, on the other hand.

I am led towards the dining room. The corridor leading up to it has pastel green walls holding framed photographs here and there. The photos show a total of three people. Aside from Heron and the woman I'm assuming is his partner, there is also a little girl.

There is a photo from the day she was born, her eyes barely open, so small in the arms of her father, who is looking down at her with so much fondness. Another photo, perhaps from when she was a toddler, shows her tightly hugging a Pikachu cushion taller than her in height. A few years pass until the next photo, where she is wearing school uniform, the schoolbag a little too big for her, a water flask hanging from her neck, the wide smile on her face revealing the missing teeth. She's grown taller in the next one, and is holding a gold medal in it.