Page 94 of The River We Remember

Graff thought about it and said, “Maybe he’s a little unhappy.”

“We’re all unhappy in some ways. But there is usually balance. I don’t sense a balance in Sheriff Dern.”

“Maybe he just needs a good woman, Kyoko. Someone like you.”

She laughed and Graff marveled at the richness of the sound, because he knew her story now and knew she had little reason for happiness, yet there it was.

Kyoko Bluestone had been born and raised in Nagasaki. Her father had been a colonel in the Imperial army. She remembered that he did not think the war was a good thing for his country, but it was his duty to participate. He’d been killed in fighting in Malaysia. She’d lost one brother in the Battle of Midway and another on Guadalcanal. When she was twelve years old, near the end of the war, she’d left her mother and her remaining younger brother and had gone to help care for her grandparents, who lived in a village on a small island off the coast. One day, everyone in the village had seen a great fire in the sky, like another sun rising on the horizon. The next day, she’d made her way to the mainland and had stumbled, horrified, among the ruins of what had been a beautiful city. Her mother and brother were gone, obliterated. Later, during the occupation, her hair had fallen out, and the American doctors had told her that it was the radiation. As a result, she would never have children.

She’d been raised Catholic in Nagasaki, had gone to a Catholic school, and learned from the nuns how to speak excellent English. When she met Noah Bluestone, she’d been working as a translator for the government on Okinawa, where he was stationed. He was kind to her; they’d fallen in love. Against the advice and, generally speaking, the wishes of his superiors, Bluestone had married her. Almost immediately, he’d been sent to fight in Korea. When the conflict ended, he’d been assigned to a Marine combat training center in the hostile California desert. It was a continuing punishment, of sorts, and when, after more than twenty years of service, he could draw a pension, Noah Bluestone left the military and returned to Black Earth County, bringing Kyoko with him.

She was right about Brody Dern. And she was right about Connie Graff, who felt happier these days than he’d been since his wife’s passing. After Gordon Landis and the other two hooligans had showed up with rifles and Brody had assigned him the responsibility for seeing to Kyoko’s safety, Graff had established a new routine. At the end of each day, after helping on the farm and sharing supper with her, he would ask, “Will you be all right?”

To which she always replied, “I say my prayers. And I have Fuji.” As if the Christian ritual that she’d grown up with in a Shinto country and the old dog who kept her company were reasonable defenses against all the dangers of the night when she was alone on the farm.

He’d tried at first to argue her into allowing him to sleep in the small barn, but she refused, gently and persistently. So Graff had found a way to be her unseen sentinel. After leaving the farm, he would return to his home, exercise Bogie or Honeydew, riding for an hour along the graveled back roads of Black Earth County. Then he put the horses to pasture, cleaned himself up from the day’s work, and returned at dark to the Bluestone farmstead. There, hidden among the trees along the Alabaster River and unbeknownst to Kyoko, he bedded down in his pickup truck for the night.

She poured him more iced tea and asked, “Do you have children, Connie?”

“Myrna and me, we tried but it never happened. That’s okay. We were fine with just each other.”

“You told me you are a widower. How long?”

“Myrna died four years ago last March,” Graff said. “Lung cancer. She never smoked a cigarette in her life. The doctors at Mayo said it could have been from breathing in all that smoke from my cigarettes.” And now the guilt that he so often felt in his aloneness settled on his shoulders. “Was me that killed her.”

“But I’ve seen advertisements with doctors themselves smoking cigarettes.”

“When money’s involved, Kyoko, everybody lies.”

She laid a hand gently on his arm. “How could you have known?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Can’t change the past.”

They both heard the growl of a vehicle approaching on the lane. They were always on the alert these days, and Kyoko gave Graff a look of concern.

“Wait here,” Graff said. He left the table and went to the window. He watched the car pull to a stop, then he turned to Kyoko and said, “Relax. It’s only Charlie.”

CHARLIE JOINED THEM at the table where they’d finished the noon meal, and they drank iced tea. Charlie had told them about Jimmy Quinn’s funeral. Then she said, “What I found most interesting was that Fiona, Jimmy Quinn’s first daughter, didn’t attend.”

“Lives in Des Moines, doesn’t she?” Graff said.

“An easy drive if you cared to pay last respects to your father,” Charlie said.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I’d like to talk to Fiona.”

“What could she tell you that would help Noah?” Graff asked.

“Jimmy’s first wife was ill a long time. I’m wondering if there might have been a girl they hired back then who maybe had the same kind of experience as Sissy Barrows.”

“Looking for a pattern of behavior?” Graff said. “Did you talk to Terry Quinn?”

“He told me he didn’t remember any girl. I honestly think he was lying. But he did give me Fiona’s address in Des Moines.”

Kyoko said quietly, “Did you ask him why his sister might not have come to the funeral?”

“I did, Kyoko. He told me he doesn’t talk to his sister, and so he had no idea.”