“We all die,” said Steers. “It is best to be prepared, is it not?”
They dressed her in the kimono, and Nash then watched Steers carefully apply makeup to Hiroko-san’s face. “This must be done precisely to ensure her onward journey,” she noted.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“When I was a child a friend’s grandmother died in Kobe. I learned then.” She sat on her haunches and looked at Hiroko. “Death has always. . .fascinated me. I am not sure why.”
“Because you can’t control it,” he said promptly. “When it comes for you and how,” he added.
She glanced up at him. “You are wrong, Dillon-san. There is one way to controlwhenit comes. Andhow.”
“I don’t think Hiroko-san would like to hear you say that.”
She dropped her gaze and went back to work on the woman.
Nash remembered the night she had threatened to kill herself, which was clearly what Steers had been referring to with her statement.
And who’s to say a control person like herself will not make the decision of choosing when and how her death will occur?
After Steers was finished, Nash gently picked up the dead woman, carried her to the garage, and placed her in plastic that he had put in the rear of the Suburban. He had already loaded in shovels and some other tools. He had texted the security detail that he and Steers were taking a late-night drive.
Steers had rushed back to her room and hurriedly changed out of her nightdress and into jeans and a sweater. She rode not in the passenger seat but in the back of the Suburban with Hiroko.
She directed Nash to an isolated spot about three miles away.
He had told Steers that he would dig the hole but she insisted on helping.
“It is the very least I can do for her,” she explained.
They shoveled until Nash’s head was about level with the top of the hole. Nash was impressed with Steers’s strength, stamina, and precise movements—no wasted motion, steady breaths, intently focused on the mission at hand. She had matched him shovel for shovel.
They laid Hiroko in her grave and placed the dirt over her. Nash then tamped the mound down to a level surface. He and Steers placed the grass that Nash had cut out in precise squares back on top of the leveled dirt. One would be hard pressed to tell that a hole had been dug here. In a few weeks’ time all traces of disturbance would be gone.
A sweaty Steers stood by the grave, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes closed. She was speaking words that sounded solemn and also Japanese to Nash. He just stood next to her and stared down at the last resting place of a good woman.
Steers found a large and unusually shaped stone nearby. Nash carried it over for her and placed it on top of the grave, at the exact spot Steers indicated.
“This way I will always be able to find my way back to Hirokosan, you see,” she said.
“Yes, I see,” replied Nash.
They walked back to the Suburban and climbed in. Before Nash could start the engine she said, “Can we just sit here in the quiet for a bit, Dillon-san?”
“For as long as you want.”
For the next thirty minutes Steers sat in her seat and stared at her hands and made not a sound, while Nash shot her glances and tried to surmise what was going on in her mind.
“I am ready now. We can go.”
They drove back and Steers went to her room while Nash tidied things up in Hiroko’s room. He put the contents of the suspect tea into a plastic container and closed the damaged door as best he could and then secured it. He carried the container to his room in the guesthouse and placed it in a locked drawer. He stood by the window and stared out into what was now the early dawn. It was calm and peaceful and rejuvenating.
But he knew Victoria Steers was feeling none of these things. The woman was undoubtedly all misery and sadness and, probably, regret for failing her beloved Hiroko-san.
And now mother and daughter had just lost the only buffer they would ever have. And Nash knew that Steers believed her mother had murdered Hiroko, the only true friend Steers had.
I have every reason in the world to hate Victoria Steers. And yet now I don’t. And I hate myself for that.
Nash kept standing at the window and thought that no life should be as complicated as his.
