Ink and Ashes

by Valynne E. Maetani

  This couldn’t be happening. How many lies were there?

  The picture showed the two flanking another man in the middle, who hadn’t been named. This man was about the same age as my dad, dressed similarly in a dark suit and sunglasses. Above was an arched metal sign that read Santa Monica Pier. Tony wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt. I enlarged the image. Peeking out from the collar of Tony’s shirt were tattoos. They were hardly noticeable, and if he hadn’t had his arm around the man in the middle, his shirt might not have pulled in a way that would have shown them. The man in the middle had his arms folded, a pinky missing from his left hand.

  What was Dad doing with these men? Especially with Tony? I clicked on Nobu Yamasaki to see where the tag would take me, and it revealed a simple profile with basic information. Nobu had a profile picture that was definitely my dad, but he had listed himself as a single man, divorced but no children, living in West Los Angeles. Was Dad dating other women while he was out there?

  I thought I might throw up. Was Dad in the yakuza? Did he have something to do with my father’s death? Had Dad been working with Mr. Tama? Could this have anything to do with what happened to me? He was supposed to love me. He was supposed to take care of me.

  My throat felt closed off almost completely, and I could barely breathe. I tried to slow the thoughts pinging in my brain. What did this have to do with me? What would Dad have to gain if I were gone? He could have killed me at any time. Was there a reason to drag it out? Why me and not my brothers? The only thing that made me different was I was a girl. Why did that matter?

  I was a girl. That was the difference.

  In my father’s notebook, he’d written an entry on how I was his only daughter. My father had been an extremely traditional man, and he had written about how he had put away money in my name for a dowry. He didn’t say how much, but it might be worth killing me for, especially if it had been accruing interest for almost seventeen years.

  If I was dead, I had to believe the money would go to my mom. And then, he could kill off the rest of my family, and he would walk away with whatever money was there.

  But why all these events? Was it to throw suspicion onto someone else?

  Before I could think of an answer to that, the office light flipped on.

  I screamed and fell to the ground, my phone and the luggage tag paper tumbling to the floor next to me.

  Dad stood at the door, pointing a gun at my head.

  HIS FACE WAS gnarled in an angry expression, and then recognition seemed to set in as he realized it was me.

  “What are you doing in here?” He lowered his gun.

  I scrambled backward in a crab walk as fast as I could until my back hit one of the leather chairs, pushing it aside, and then the desk. My heart beat against my chest, pounding so hard it rang in my ears. “I know who you are,” I said, my body shaking.

  “I’m your dad.” He slowly put the gun in his waistband at the back of his pajama pants. “And whatever you’re thinking, I’m sure you’re wrong.” He took a step in my direction.

  I tried to back up, but there was nowhere to go. “Don’t come any closer!”

  Dad held his empty hands up in surrender position. “I’m not going to hurt you, Claire. I promise. I love you.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek. I choked back a sob. “You’ve been lying this whole time. Why would I trust you now?”

  He took another step closer.

  “Stop!” I screamed, hoping to wake someone up.

  Mom came running, eyes wide. “What’s going—” She stopped when saw me on the floor. Her focus moved to the small of Dad’s back where he’d placed the gun.

  “I don’t know exactly what she knows, but it’s probably best if I handle this by myself.” He waved her away.

  She nodded, put her hand to her chest, and started to back up. How could she trust me with this man?

  “Mom, don’t leave me.” I stared into her eyes, begging, pleading.

  “You’ll be okay,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have a guess. Just trust your dad.” She nodded at Dad and continued backing into her room.

  Was she in on this too? “Why did you send her away?”

  Slowly, he lowered his hands to his sides. “Because this is about my relationship with you.”

  I reached for my phone, but his eyes caught me.

  “Don’t,” he said, holding out a hand. “You need to trust me.”

  I stared into his dark eyes. “If you want me to trust you, you’d better start answering my questions, or I will call the police. I swear I will. And then I’ll find a way to contact Tony Akiyama, and I’ll tell him who you really are.” The luggage tag paper was within reach, so I snatched it and waved it at him. “Does he know who you are? Does he think you’re single? How many people are you lying to?”

  Dad’s eyes closed and his brows pinched together. He massaged the wrinkles on his forehead. “Go ahead. What do you want to know?”

  Now that I had my chance, I didn’t know where to start, didn’t know if I really wanted to know what he would say. I’d been in this same position before, asking questions about my father, wanting to know more. Could I even trust him to tell me the truth?

  “Do you have any tattoos?” The question wasn’t the one burning at the front of my mind, but I needed to wade into the water slowly to see how deep I was willing to go. As much as I had loved my father, I knew the answers my dad might give me had the potential to rip my heart in ways that couldn’t be fixed.

  “I do. One on my hip.”

  No wonder I’d never seen it. “What kind of tattoo?”

  “The Takata mon.” He reached around his back and steadied his gun with his left hand. With his right, he tugged down the waistband of his flannel pajama pants and boxers to reveal our family crest, about two inches in diameter, low on his hip.

