Кэйго Хигасино - A Midsummer’s Equation

“Please,” Tsukahara said, bowing his head deeply.

Setsuko felt her tension ease. This man’s not here to reveal Narumi’s crime. He’s here because he sympathizes with Senba.

Still, secrets were meant to be kept. Setsuko straightened her back and told him she had no idea what he was talking about. She didn’t know who this Mr. Senba was, and she certainly didn’t think he had anything to do with them.

“I see,” Tsukahara said sadly. “That’s unfortunate.” He said nothing more.

Setting down his food, Setsuko walked out of the room to find Shigehiro standing in the hallway. Startled, she asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Nothing, just walking down the hall.”

She couldn’t read his expression, but she wondered if he hadn’t been listening at the door. She watched him go, leaning heavily on his cane in silence.

After that, Setsuko took Yukawa down to the bar and drank with him a while before leaving. She didn’t want to go straight back to the inn, however, mostly because she was worried that Tsukahara might say something again. So she was fretting out in front of the bar when Narumi and her friends showed up. When Sawamura offered her a ride back, she had to accept.

Everything after that happened just like she told the police. She found Shigehiro sitting, dumbfounded, in the lobby of the Green Rock Inn. He told her there had been an accident with a boiler: a guest had died. He wanted to tell the police, and Setsuko agreed, but Sawamura was against it. He thought a different kind of accident would be better for the town’s image. They argued about it a bit, but in the end, Shigehiro and Setsuko agreed. Setsuko in particular was eager to do anything that kept the investigators from connecting her family to Tsukahara.

But was it really an accident? she wondered.

Even if he’d overheard them talking that night in the hall, how could Shigehiro have known what they were talking about? Unless, she thought, he’d realized more than she knew about what had happened sixteen years ago.

Despite the fact that he was down in Nagoya, he could have heard about Senba’s arrest for the murder of Nobuko Miyake from the news, or through a friend. He’d known both of them well enough back in the day. And if he’d learned that the murder had happened near their home, wouldn’t he have put two and two together?

That, and she was pretty sure he knew Narumi wasn’t his daughter. He knows , she thought, and he’s accepted her as his own anyway.

Shigehiro was too smart to not connect Setsuko and Narumi to the murder sixteen years ago. And he’d never mentioned it once, which only made Setsuko even more sure he knew. Nor did she think it was entirely coincidence that he started talking about moving to Hari Cove soon after it happened. Had he been protecting the family, trying to make a physical break with their bloodstained home?

Maybe, she thought, when Tsukahara came to the inn, Shigehiro saw him as an envoy come to open the door on a buried past. Maybe he thought that leaving him alive would destroy their own lives. But Setsuko never learned the truth. Nor did she ask Shigehiro. As long as he was silent, so would she be. For the rest of her life, if she had to.

Setsuko knew better than anyone that silence was the only option.

Kyohei looked up from the hotel bed. His father was on the phone again. He could picture his mother’s look of exasperation on the other end of the line.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” his father was saying. “He says he wants to stay here another day. I don’t know, something about his homework. I said I don’t know. Well, you tell him,” he said, thrusting his cell phone toward Kyohei. “It’s your mom.”

Kyohei sighed and took the phone.

“Hi.”

“What’s this all about?” his mother asked. “Didn’t you tell everything to the police already? Why can’t you come down right away?” She was talking fast and loud. Kyohei held the phone further away from his ear.

“I’ve got homework,” he said.

“So? Do it down here.”

“I can’t. I’m getting some help with it here.”

“From whom?”

Kyohei rolled his eyes. “Someone I met at Uncle Shigehiro’s inn. He’s a professor at a university.”

“Why is a university professor helping you with your fifth grade homework?”

“I dunno. I was telling him about it, and he said he’d help. He’s staying in the same hotel as us — but he’s out now. He won’t be back until tonight, and I really gotta talk to him.”

He heard his mom snort. “Why can’t your father and I help you, like we always do?”

“He said it’s not good if you do it for me. I have to learn how to do it for myself.”

His mother was silent for a moment.

That shut her up.

“Fine, whatever. Give me back to your dad.”

Kyohei handed the phone back to his father, then opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. The room was right over the hotel pool. He scanned the chairs around the pool, but Yukawa was nowhere to be found. It was a little after three in the afternoon.

He had almost given up when the woman at the front desk had told him Yukawa would be out all day. But when he got back to his room and started packing up his things, a strong urge had struck him to stay and wait for him, no matter what it took. He needed to talk to Yukawa one last time.

Despite the fact that he didn’t even have a good explanation, his father didn’t put up too much of a fight when Kyohei pleaded to delay their departure by another day. Maybe, Kyohei thought, he sensed Kyohei’s deeper reason for needing to stay.

His father put down the phone. “We’re going home tomorrow afternoon, and that’s final.”

Kyohei nodded.

He figured that since he’d told his mom he was staying to do his homework, he’d better get to it, so he spread his books out on the one table in the room. He didn’t feel like playing anyway. He couldn’t imagine enjoying anything right at that moment.

“I’m going to go talk to the police,” his father said. “I want to check in and see how your aunt and uncle are doing. If they’ll tell me, that is.”

He returned a little after six o’clock, empty-handed. “I pushed pretty hard, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. So I just hung out there for a while,” he said.

Kyohei hadn’t gotten much done either. His head was whirling too fast for him to focus on his homework.

They decided to eat dinner in the restaurant on the first floor. Kyohei ordered the fried shrimp platter — one of his favorites. It was a big plate, with three giant shrimp on top.

He was about to dig in when he heard a familiar whiz pop , and Kyohei’s eyes went out to the ocean shore.

“Fireworks?” his father said. “Sounds like someone’s shooting off some big ones down on the beach.”

Kyohei was about to correct him — the sound was definitely a smaller bottle rocket — when memories of that night came rushing back. He felt a large lump in his throat, heavy, like lead weighing on his chest. Kyohei shook his head and put down his fork and knife.

“What’s wrong? You aren’t sick, are you?” his father asked.

Kyohei shook his head. “Nah, just full.”

“Full? You’ve barely eaten a thing.”

Just then, Kyohei spotted Yukawa walking past the restaurant toward the lobby. He hopped out of his chair and ran toward him, calling out, “Professor!”

Yukawa stopped and turned. A momentary look of confusion passed over his face when he saw Kyohei, then he smiled. “Hey,” he said. “You’re still here?”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Kyohei said, the words coming out in a rush. “I couldn’t tell my mom or my dad, I wasn’t even sure if I should be telling you—”