11

Outside, doors opened and closed. Papers shuffled. Someone walked quickly past.

It had only been fifteen minutes since they had arrived at the precinct, but it already felt like an eternity in Naoki’s mind.

Inside the room, Naoki stared at nothing.

His body was motionless, but his mind did not stop. What if she had lived long enough to hate him? What if she had woken and remembered only the blow? What if she had woken and remembered nothing and loved him still? What if prison was easier than being forgiven?

What if Takeshi looked at him now and saw it immediately? What if the police checked the butcher freezer? The trash? The deliveries? The streets? The call records? The blood spatter?

What if there was no room left in the world to hide a thing like this? What if there was too much room? What if he had just stayed? What if he had just let her leave?

What if love, real love, had required letting her walk out the door with the suitcase and the necklace and her phone and the rest of her life intact?

He shut his eyes.

The answer to that one came too quickly.

Then I would still have her.

That was not true. But it was what the broken part of him believed.

Hana would still have her mother, for better or for worse.

And that broken part was still speaking louder than anything else.

The door burst open, startling all the officers in the room with Naoki—except Naoki, who was still in a stupor.

Takeshi entered with Hana on his shoulder.

One officer tried to stop him with a hand to his chest. Takeshi shook him off as if brushing away steam.

“Move.”

“Takeshi-san, please—”

“Get out of my way.”

He crossed the room in three heavy strides and planted himself in front of Naoki.

Hana had stopped crying. Her face was blotchy from it, her eyes swollen and wet, but she had entered that strange quiet babies sometimes found after fear exhausted itself.

She stared over Takeshi’s shoulder without understanding.

Naoki lifted his head slowly.

The sight of her did something abrupt and washed away all the ugly inside him.

Until that second, the night had been about Aiko.

About the blood. About the floor. About the strike. About the impossible wish that she would sit up, touch the back of her head, look annoyed, and tell him what he could do to fix it all.

Hana was still here, he thought.

And if he spoke the whole truth now, if he let it spill out exactly as it had happened, then Aiko would still be dead, Hana would still be alive, and he would be taken away from the only thing left that still called him necessary.

Takeshi’s hand landed hard against the table.

The sharp crack made Hana flinch.

“Look at me.”

Naoki did.

Takeshi’s face looked older than it had that afternoon in the butcher shop. Older than it had looked at the wedding. Older even than it had looked the day Hana was born, when he first held his granddaughter and looked like a man who did not trust his own hands with something so small and soft.

“Get it together,” Takeshi said.

Naoki swallowed. His lips parted, but nothing came out.

“Do you hear me?”

Naoki looked at Hana again.

Her tiny fist had curled around the shoulder seam of Takeshi’s shirt. He imagined that fist empty. He imagined it reaching for him through bars. He imagined someone else lifting her, feeding her, rocking her, telling her stories about a father who loved too much. About a father who made one terrible mistake.

About a father who could not stay.

No.

That could not happen. Aiko was already gone.

Whether she was dead in the morgue, dead in the operating room, or dead somewhere between this station and the hospital, she was already on the other side of whatever could be fixed.

But Hana was here.

He could not go down too. Not now. Not while she was still in the world needing things.

Naoki straightened.

The movement was small, but the officers saw it. Takeshi saw it too.

He reached toward Hana and his breathing slowed.

“You can ask me again,” he said.

His own voice sounded strange even to him.

One of the detectives, a middle-aged man with tired eyes and a notebook already full of the night, exchanged a quick glance with his partner.

“Good,” he said.

Takeshi shifted Hana carefully and stepped back only when he was sure Naoki’s eyes had found their focus.

Naoki kept looking at his daughter to remember the direction he had to move now.

She was just a baby. Sweet and harmless. His anchor.

He would not tell the whole truth. Only the parts that did not destroy Hana.

The detective sat down across from him and opened his notebook. His partner remained near the wall with folded arms.

“We’ll go through this once more.”

Naoki nodded.

