Although she’d been gone a year, inside him their time apart contracted suddenly, and that she hadn’t outwardly changed both confounded him and seemed inevitable. In addition to being shorter, her hair was also lighter, a chocolatey color it might have become after exposure to the sun. She paused at his table and gave a long, low bow. Her hair fell from behind her ears and hung straight down, causing her sunglasses to drop from the neck of her dress to the floor. A waitress behind her knelt to retrieve them. People at the surrounding tables had turned to watch Nozomi’s unexpectedly formal behavior. It was like a performance, Sedge nearly said aloud.
She sat across from him and asked the same waitress for a glass of water and a cup of coffee. The waitress looked at Sedge, who had put off ordering until Nozomi arrived. “I’ll have the same,” he told her.
Nozomi set her sunglasses on the table. Almost immediately she took them back and placed them in her lap, where she turned them over repeatedly. The clacking of their earpieces was the only noise between them.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she finally said. “I realize it can’t be easy for you.”
Her voice was stronger than he expected—different from before, or different from how he remembered it. Hearing it confirmed that she was real and in front of him again. Even so, he remembered—he consciously reminded himself—that he had nothing to celebrate by seeing her. Though he tried to conceal his careful observation of her, he noticed she was thinner, her cheeks and the line of her shoulders just prominent enough to indicate this. Had she lost weight because she’d been taking care of herself, or because of worry or even illness? She wore little makeup, which wasn’t unusual, allowing him to see she wasn’t hiding any bruises. His mind raced wildly. He could barely speak.
“Is this easy for you?” he managed to say.
“Of course not. But I’m relieved we’re together again like this. I was extremely nervous until I saw you sitting here.”
“And you’re not now?”
“No, I am. Would you like to feel my pulse?” She held out an arm, beautifully white with perfect green-blue veins running through it.
He shook his head.
“Your face is bruised,” she said, leaning forward. “What happened?”
“I got in a fight.”
“You? You never fight. Who was it with?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She reached across the small, marble-topped table between them and took his hand. He wanted to draw it away, but the inclination was only a mental exercise. Her hand was warm; or his was unnaturally cold. He only pulled his hand back when he could no longer control its trembling.
“Are you moving back to Kanazawa?” he said.
She paused, and he saw her trying to process his tone. “I don’t know yet. It depends partly on what my mother and brother ask me to do. If anything.”
When she turned to look out the window, his eyes scrambled over her body, which appeared thinner as well. That another man had taken it from him, had probably discovered every secret pleasure it had once bestowed only on Sedge, infuriated him. And yet he had discovered similar pleasures with that very same man’s wife. None of it made sense.
“Have you seen them yet?” he asked.
“Yes. I stayed at Takahashi and Yuki’s ryokan my first night back. For the last two days I’ve been at my mother’s.”
Sedge could hardly believe she had been in Yamanaka Onsen at the same time he was living with Mariko. He wondered if the two women had seen each other. Mariko never mentioned that she had, but it would also be like her to shield him from this, just as she had shielded him from her husband’s Kutani-ware in the hallway outside his room.
“I was sorry to hear about your father,” he said. “Your family kept me at arm’s length after he died. They distrusted me, and your mother was sure I’d chased you off. That hurt me, but I came to understand where I stood. I’m afraid I pushed them hard to be included in his funeral and cremation. You’ve probably heard about it by now.”
“Why would they distrust you?”
“They didn’t say?”
She shook her head.
“They worried that I’d press charges against you. It’s true they helped me, but they weren’t concerned with my well-being. More than anything, they were afraid about what might happen to them.”
She looked down. “I’m sorry. I made it awkward for everyone.”
“You’re lucky they’re so forgiving with you.”
The waitress came back with their drinks and slid a cakes menu onto their table. By the time she bowed and stepped away, Nozomi was looking at him again.
“I’m not sure which I regret more: leaving you how I did or being unreachable when my father passed away. At least I’ll be able to help with the shijūkunichi soon. That consoles me a little.”
Sedge had forgotten about the forty-nine-day death memorial that her family would hold, but it no longer mattered to him.
She continued: “The man I ran away with, Kōichi, insisted that I hold off contacting anyone, even my parents. He took my phone the moment we left Kanazawa and wouldn’t give it back. In the end, he threw it into a river and just laughed. You may not believe it, or not want to hear it, but it’s been difficult for me, too.”
“What do you mean?”
But she didn’t answer, and he wasn’t prepared for what she said. “I don’t want to go into it now, but Kōichi wasn’t who I thought he was. He took the money I’d taken from you, and I had to beg for everything I needed.”
“What did you need it for?” The question nearly burst out of him. “Why did you have to take everything?”
“He told me to. And I didn’t want to disappoint him. He said we needed it to live on.”
Sedge closed his eyes and kept them shut until she spoke again.
“One time he just . . . went crazy,” she went on, her voice quieter—or perhaps it was the competing noise of the café that made it harder to hear her.
“What did he do?”
“He frightened me. The things he said were . . . they were unforgivable.”