  Relief washed over me, allowing me to steady my nerves. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  Dad paused for much longer than I expected. My sinking feeling plunged somewhere even deeper and darker. Too many times, my gut had told me all of his business trips didn’t make sense, but I could never come up with a realistic answer for why that would be. Thinking he was a member of the yakuza still didn’t make sense to me either, but what other explanation could there be?

  “You don’t deal in antiquities, do you?” I asked at last. He never seemed to bring any antiquities home. For all I knew, he’d never dealt with the Copper Cactus at all.

  He didn’t say anything. He only shook his head, confirming what I’d known all along but never voiced, never truly wanted to know. My father and Dad, both involved in nefarious schemes. At least my father tried to right his wrongdoings. What kinds of horrible things had Dad done? But I was done asking questions. I knew all I needed to know.

  Dad reached out slowly and grabbed the back of one of the leather chairs, sliding it closer to him. He glanced through the glass of the french doors, and then pulled them closed.

  My heart thundered. I stared at my feet, and hugged my knees to my chest, the paper wilting in my hand. A stabbing pain tore through me. I had loved and trusted a man I’d never really known at all.

  He perched himself at the chair’s edge and scooted it closer to me. “Claire, I need you to look at me.”

  My shaking body stayed frozen in the same spot, but I let my eyes drift up.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard. “I thought I did, but I don’t know,” I said and shifted my focus to the floor.

  “Do you know that I love you?” His voice was soft, and his expression sincere.

  In the past, I’d known and never questioned it. I still wanted to think he loved me, but too much had happened. “I don’t know.”

  “Claire, look at me.” He said each word as if it were its own sentence.

  I forced myself to raise my eyes until they met his.

  “Do you feel that I love you?”

  There was a slight
tremble in his voice.

  Whether he deserved it or not, I knew I loved him. Could I trust myself to see what was really there rather than what I wanted to see?

  Dad rested his hands on his knees, and his face was soft, crinkles at the corners of his eyes. When I bored my eyes into his, trying to glimpse his soul, I couldn’t ignore the warmth that swelled inside of me. “Yes. I feel you love me.”

  He pointed to the other leather chair. “Then come sit next to me.”

  My legs wobbled as I stood. What was I doing? If I felt his love, did that also mean I trusted him? I slid the chair to its original position, and let myself sink into the leather.

  Before he started to speak again, he eyed my closed fist and held out his hand. I gave him the scrap of paper with both names on it, and he set it on his lap. “I deal with some very dangerous people,” he said in a soft voice. “People who trust me and consider me a friend. People who would hurt me and our family if they knew I wasn’t who I say I am.”

  A small tear rolled down my cheek. “Who are you?” I asked in a voice that was barely audible. My knuckles had gone white from gripping the sides of the chair. “Who is Nobu Yamasaki?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

  I thought of the autopsy report, and how my father had died. I hadn’t let myself really think before about how something was suspicious with his death, and how even though the cause of death was listed as a heart attack, the manner of death was undetermined, which meant something else must have caused the heart attack, and it could’ve been medicine that caused it, or it could’ve been something he did on purpose.

  Or it could have been someone.

  My heart raced and my voice trembled. “Did you kill my father?”

  He reached over and put his hand on my arm. His grip felt strong. “No,” Dad said. “Claire, I loved your father. I love your mother. I love you and your brothers. I would never hurt any of you.”

  The room felt as if oxygen had become scarce. I tried to breathe, but my throat was too tight.

  “Did someone else kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  I had to ask again. I needed him to say it out loud. “Who—who are you?”

  “I’m your dad.” His voice was hushed. “And that won’t ever change.”

  Some of the knots in my stomach began to loosen. I fixated on the trees outside the window. The sun had begun its rise, but it was still so dark. Every now and then the wind rustled the fading night, and a silhouetted leaf glided gently to the ground. I focused on a falling leaf, focused as if it was the most important thing in the world. My eyes traced the descending path, and by the time it fell below my view, I could breathe again.

  His hand remained steady on my arm. “Claire, when your father died,” he said, “I vowed to take down the man who did it. I had already been working with the government, but when he died, I switched divisions, and I am in very deep with the organization behind your father’s murder. As far as they know, I roam between L.A. and San Francisco. To them, people like Tony Akiyama, I am Nobu Yamasaki. But if they found out who I really am, it would be bad for all of us.”

  He lifted his hand off my arm, took the crumpled paper tag from his lap and stared at it. “As Nobu, I am single and childless so no one tries to get to you to get to me. It’s one of the ways I keep you safe. Your mother is the only other person who knows.” His fingers curled around the tag until it disappeared in his fist. He raised his eyes to capture mine with a tight expression. “I need you to promise you won’t say anything to anyone, including your brothers.”

  “I promise,” I said. “Why are you only telling me?”

  Dad moved his grip from my arm and rotated my chair so I was directly in front of him. He took both of my hands into his on my lap. “Because your brothers are content in their ignorance, but you are a much higher liability when you don’t know something.” He shook his head. “A real pain in the ass.” He smiled. “I like to think you got that from me.”

  I bit my lip, then returned the smile. “I am your daughter.”

  “I’ll tell your brothers soon,” he said. “When the time is right.”