“If you need water—”

“I’m alright.”

The detective studied him, perhaps surprised by the steadiness.

“Start from this morning.”

Naoki folded his hands in his lap so no one would see the tremor in them. He chose the first truth.

“I woke up before Aiko.”

Telling the truth that didn’t make Aiko look bad was easy enough.

“I made breakfast. She fed Hana before work.”

The detective wrote.

“She went to work as usual?”

“Yes. She said she’d eat lunch at the hospital.”

Also true.

“Did anything seem wrong?”

Naoki let himself hesitate.

“She seemed tired. She’s been tired since Hana was born. The shifts are long. I told her to rest more.”

The detective nodded.

“You stayed home with the child?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do during the day?”

Naoki looked down for half a second.

“I cleaned. Laundry. Kitchen. I made lunch later.”

He did not say: “and I looked at our photographs and thanked God for giving me her and touched the frames and thought my life was blessed beyond reason.”

That kind of truth had no use here.

“Lunch for yourself?”

“For Aiko.”

The detective kept writing.

“Then what?”

“I went to the butcher shop to borrow some meat, then went back home.”

“And after that?”

“I cooked, took Hana back to the butcher shop so I could deliver Aiko’s lunch.”

The detective looked up.

“You brought food to her workplace?”

“Yes.”

That one helped him. It made him look like himself.

“What time?”

“Near midday.”

“Hospital staff saw you?”

“Yes.”

True. Many of them had. Aiko had smiled. She had kissed him. The nurses had laughed. One of them had called him a perfect husband. The memory passed through him like a blade wrapped in velvet.

“After that?”

“I went back to the butcher shop.”

“Why?”

“Her father needed help. I sometimes help there.”

The detective’s pen moved steadily.

“Describe that.”

Naoki took a breath.

“We had already opened with deliveries done. Takeshi was working the front and back. Genki was there.”

“We had customers. Then Genki made a mistake with one of the marinade batches.”

The detective looked interested.

“What kind of mistake?”

“He used the wrong marinade on pork.”

“And?”

“Takeshi sent him on deliveries while he fixed it.”

True. All true.

The detective nodded.

“What were you doing then?”

“Helping at the front.”

“And the child?”

“With Takeshi in the back, mostly. Sometimes with me.”

The detective turned a page.

“How long were you alone at the front?”

“Not long. There were always customers.”

“When was your last interaction with someone?”

“I don’t keep track exactly, but besides customers, Takeshi often came out from the back to grab meat or seasoning from the front.”

“Were you ever away from the front?”

Naoki felt something tighten briefly behind his ribs.

“Yes.”

That was the doorway. He had to walk through it cleanly.

“Takeshi told me to go to the freezer to get meat for dinner.”

The detective looked at him.

“How long were you away from the front?”

Naoki lowered his eyes as if trying honestly to remember a dull, insignificant number.

“Not long.”

He let the answer sit first. Then, because vagueness could look like calculation, he added: “I went to the freezer. I wasn’t paying attention to time.”

Also true. Just not the whole geography of it.

The detective tapped his pen once.

“When did you leave the shop?”

This was the important line.

Naoki did not rush. He looked composed on the outside.

Inside his head he said:

I left. I took the turkey. I ran home. I hit her. I went back. I put the turkey back among the others. I put the bloody wrapping into the butcher trash. I took the ruined pork instead. I came home and saw the blood.

His face remained open and stricken.

“Just around sundown.”

The detective continued.

“Tell me more about seeing your wife at the hospital earlier that day.”

Naoki swallowed.

“She was working.”

“Did she seem upset?”

“No.”

In fact, she looked too happy.

That answer came too quickly, so he added more. “She seemed… better than she had lately.”

The detective’s pen paused.

“Better?”

“She was laughing with coworkers.”

With a doctor, his mind added.

The detective asked, “Did that bother you?”

Naoki blinked.

“No. I was delighted to see her smiling face. She was beautiful.”

Not a lie.