Silent Honor (42 page)

Authors: Danielle Steel

BOOK: Silent Honor

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“In California,” she answered vaguely.

“You been there recently?” he asked, surprised.

“I just came back, last week,” she said, hating to start a conversation with him. She just didn't want that. She had no idea what she and Toyo were going to do. She didn't know if they should stay here, or go back to the States. And even if she wanted to return to America, it seemed foolish to rush back right away. She had to decide what she wanted to do with her parents' house in Kyoto. And this would be no time to sell it. The sensible thing would be to stay here for a month or two, and then go back to the States, or maybe she had no reason to go there at all now. It was all a jumble in her head, but having soldiers at her gate was not going to make life any easier for her, if they stayed there. It was a complication she would have gone far to have avoided. But the man seemed to be crazy about Toyo.

“Were you there during the war?” the sentry asked, loath to move on and leave them.

“Yes, I was,” she said, and thanked him for the chocolate again. Then she hurried into their garden and closed the gate, regretting that there was no lock there. She bowed hastily to their shrine, and went back into the house with Toyo.

He dropped by again once or twice in the next few days, and Hiroko never went to the gate, hoping to discourage him, and then she and Toyo went to Tokyo, to try to find some relatives of her father. But Hiroko learned rapidly that all their relatives were dead, and Tokyo was truly a disaster. The effects of the bombing were still sorely felt, and there were even more soldiers, most of them drunk, and all of them looking for women. And all Hiroko wanted to do was get back to the safety of her parents' house in Kyoto, which they did very quickly.

She had been in Japan for two weeks by then, and it was beginning to seem as though it was going to be too complicated to stay in Japan at all. She was both modern and independent now, but she was also wise enough to know that if she stayed in Japan alone with her son, she would be in too much danger. She already had the schedules of several ships returning to the United States, and there was one sailing on Christmas Day, and she was starting to think they should be on it.

And when she returned to her parents' house after their brief trip, her neighbors told her that a soldier had come by inquiring for her several times, and she told them that if he came back again, to just tell him that she had gone back to the States, or gone away, anything they wanted to tell him, and as she said it, she looked frightened. If it was the same sentry who was so interested in her, she sensed something ominous about his persistence, and it only served to confirm her feelings that they should go back to the States as soon as she could arrange it.

And late that evening, as Toyo slept on the futon in their room, she heard the chimes at the gate again, and didn't answer them. But the next day, Toyo was playing in the garden and heard them before she did. And just as he was, she was sure it was their friend with the chocolates. She ran out of the house, hoping to stop Toyo before he opened the gate, but it was too late. He was already talking to the soldier. And then she saw, as she approached, that it was a different one, and she called the boy to her. But he wouldn't come, and she saw that the man he was talking to was crouched down low with him, to talk to him better.

“Toyo!” she called insistently, but he didn't move, and she knew she would have to go and get him. But she hated these unnerving brushes with the Americans. She had seen the look in the sentry's eyes, and other soldiers like the ones she'd seen in Tokyo, and they frightened her. She didn't want any trouble. “Toyo!” she called again, and this time they both looked up at her, the same face twice, the two of them, as they held hands, and she stared at them. It was Peter. He was alive, and she had no idea how he'd found her. She just stood there and started to cry, and holding Toyo's hand, he came quickly toward her and without waiting for another moment or a sound from her, he kissed her.

She was trembling when he stopped, and she looked up at him, unable to believe he was back, and holding Toyo.

“Where were you?” she said, as though to a lost child who had finally returned to his parents.

“I was in a hospital in Germany for a while…. Before that, I was hiding in a pig sty….” He grinned at her, looking like the boy he had been, and then he looked serious as he looked down at Toyo.

“Why didn't you tell me?” He looked so exactly the way she had remembered him, the way she had dreamed of him for three years since she'd last seen him.

She laughed through her tears. “I didn't want you to feel you had to come back if you didn't want to.” It sounded so stupid now, but it seemed to have made sense at the time, and then she looked at him, confused again. “How did you get here?”

“The same way you did. I've been right behind you for weeks,” he said with a look of exasperation as he pulled her into his arms with one hand and kept a grip on Toyo's hand with the other. He wasn't going to lose either of them again. He had come this far and he was sure of that much. “I went to my bank, and found you'd left a message there.” And she had left another one at Stanford. “I got to the Spencers' the day after you left. I caught the next ship out, after I talked to Reiko. I had a hell of a time finding her, but the Spencers had her number.” He had been an excellent detective. “She gave me the address here, but whenever I came, you were never here.”

“We went to Ayabe right after we got here,” she said, with huge, sad eyes. But she still couldn't believe that he was there, that he had survived, that he had come back to her, and all this way just to find her. “My parents were killed in an air raid.”

He shook his head then, thinking of all they'd been through, all of them. Even poor Tak hadn't made it. “I came back a number of times, but you were never here. I kept asking the neighbors.” And then she realized that he was the soldier the neighbors had mentioned.

“I thought you were the sentry, coming after us. … I think they're looking for geishas.” She smiled at him.

“That wasn't what I had in mind,” he said, devouring her with his eyes, remembering Tanforan, as they both did. “Or maybe it was,” he said softly, and then Toyo tugged at his hand just, as Peter was about to kiss his mother.

“Do you have chocolates?” he asked, looking bored, and Peter shook his head.

“No, I don't. I'm sorry, Toyo.”

“The other one did,” he said with a look of annoyance, and Peter looked at Hiroko again, forgetting their son for just a moment.

‘I'm sorry …” he said to her, “for everything … for all of it … for everything you had to go through … for my not being there with you …for not being there for him….” He looked at Toyo. “For your parents. Hiroko, I'm so sorry….” His eyes were filled with love and tenderness for her, his own miseries entirely forgotten. He was just so happy he had found her.

“Shikata ga nai,”
she said, and bowed low to him, reminding him of the phrase she had said to him before, so long ago, at Takeo's. It cannot be helped …
shikata ga nai.
…Perhaps not. But it had been so difficult for everyone and it had cost them so dearly. “I love you,” he said, as he took her in his arms and kissed her slowly, and then with all the longing that had filled him for three and a half years. It was hard to believe they had been apart for so long, and together for only moments before that. She remembered their time at Tanforan, the hours he had spent with her, talking to her, and their moments in the tall grass, hidden from everyone …the Buddhist priest who had “married” them in the brief ceremony that no one but they would ever honor. They had come through so much, and so far, and at last the days of shame and sorrow were over.

He smiled at her, and then looked down at their son, and even he could see how like him he was. And then Peter bowed low to her, as her father had done to Hidemi years before. And she bowed low to him and smiled, as he remembered her when they met, in her kimono.

“What are you doing, Mommy?” Toyo whispered.

“I am honoring your father,” she said solemnly, as Peter took her hand, and then his, and they walked slowly into her parents' house. And she knew that somewhere they, and Ken, and Tak, and Yuji were watching.
“Arigato,”
she said softly, thanking Peter, and all of them, for all they had shared, as she closed the shoji screens gently behind her.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-56682-9

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