“How’ve you been?”
“I’ve missed you,” Daidai said. “How are you?”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Louise said. “Can you hold on a minute?”
Daidai could hear traces of a conversation and papers being shuffled in the background, as she visualized Louise behind her desk, surrounded by briefs and client files. “Sorry for being out of touch,” she said after the interruption. “That was a pretty good party we threw.”
“Yes, it was.” Daidai laughed, thinking back to the fall.
“It’s funny you called because I stopped by the museum just the other day,” she said. “I’d heard about the new exhibit and I wanted to see it for myself.”
“And?”
“Awful,” she said, implying to Daidai that her leave had damaged the museum’s impeccable landscape. “Paltry. Poorly lit.”
Had she gone in looking for flaws? She must have known that her negative review of the new exhibit would brighten Daidai’s day.
“It’s been a mess around here,” she said, changing the subject before Daidai could respond. “I’ve been meaning to call to tell you. But maybe your mother’s told you?”
Daidai’s heart sank, her first thought being Gizo.
“My father’s in pretty bad shape. He’s in the hospital.”
Daidai leaned back in her chair. Louise’s mother, Irene, had been Daidai’s mother’s first friend when she’d arrived in L.A. She’d shown Mako where to shop for Japanese food and helped her to “Americanize” just enough so she didn’t stick out. So why had Mako not told her about Danji? Had she assumed Daidai already knew? “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Louise said. “Gizo’s been running the shop and living at my dad’s place. Fortunately Dad’s house, the shop, and the hospital are all within walking distance.”
“Let me help cook,” Daidai said. “I’ll bring something by tonight. I’ve got the time.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, shuffling papers on the other end as silence once again engulfed the line. “But I think we’re okay right now. Gizo’s new girlfriend’s family owns a restaurant, so that helps.”
Daidai remembered the girl behind the counter. Then, returning to the unexpected news about Danji, she stiffened and debated the appropriateness of asking Louise for the information she sought, but her thoughts seemed focused on Satsuki. “Would you mind searching through the death index and coroner’s office for some information on a woman with the last name Suzuki? She’s the mother of Hiroshi’s student. She’d be in her mid-fifties. We just found out Friday.”
Daidai could hear the faint rhythm of Louise’s breathing, coupled with the sound her fingers made tapping at the keyboard. It took her less than a minute to pull up the information Daidai had requested: “Ritsuko Suzuki. Born in Mito, Japan, died December 17, 2010, in West Los Angeles, California, at age fifty-six.” She stopped herself. “This isn’t the foreign student from the party, is it? Our age, pretty?”
“Satsuki,” Daidai said, but Louise didn’t wait for her to continue.
“There’s more,” she said. “What’s up with this?”
What she said next made Daidai wish she were sitting across from Louise, rather than alone in the apartment with the phone pressed to her ear. The cause of Ritsuko Suzuki’s death had not been confirmed, but a preliminary report indicated a probable suicide: fatal gunshot to the side of the head, .38-caliber pistol found next to the body.
At the time of death, Ritsuko Suzuki had lived as a cloistered nun at Holy Heart Monastery, located—of all places—in the foothills of Hollywood.
The spring term started the first Tuesday of the New Year, which happened to coincide with the onset of winter weather. Overnight the thermostat had dropped below 60 in the apartment, causing the heat to click on for the first time that season. Daidai woke in a fit of sneezing when a rush of stale air and dust poured in through the vent. “Bless you,” Hiroshi called from his study on the other side of the wall. It was Hiroshi’s habit to take a run in the mornings when he reached a stopping point in his writing or needed a break from grading. Hearing the sound of his chair being pushed back from his desk followed by his approaching footfalls, she hoped she’d been the reason for his staying back, that he’d been waiting for her to wake up.
“Good morning.” She smiled up at him, wiping loose strands of hair away from her face.
“Good, I guess.” He shrugged, extending a box of tissues in her direction.
“Thank you,” she said, kicking off the covers to expose the length of her thigh. “Want to join me?”
“Wish I could,” he said before turning away. “Gotta shower.”
Daidai watched him from behind as he undressed, either not noticing or not caring that she was watching him, and she lapsed into another sneezing fit.
The fact that Hiroshi left the apartment over an hour before the start of his first class that morning didn’t escape Daidai’s attention. After her phone conversation with Louise, she’d located an address for the Holy Heart Monastery and had decided to stop in for a visit. She’d make a day of it and drop by the Hashimotos’ shop afterward with something for Gizo to take to Danji in the hospital.
Needing something to occupy her time while she waited for the morning traffic to die down, she returned to the bedroom to pull out the trunk she stowed under the bed during the summer months and began going through her drawers, replacing the tanks and short-sleeved T-shirts with sweaters. By the time she got in the car, it was nearly eleven thirty, which would leave practically no time to look around, as she’d read online that the monastery closed down during the lunch hour. Fortunately, the freeway traffic was moving along without a hitch, the cars in front and behind on the Ventura Freeway eastbound enabling her to merge right without having to overshoot the exit to avoid being hit, which she’d had to do on several occasions when she’d driven that stretch of freeway more frequently.
It had been years since she’d driven through Coldwater Canyon, so long ago that the vegetation spilling over the hilltops had matured in her absence. The scenery seemed inured to the sudden change of weather, with the glare of sunlight glinting off the pavement and plant leaves showing not a hint of frostbite. Trying to recall the last time she’d driven that route, she decided it must have been high school, long before Hiroshi, on a summer night with a boy whose face she no longer remembered. The windy path seemed built for reflection and self-recrimination, and she thought over the year and a half she’d been trying to get pregnant. Could there be a connection between Hiroshi’s and her inability to conceive and their being somehow unfit to raise a child? Though she’d always trusted Hiroshi, she suspected he might be contemplating or having an affair with Satsuki. Then again, she believed it possible that her judgment had been skewed by being alone so much without work to contemplate. What if the affair was in her head? What if it were her fantasy instead of Hiroshi’s? But her marriage had been fine up to that point.
The monastery had listed the director as Sister Mary Agnes, a woman who’d lived as a
