Yukawa leaned back into his headrest, his eyes going up to the roof of the car. “The woman in the photograph I showed Senba just now is one Narumi Kawahata—Setsuko’s daughter.”
“And you said she’s been looking after Hari Cove?” Utsumi asked.
Yukawa nodded. “Yes, passionately. There’s a deep pathos in the way she goes about it, with almost painful dedication. But why is she so committed to a town, and a coast that’s not even her birthplace? And why did she so readily agree to move out there, when just the year before, she told her friends that she wanted to stay in Tokyo, even if it meant living by herself? I can only offer one theory that accounts for these mysteries. She needs to have believed in her heart that it was her duty. Not a civic duty, mind you, but a duty she owed to another person. A paying of a debt.”
“Yukawa,” Kusanagi groaned, “you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
“At first, I thought that Senba was taking the fall for Setsuko when he confessed. Except, at the time it happened, it’s likely they hadn’t seen each other for over a decade. Even if they’d once been intimate, it’s hard to imagine he’d accept a murder sentence to save an old flame. No, there was something bigger driving him. This realization brought me to another, completely different idea. Senba wasn’t protecting Setsuko. He was protecting her daughter—their daughter.”
“So Narumi Kawahata is Senba’s daughter.”
Yukawa looked out at the street straight ahead and breathed a deep sigh. “That’s the secret that Senba and Setsuko had to keep. The secret that drove their daughter to murder.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
With the nurse’s assistance, Senba lay down on his bed, still clutching the photographs in his hand. Sometimes lately, he couldn’t make his fingers grasp things like he wanted them to, but not today.
The nurse told him to call her if he needed anything and walked out without asking any questions, for which he was grateful.
He heard someone cough. Probably Mr. Yoshioka. He had a brain tumor too. There’d been three people in their four-person room up until the week before. Now, as of two days ago, the bed right next to him was empty.
He felt a dull pain in his head, and his field of vision narrowed. Darkness crept in around the edges, until he had to hold the photographs directly in front of his face to see them.
He looked at the girl, with the look of surprise on her face. She was sitting behind the steering wheel of a car. Her chestnut-brown skin shone in the photograph.
She looks just like her mother, Senba thought. Lately, he had a hard time telling his dreams apart from reality, and occasionally he would get confused, but there were a few memories he had been holding onto with particular tenacity. Setsuko was one of them. He could close his eyes and be instantly transported back decades.
Senba was still in his early thirties. He was working for a company selling electronics, wearing a suit, carrying his attaché case as he flew around the country. His sales numbers were the best in the company, and he got special dispensation when he took customers out to party in Ginza. Their best customers he took to luxury nightclubs, sometimes more than once a week.
It was at one of those clubs that he met Setsuko. She had a pretty face but an at-home feel to her. She wasn’t pushy with her conversation and mixed drinks without a lot of small talk.
She reacted differently one night when Senba brought up the topic of local cuisines—he caught a sparkle in her eyes, which he remembered. The next time he had a chance to talk with her alone, he asked her if she had an interest in cooking.
Her answer was as clear as could be: absolutely. She confided in him that what she really wanted to do was quit her nightclub job and work at a restaurant. Not as a waiter, but as a cook. Except, she said, she probably lacked the experience she would need.
Senba immediately thought of Haruhi. He had been to Hari several times to visit his wife’s hometown, which was enough to pique his interest when he found the little restaurant. The food was excellent, and Senba quickly became a regular. The proprietor was a short man with a beautiful wife, and they ran the whole place by themselves. He’d heard them say on occasion that they were looking for extra help. He mentioned it to Setsuko, who was interested, so he took her over one night after the nightclub had closed.
The proprietors loved Setsuko the moment they set eyes on her, and one month later, Setsuko was working there. Within three months, the regulars were calling her by her nickname, Setchan, and after half a year had passed, the owners couldn’t imagine running the place without her. Every night, she wore her trademark foliage-patterned kimono. To Senba, she looked ten times more alive than she had when she was working as a hostess.
Haruhi was open late those days, and Senba would almost always drop by after he’d seen his clients off for the evening. He enjoyed closing off his nights in Ginza with a cup of warm sake, a bit of Hari-style hors d’oeuvres, and Setsuko’s smile.
The food at Haruhi was always good, but that wasn’t the only reason he went. No matter how tired he was or how pressed he was for time, he always stopped by to see Setsuko. He wasn’t sure exactly when it had started, but it was clear she had a hold on him. He thought she noticed, too, and when their eyes would happen to meet, he felt a connection there.
But he lacked the courage to do anything about it. He was married, after all, and he told himself he should be happy just getting to sit across the counter from her like this. Occasionally, Senba would bring a hostess he knew well along with him to Haruhi, as a kind of camouflage and a way of restraining his own feelings. The hostess’s name was Nobuko Miyake.
Senba wasn’t the only customer who came there to see Setsuko. Some of them made open passes at her, which she brushed aside with finesse. But there was one customer whose advances she didn’t seem to mind. That was Shigehiro Kawahata.
Senba had seen him at the restaurant several times before. They would usually nod to each other, but they had hardly ever exchanged a word. Senba got the sense that Kawahata came there even more often than he did.
“He’s a good man,” the owner’s wife would say. “Hard worker, gentle, and single. A perfect catch, if you ask me.” Setsuko seemed to agree. She would laugh and shake her head while jealousy burned inside Senba’s belly.
Then one night, after work was done, Setsuko invited Senba out for a drink out of the blue. He was a little surprised, but happily agreed. They went to a wine bar that stayed open all night. Setsuko was in unusually high spirits. She suggested they drink champagne, and when that was done, they ordered a bottle of wine. She drank quickly, and the bottle was gone before they knew it. He asked her why the good mood, and she said it was nothing, she just felt like tying one on that night.
She was considerably drunk when he brought her home, and he was laying her down on her bed when she wrapped her arms around his neck. When he looked down and saw the tears glimmering in her eyes, he lost what self-control he still had and returned her embrace, his lips pressing against hers. Setsuko was still lying in bed the next morning when Senba left. Her eyes were closed, but he didn’t think she was asleep.
It was the only time they slept together. The next day, when he saw her at Haruhi, she acted the same as she always had. The events of the night before might as well have been nothing more than a dream.
He heard shortly thereafter that Kawahata had proposed to Setsuko, and she’d said yes. Only then did he understand what their night together had meant. She’d had something she needed to get off her chest, and that was him.