  I sat for a moment, taking in what Dad had said, my hands still in his. Could I believe him? My intuition said I could—that he’d never do anything to hurt us. And when I looked into his eyes, there was something there, even if I didn’t have proof, something told me he loved me even though I had doubted him. Even though I’d made mistakes. That had to be proof. And it wasn’t like the CIA had badges . . . did they?

  The heaviness in the air lifted. If Dad wasn’t working with Mr. Tama, then we should be safe.

  “Dad, this should all be over, right? Now that Mr. Tama’s been arrested?” I asked.

  I noticed Dad’s eyes were red and his face sagged. He sighed. “I hope so, but I’m going to make sure I check out any other possibilities to make sure he wasn’t working with anyone.”

  I let the chair swallow me. As I sank, I stared at the light on the ceiling, counting the dead bugs caught in the domed glass.

  Mr. Tama could have been behind the cheating accusation. Maybe there had never been a student involved in the accusation in the first place like he’d suggested. Was he trying to ruin my life in every way possible? He must have known I wouldn’t be allowed to play soccer if that happened, and when he saw how easy it was, he probably moved to the next thing. I’d already concluded getting into my locker would have been easy for him. In fact, I remembered it was his first day there, and he was late to class. He could have stolen my pictures before he’d gotten to the room.

  On the day I received the eyeballs, he’d actually stopped me on the way in and said he wanted to speak to me. That’s probably when he slipped the box into my backpack—probably a little trick he learned in prison. He’d seen me take off running after class. Maybe he thought I was already on to him. Had he left school and chased me down in the black SUV when I hadn’t met him in the faculty lounge? And then run me down in the white car later? Obviously he broke in to my room and started the fire because that’s what led me to him in the first place. It seemed possible he could have done everything by himself, although how would he know about all the Japanese superstitions? How did he choose the Japanese song?

  A thought made me bolt upright. “Do you think he had ties to the yakuza? Maybe he met someone in prison. How else would he have known about all the Japanese stuff?”

  Dad had reclined in the seat next to me and stretched out his legs to the side of my chair. The back of the chair supported his neck, and his eyes were half closed. “If he had ties, I would have known about it because he would’ve been on my radar a long time ago.”

  I sat up and folded my legs under me in the chair. “How could the school even hire someone like that?” Weren’t there laws to protect us—to make sure this exact thing didn’t happen?

  Dad stayed in the same position but scrubbed the sleep from his eyes so he could look at me. “He did everything he was supposed to do. He was only eighteen when he was arrested and charged for credit card theft.” He gestured with his left hand, up and down, in a chopping motion. “He was sentenced to three years, but he worked with a group called the Waiawa Circle of Friends, who helped him petition the governor to get a pardon, and after that his record was expunged.”

  I gazed out the window. The sun had moved higher. The sky was gray, washed with pockets of pale blue. I expected to feel happier, knowing the man who had stalked me and sent me such nasty “presents” was behind bars. But something wasn’t right.

  I couldn’t stop questions from poking at me. I rose from my chair and wandered to the window. “So if my father is dead, why come after me? Why now, and why me, and not my brothers?” I asked, glancing back.

  Dad grabbed the ends of the armrests and pulled himself upright, folding his legs back toward him. “I’m not sure why he chose you, but it could have been as simple as you were the one he had the most access to because he was your teacher.” He rem
oved his gun from the back of his waistband and checked the safety before he set it on his desk.

  Before long, he was next to me, his expression pensive. “When a person feels like he’s been wronged, he can lash out in ways that don’t necessarily make sense.” Dad shifted his focus to something beyond me. “From what I’ve seen since your father died, there isn’t a statute of limitations for revenge. Sometimes the desire to make things fair or right only gets stronger over time. Sometimes this gets expressed in irrational ways.”

  Even with all the evidence, I still couldn’t imagine Mr. Tama trying to hurt me, much less trying to kill me. I knew it sounded naive, but I still had to ask. “What do you think he was planning to do to me?”

  “I don’t know.” Dad put his arm around my shoulder and tugged me close enough that he could rest his chin on the top of my head. “I don’t even want to think about it. I’m just glad you and the rest of the family are all safe.”

  “Me too.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, and we stared out into the street, facing the mountains as the sun climbed higher above the peaks. The window glowed a slightly greenish tint in the rays from a film Dad had specially ordered so our windows on the first floor would be resistant to baseballs or rocks. “That special film you had put on the windows? It wasn’t because you were afraid one of us would throw a ball or something at it and accidentally break it.”

  “No.”

  “Are they bulletproof?”

  “Yes.” He rubbed his hand along my arm. “But in the event of a fire, the structure will change, and you’ll be able to break through. Otherwise, no.”

  Silence hung in the air. There were so many things I had yet to learn about my dad. About our house. About our past. About our futures.

  “Claire, what were you thinking when you broke in to his classroom? Why didn’t you come to me first?” His chin dug into me when he exhaled a tired breath. “Never mind. After this morning, I think I understand what was going through your mind.” He lifted his head from mine and pointed to the side of his head with the arm that wasn’t around me. “Do you see this gray hair?” he asked. “It has your name written all over it.”