I asked Yuichi if she ever got in touch. He shook his head and I thought that was the end of it. But then he added, “If it’s about Grandpa’s condition, I already told her.”

“You told her? You mean… you have kept in touch with her?”

“We go out to eat sometimes.”

“What do you mean by sometimes?”

“Once a year, maybe.”

“Do your grandparents know about this?”

“No, they don’t,” Yuichi replied, shaking his head. His grandpa took great pride in the fact that he’d raised Yuichi, so it must have been hard for Yuichi to say anything about it.

“Don’t you get angry when you meet her?” I said this without thinking. I mean, look, his mother abandoned him there at the ferryboat dock, without anything to eat, and he ended up stuck with his grandparents.

But Yuichi said, “No, I’m not angry. I don’t see her enough to get angry.”

“Where is she now, and what’s she doing?” I asked.

“She works at an inn, in Unzen.” This was about three or four years ago.

Apparently he’s driven over a few times to see her. “What do the two of you talk about?” I asked.

“Nothing much.”

I know I can’t forgive his mother for what she did. I can still picture Yuichi at the ferry dock, abandoned. It’s not just me. His grandfather and grandmother, and the other relatives, feel the same way. But this parent-child relationship really is strange, isn’t it? None of us forgave her, but Yuichi did.

After seeing Yuichi off, Mitsuyo sat for a while on the staircase outside her apartment. The hard concrete chilled her backside, and from an apartment on the first floor, she could hear a young man soothing a baby.

Finally she couldn’t stand the cold so she headed back to her apartment on the second floor. She opened the door and called out, “I’m back!”

Tamayo, from the bathroom, called out, “You had to work overtime?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mitsuyo answered, and took off her shoes. She went down the hallway to the living room, where she saw a plate on the table. It looked like Tamayo had been eating stew.

“Did you make this yourself?” she asked, turning toward the bathroom, but there was no response.

She slid open the door to her small bedroom. Yuichi must be on the highway already, she thought. She found herself next to the window, pulling aside the lace curtain. A stray cat loped across the spot where she and Yuichi had said goodbye. Just then a car pulled off the main road at a high speed, almost spinning out as it headed in her direction. The cat, about to scurry toward the garbage cans, was illuminated in the bluish headlights.

Mitsuyo instinctively clasped her hands together. “Watch out!” she said to herself. The car came to a halt, just shy of hitting the plastic garbage cans. The cat, shrunk back in the headlights, scampered away.

“Yuichi?”

The car that had skidded to a halt there was definitely his. The headlights illuminated the empty space where the stray cat had been.

Mitsuyo closed the curtains and raced to the front door. She was in such a hurry she couldn’t get her heels into her shoes. As she grabbed her bag, Tamayo called out, “Where are you going?” Mitsuyo didn’t reply and ran out of the apartment.

From the staircase she could see Yuichi inside the dark car, head down against the steering wheel. The car’s headlights shone on the filthy garbage cans. As she ran down the stairs she came to an abrupt stop. Was this all a hallucination? she suddenly wondered. Did I want to see him so much I’m having a hallucination?

Still, as she slowly approached, the gravel crunched under her feet. She rapped on the window with her fingers and as she did Yuichi bolted upright. What’s the matter? she wordlessly mouthed. Yuichi’s eyes as they followed her lips looked like they were gazing at something else, something far away.

Mitsuyo rapped on the glass again, asking with her eyes again the same question, What’s the matter? As if in reply, Yuichi looked away. She tapped the window once more, and Yuichi, clutching the steering wheel, eyes down, slowly opened the door. Mitsuyo took a step back.

Without a word he got out of the car and stood in front of her. Looking up at him, Mitsuyo again asked, “What’s wrong?”

A car rushed by on the main road; the weeds along the road whipped in the blast of air. Yuichi suddenly grabbed her and held her tight. It was so quick that Mitsuyo let out a short cry.

“I wish I’d met you earlier,” he said as he held her against his chest. “If I’d met you earlier, none of this would have happened…”

“What do you mean?”

“Please get in the car, okay?”

“Huh?”

“Get in the car!” Yuichi suddenly said roughly, and grabbed Mitsuyo’s arm, pulling her around to the passenger side.

“What is going on?” Mitsuyo tried to pull away, her heels digging into the gravel.

“Just get in!”

Almost holding her under his arm, Yuichi opened the passenger door. With both doors open, the wind rushed through, carrying out the heated air from inside.

“Wait-wait a second!” Mitsuyo said, resisting. She didn’t mind so much getting in the car, but she wanted to know why.

“What is up with you? Tell me!”

As he pressed her down, Mitsuyo grabbed his wrist. After his harsh words, and the rough treatment, Mitsuyo was surprised to feel his trembling wrist feel so frail.

Yuichi shoved her inside, slammed the door shut, and hurried around to the driver’s side. He almost tumbled inside and, breathing raggedly, he released the parking brake. The tires sprayed gravel as he shot down the path. He roared past the vacant lot in front of the apartment building and turned sharply to the left. As he turned, he nearly crashed into a car coming from the opposite direction, and Mitsuyo screamed.

They barely missed the other car and sped down the dark path through the rice fields.

Fusae turned off the light in the bedroom, sat up in her futon, and, without making a sound, crawled over toward the window. With a trembling hand she parted the curtain a bit. Outside the window was a cinder-block wall with a few blocks missing, and through the holes she could see the narrow road in front. The patrol car that had been outside was gone now. Instead, a black car was parked there, and in the light from inside the car she could see a young plainclothes detective talking on a cell phone.

An hour before, Fusae had called Yuichi, the local patrolman and the plainclothes detective standing in front of her as she did. She could barely follow their directions to call him. Before she called, they warned her not to let him know they were there, but she’d blurted it out. When he heard this, Yuichi hung up.

It was all so unexpected. They’d all thought the Fukuoka college student was the murderer, but he wasn’t. Even so, she still couldn’t understand why the police had come here again.

“Yuichi has nothing to do with this,” she insisted, her voice trembling, but the police wouldn’t relent. “Just call his cell phone,” they told her. The instant she let slip that the police were there, they couldn’t hide their anger and disappointment. This is one worthless old lady, they must have thought, and their expressions were exactly like those of the men who had forced her to buy the Chinese herbal medicine. The irritated men who told her just to Sign it already!

She took her hand from the curtain. Usually the only sound she heard in this neighborhood was the waves, but now, with several strangers hanging around outside, she could sense their presence, even with the windows closed.

She closed the curtains and crouched down next to the wall. It seemed as though the wall were shaking, but she knew it was her. If she stayed still, the shaking would only get worse; she was about to faint. The Fukuoka college student they’d arrested apparently hadn’t murdered that young woman. He’d taken her to the pass-that much was certain-but what he said about events after that didn’t make sense. He said that before he gave her a ride she’d been at Higashi Park, in another man’s car, a car with Nagasaki plates. Apparently the other man looked like Yuichi.