Mas finally scooted down into the belly of the pond on his oshiri. The concrete was cold and wet from the morning dew, and Mas knew that it would take some time before his jeans dried completely. Mas crawled on his hands and knees to the spot. The carved message, left for who? Kazzy, the son? Or perhaps someone like Mas, a fellow gardener whose gaze stayed on small things, perhaps because that was all he was allowed to see. What had Kazzy’s father used? The end of a stick? The end of a rake? Either way, the strokes were sure and strong.. Child. And. To live. CHILD LIVES. CHILD LIVES. Jinx Watanabe said that Kazzy’s sibling had died in birth with his mother. But Kazzy’s father knew different. So did the housekeeper, Asa Sumi. A baby had been born. A baby with pale skin. A baby girl, according to Asa’s diary.

Mas didn’t know if it was the result of a love affair, but he doubted it.

“Fixing something?” Mas knew who it was even before he looked up to see the varicose-veined legs of Miss Waxley. She was holding a small gun; how did a genteel woman like Miss Waxley know how to shoot? wondered Mas.

Mas raised his arms, like he had seen done in so many cowboy and detective movies. It was such a natural response. I surrender. I give up. But Mas knew that Miss Waxley would not honor his defeat without payment. The shot, he imagined, might go through his heart, or perhaps his head, like Kazzy.

They both knew the truth, so there was no use in Mas saying it out loud. But Mas did have one question. “Youzu old like me. Whatsu the use? You gotsu no kids.”

“How can you say that? This is my life. The only life that I’ve ever known. All these years, I’ve wondered why my mother didn’t show more love to me. I had always blamed it on her sickness, but then Kazzy comes to me, saying that he has proof that we are half brother and sister. The same mother. The Irish maid.

“I told him that he was wrong. What’s this proof he has? And then he gives me a translation of the journal. That the Japanese housekeeper assisted in my birth. That she thought it unusual that the baby looked so white, with golden wisps of hair.”

Kazzy must have sensed that there had been something mysterious about his father’s death. They would probably never know what really happened. Mas suspected that Henry Waxley had played some sort of role in Hirokazu Ouchi’s early demise, just as Elk Mamiya had hypothesized.

“I couldn’t let him tarnish my father’s reputation,” Miss Waxley continued. “My family’s reputation. He told me that he needed to tell his children, his grandchildren. That his own father had left this message, and to honor his father, he needed to let everyone know the truth.”

“Whatchu father did can’t hurt you, Miss Waxley. Thatsu his business, not yours.”

“You should have left it alone, Mr. Arai. Just let it stay buried. But I saw you that day at the garden, looking at the writing in the pond. You were slowly putting two and two together.”

The gun in Miss Waxley’s hand shook-from either nerves or the old lady’s weak muscles. “But the journal’s gone, you see. Destroyed. Burnt to a crisp.”

What about the copies? Mas thought. Then he realized that Miss Waxley wasn’t operating out of logic, but of desperation. “Youzu wrote those notes. To Becca and Phillip. And Anna Grady. From K- san.” It was so clear to Mas.

Miss Waxley nodded. “I was in the house when that gardenia was delivered. I saw it as my chance, my chance to get Kazzy alone. To stage his suicide. So easy. But then you came along, ruining my plans.

“I knew that it was a matter of time before you came here again. You couldn’t let the poor plants alone, could you?” Her eyes shifted to the message on the concrete floor of the pond. “I hate this garden. What’s written there, for everyone to see. My father’s company has poured money into restoring this place. But Kazzy didn’t care. He was going to keep going, whether I liked it or not. My life is mine; it’s not for public display.”

Mas didn’t doubt that Miss Waxley was prepared to kill him. She hadn’t just killed Kazzy, but must have also ordered poor Seiko’s death in Fort Lee. And Mas was next on the list. He wished that he had hung on to Mari back in the hospital, like her ragamuffin friends. But she knew that Mas cared, didn’t she? Flew all the way to New York? Gave blood for the grandson? Mas kept his arms outstretched like the man on the cross. His fingers trembled, and he didn’t know if it was from holding his arms up so long or straight-out fear. He knew that he should keep his eyes wide open, remembering his last moments clearly, the still cherry blossom branches, the clumps of silver grass, the grayness covering the sky like a blanket. But he closed his eyes, picturing his daughter holding his grandson.

A pop burned in Mas’s ear, and then a smell ten times stronger than burning incense. Mas opened his eyes and Miss Waxley was screaming, tumbling toward him like a crazy bird trying to land. Mas rolled to his left, and Miss Waxley fell headlong on the concrete bottom, the gun clattering nearby. Mas looked up and saw the outline of his daughter standing at the rim of the pond. “You okay, Dad?” she asked.

Mas felt his chest, his shoulders, even his head. There was no blood, no holes, no missing parts. He was completely intact, whole.

chapter fourteen

The wayward bullet, this time, had not landed on the dirt floor of the shed, but in the trunk of one of the cherry blossom trees. It was indeed Mari who had saved him, cracking Miss Waxley’s head with one of the garden rocks and then pushing the old woman four feet down onto the concrete floor. Luckily, the busybody neighbor had seen Mari run into the garden; curiosity had gotten the best of him. He had witnessed Miss Waxley brandishing the gun and spouting out her confession, thereby becoming Mari’s ticket out of jail.

“Howsu you know I’m here?” Mas was resting on the back stairs, his hands still trembling.

“I was worried when you never came back to the hospital with my things,” Mari explained. She had gone to the apartment, found the fax, and promptly called Haruo, who gave her a quick translation of the fax. He was the one who suggested that Mas might be at the garden. “He told me that you would need to be around plants to really think.”

Like always, Haruo was watching his back, more than three thousand miles away.

In minutes the police arrived. If Mari hadn’t saved Mas, the police would have been investigating a murder-suicide. Mas figured that after he was shot, Miss Waxley would have turned the gun on herself. The point wasn’t that she escape prosecution but that her secret end where it started, at the Waxley House.

Paramedics checked out Miss Waxley’s broken body and confirmed that she was indeed dead, her skull cracked, with her sticky blood settling underneath her. She was a tough baba -an old woman with a single-minded purpose-to hide the fact that her father had had relations, most likely forced, with an Irish maid. And that union had resulted in her, a woman whose perceived family lineage was so revered and precise. The Waxley family ended with her, but the irony was that the extended family tree would continue on, with the Ouchis.

Mari and Mas took turns sitting in the dining room of the Waxley House, telling their stories to Detective Ghigo, his bald partner, and their attorney, Jeannie. Mari went first, because she was considered the main suspect. After her turn, Mas was called in. He kept his eyes on the attorney as he told them about reading the journal and putting two and two together. Seeing the words on the bottom of the pond had sealed it, and then he had come face-to-face with Miss Waxley and her gun.