“Stop, will you?” I snapped before realizing how I was falling into my old, ungracious patterns. I took a deep breath and started again. “Sorry, I can’t fly out. The police are watching for me at Narita Airport.”
The story took half an hour to tell. My mother gasped at the story of Setsuko’s murder, but seemed equally curious about matters relating to Hugh.
“Married or divorced?” she asked casually.
“Neither. Mom, that’s not important”
“Sendai? Hmm,” my father said.
I felt it my duty to confess he was on indefinite leave. There was an uncomfortable lull.
“You see, everything hinges on finding Setsuko’s killer,” I said, trying to get back on track. “If we can prove there were other people in Setsuko’s background, these awful questions and the possibility of the indictment will be over.”
“Something like ninety-nine percent of the people who stand trial in Japan are convicted. Did you know that?” My father demanded.
“Yes, Dad.” As if I hadn’t heard it a dozen times already.
“Hugh’s an attorney, not a killer,” my mother cut in. Ordinarily, that kind of generalization would have drawn an argument from me, but I kept my mouth shut.
There was a silence on my father’s side. I pictured him sitting on the edge of his walnut desk with the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, staring through the study’s glass doors at the rock garden my mother and I built together. He could ponder the swirls of gravel and small, moss-covered boulders for hours. I preferred the garden from outside, with the fresh air around me and the birds in the trees. I remembered how I’d spent a long-ago afternoon there, deciding whether I would risk coming to Japan without a job. The garden had told me yes.
“Dad, are you looking at the garden?” I asked him.
“Yes.” He sounded faintly surprised.
“It’s special because the stones and plants all followed a plan. There’s a pattern here, too, in what happened to Setsuko. And I’ve got it drawn in my mind, all but the last few pieces.”
“What do you need from us, Rei? Should we come?” my mother pressed.
“You can help me best from where you are.” But as I started to talk about calling directory assistance in Boston and Texas, it was my father who asked for the Evans brothers’ first names. My father, my champion.
After I hung up, Richard and Mariko drifted in, talking about making pancakes. From the way Richard looked at Hugh’s shirt on me, I could tell he had planned on wearing it. Mariko was wearing a pair of his long johns with her own Ranma sweatshirt. Standing at the stove with a spatula, she looked very much like she belonged.
The pancakes she produced were perfectly golden, fluffy, and all about the size of a 500 yen coin.
“Mariko’s such a perfectionist,” Richard said, watching her arrange a square butter pat on each cake. I thought of getting some maple syrup but she had something else in mind: strawberry jam.
“You probably wonder why I’m staying with Richard again,” Mariko said, watching me cut into a diminutive pancake.
“It’s better for you here than at the Marimba, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Even though this neighborhood is horrible.” She shot Richard a sidelong glance. “We’re friends again. I like him, you know? At first it was just his looks. Now I know his heart, and he is the only man who wants more than my body.”
“Are you planning to continue living together?” I asked cautiously.
“Well, I’m actually moving out of here.” Richard ran his fingers through his hair so it stood straight up. “Simone has a lead on a place in Shibuya and figures we could afford it together.”
“Shibuya’s pretty ritzy,” I said, envy running through me along with the awful feeling I wouldn’t be his best friend anymore.
“It’s one bedroom, but I said I’d take the living room.” Richard shrugged. “It’s similar to the way we live here, but it will be a thousand times neater with me out front.”
“How stupid to leave such a cheap apartment in Tokyo!” Mariko, who had previously mocked our neighborhood, exclaimed.
“I’ll be earning more money now that I’m leaving Nichiyu!”
“You have a new job?” I was incredulous. He really had locked me out of his life.
“Hugh and I were shooting the breeze at Marimba, and he told me about some French businessman who wants to back a new language school. It’s going to be an expensive place oriented to people going on European tours, and I’ll do English and Simone will teach French. She was getting sick of selling bracelets in Ueno Park anyway.”