The Kizuna Coast: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 11) Read Free Page B

cloudy from the sleeping pills, and a line of pain ran across my midback, courtesy of the sofa bed’s bar. Michael was on the other side; he’d slipped into bed when I was knocked out.
    From the kitchen, I could hear my aunt and uncle talking about the local impact.
    “Just a tiny one-foot wave hit Waikiki,” Uncle Edwin scoffed. “All those warnings for evacuation made no sense. The lady at Safeway was saying our wave was too small even for a toddler to surf.”
    “Better safe than sorry. Remember the 1960 tsunami in Hilo?” Aunt Margaret’s high voice reproached from the kitchen. “People knew it was coming, but some stayed to watch like fools and got themselves killed.” She looked through to the living room and waved at me. “Rei, you and Michael gotta get up! Come watch over the veggie bacon Edwin got for you. Everyone else is having Portuguese sausage.”
    Rubbing my eyes, I went into the kitchen. The artificial bacon was sizzling on the stove; using a spatula, I flipped it, although it held no appeal for me. Looking toward the crowded kitchen table, I saw the little television Aunt Margaret always kept going. The TV was broadcasting a repeat of one of the morning news shows, and a newscaster was speaking about the results of the earthquake and tsunami. Then came the horrifying pictures of destruction and people searching for loved ones. I wanted to turn away but couldn’t.
    “Rei, did you speak with your Japanese auntie yet?” Margaret asked. “I bet you’re worried. We all are.”
    “I couldn’t get through to her last night. One time, I did get a recording from the phone company saying circuits were full.” I stopped talking to listen to the television, where an American reporter in Japan was talking about schoolchildren who’d vanished on a kindergarten bus that was presumed taken by the wave.
    “Rei, your bacon’s burning!”
    Michael rushed in wearing nothing but shorts and grabbed up the spatula I’d forgotten. With soft eyes he looked at me, then put the burnt bacon on his own plate.
    Still in a fog, I dropped Michael at Pearl Harbor a few hours later and returned to Ewa Landing. After doing some work check-ins, I left my office for a late lunch and settled down at the kitchen table with my phone. The first six times I called my Shimura relatives in Yokohama, there was neither a dial tone nor even a busy signal. Just a static-filled silence that was mystifying and only served to make me feel like the whole country had gone under. But on my seventh try, the crackling gave way to the usual double-beep of a Japanese phone ringing. My heart began pounding. If someone picked up, what would I learn? Maybe something I didn’t want to hear.
    Three more rings. Just as I was expecting the answering machine to pick up, my aunt Norie answered
“Hai”
as if it was an ordinary morning.
    I was almost too frazzled to remember the proper telephone greeting of
moshi-moshi
. I blurted, “Obasan! I’ve been so worried.”
    “Rei-chan, it’s very thoughtful of you to call. Don’t worry. We are not near the devastation. But what a bump it was; the ceiling tiles fell down right on the flowers I was arranging during my class at the
ikebana
school.”
    “It sounds as if you were in Tokyo yesterday afternoon. Where were Uncle Hiroshi and my cousins?”
    “Chika-chan was traveling for work in Osaka, where she didn’t even feel the earth tremble because it’s so far away.” My aunt gave a half laugh at this. “Tom was at his hospital in Tokyo. He took care of almost a hundred people, stayed overnight, and is continuing work there today. Your uncle was on the train from Tokyo to Yokohama. That train slipped partly off the track but fortunately did not turn over.”
    “Thank God!” I had not thought about the impact the jolting would have on the thousands of trains crisscrossing Japan.
    “The situation in Tohoku is much more serious. So many people are missing from small towns along the coast. It’s a