He let his hand fall back to his side, turned, smiled at her, and said, “Then off we go.”
CHAPTER
34
IT WAS CLEAR THAT MASUYOdid not know that Hiroko was coming along on the outing. But when Nash told the woman that her daughter had organized it, Masuyo questioned nothing. However, she was dismissive of the other woman and showed her displeasure for Hiroko’s presence the entire time they were out. For her part, Hiroko seemed nervous and excessively ill at ease, and Nash didn’t think it was simply because of the way Masuyo treated her.
Hiroko just seemed afraid to be around the other woman.
The shopping and tea completed, they drove back in silence to Steers’s building. Thura escorted Masuyo to her part of the penthouse, while Nash took Hiroko back to her small apartment.
“Ms. Steers advised me to get to know you better, Ms. Hiroko.”
“How wonderful. If you have the time, come in then and we can chat, Mr. Hope.”
“You can just call me Dillon.”
“I will call you Dillon-san. And please call me Hiroko-san. I had my tea, but would you like some?”
Nash brightened at the offer. “Thank you, yes.”
While she put on a kettle and got the tea ready, Nash looked around the living room. On some shelving there were a number of framed photos. Almost all of them were, presumably, pictures of Hiroko and Steers, the latter from the time she was an infant in a blanket to a fully grown woman. And there were numerous drawings of Hiroko that spanned many years. They were mostly done in pencil and pen and ink, but there was also one in watercolor.
Hiroko brought the tea in, poured out a cup, and handed it to Nash, who took a sip and smiled appreciatively.
“Excellent, thank you.”
They sat down in her small living room with impressive views of the city.
“Victoria-san has always been so good to me,” noted Hiroko.
“She said you have been with her since she was born. And I see that in the photos.”
Hiroko looked at the shelves of pictures and her face crinkled into a smile. “Yes.”
“And those drawings of you?”
“Victoria-san did those. She said she wanted to capture her Hiroko-san as I aged.”
“She really did those?” Nash said in surprise.
“Oh yes. She maintains a studio here where she paints and draws. She is very talented.”
“They’re really exceptional.”
“She was the youngest child, so it was in some ways easier and in other ways harder for her. The other children. . .they had their own people to care for them, and my job was to look after little Victoria-san.”
“I’m sure she was a handful,” noted Nash.
“I do not know what. . .?”
“Stubborn?”
Hiroko tittered. “Oh yes, she had that way about her. She would wave her little fists and would want to do things only her way.”
This intrigued Nash. “What did you do when she did that?”
Hiroko said quietly and precisely, as though reliving a cherished memory, “I would get down on the floor so that I was eye to eye with her. I would tell Victoria-san that true wisdom was not thinking that only you had all the right answers in your head, but to draw upon all the knowledge that was out there and then judge for yourself what was worthy and what was not. If you did so, you would be smarter than everyone else.”