Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) by Judith A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

out to this fragile old woman who seemed to be losing everything at once—husband, home, security. Somehow she didn’t seem defeated.
    â€œHomesick for Japan?” I asked, wanting to be clear about what she was saying.
    She nodded.
    â€œDidn’t you ever go back?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œNot even for a visit?”
    â€œNo.”
    From the look of the surroundings, the kind of home they lived in, the kind of business her husband had run, they surely could have afforded the price of an airplane ticket.
    â€œMy home in Nagasaki,” she said simply.
    Nagasaki. Hiroshima’s sister in devastation, the one you seldom heard about. For the second time that day the specter of World War II rose up before me, its horror and destruction made personal in a way it had never touched me before. Looking at Machiko Kurobashi, I wondered what tricks of fate had placed her home and family in the path of exploding atomic bombs.
    â€œThere’s nothing left?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “No one. Nothing. Only this, that Tadeo made for me. Now it gone too.”
    Tears sprang once more to her eyes. For several long seconds no one spoke. The brilliantly colored fish alternately lazed in and darted through the shallow water.
    â€œTell me about my husband,” she said.
    And so, as gently as I could, I told her everything, including how George Yamamoto had been called in to help determine whether or not Tadeo’s death had involved the ancient practice of hara-kiri or seppuku . I noted what seemed to be a sharp intake of breath when I mentioned the sword, butshe said nothing and I continued. Finished finally, I waited to hear what she would say.
    â€œNo.”
    She spoke the word so softly that I almost missed it. “No what?” I asked.
    When her eyes met mine, they were blazing with a new intensity, a desperate defiance. “My Tadeo not kill himself. This I know.”
    And that was all she said, her only response. They may have disagreed on everything else, but on that score, George Yamamoto and Machiko Kurobashi were in full and total agreement. Neither one of them believed for one moment that Tadeo Kurobashi had committed suicide.
    Their insistent belief led me to agree with them.

CHAPTER 4
    T HE DEEP-THROATED HONK OF A SEMI’S horn sounded three short bursts out in front of the house. Kimi glanced at her watch then jumped up and started out of the garden. “The movers,” she explained. “I’ll go tell them what’s happened, that they’ll have to come back later.”
    â€œNo,” Machiko said. She didn’t say much, but what she did say was definitive.
    Frowning, Kimi stopped and turned to her mother. “What do you mean, no?”
    â€œYour father say today. He give his word. We go today.”
    â€œBut—”
    Machiko held out her hand, a gesture which both stifled protest and asked for help. Kimi pulled Machiko to her feet. “You stay,” the older woman ordered. “I go.”
    It was more a command than a request, and Kimiko unwillingly assented to it. She stood watching with furrowed brows as her mother, leaning on the gnarled cane, hobbled slowly across the bridge and out of sight around thehouse while the truck’s horn honked impatiently once more.
    This time when Kimiko turned back to us, tears were streaming down her face. She made no effort to wipe them away. “How could he do this to her?”
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œBail out. Leave her like this with next to nothing. Worse than nothing. The house is gone, along with everything else.”
    â€œBut your mother seems to think he was murd—”
    Kimi interrupted with an angry snort. “She’d defend him no matter what, right or wrong. It’s always been that way.”
    She paused long enough to blow her nose. Kimiko Kurobashi’s bitterly hostile words didn’t sound like those of someone grieving for a dead father, at