She gazed at her water glass, finally reaching for it and drinking several quick sips.
“What do you suggest we do about it?” he said.
She bowed to him again. “I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you, Sedge. My family suggested I borrow money from them to pay you back. My mother and brother were able to loan me only a little of what I took, but it’ll have to do for now.”
She removed from her handbag two regular-sized mail envelopes and placed them on their table.
“They’re full of cash. I hope you don’t mind doing things this way.”
“What about the rest?”
She shook her head. “I have nothing, either, Sedge. Yuki suggested we invest this in a new shop. But Takahashi said you’d never go for that, and I agreed that it wouldn’t work. But if you thought it would be a way forward . . .”
“If I did that,” Sedge said, “how would I trust you again?”
He picked up the envelopes and dropped them into his backpack. Afterward, he lifted out the folder he’d brought with him and handed it to her. “It’s a copy of the divorce papers from my lawyer. You can read over them and stamp your hanko seal on the places he marked. I can do it without your cooperation, but if you give it to me it will go more smoothly.”
She hesitated but took the folder he held out to her.
“Would you stay with me tonight if I got us a room here?” she said. “I feel like we have a lot more to work through. Wouldn’t it be easier to do that now that we’ve seen each other again? We’re here already and . . .”
Sedge lacked the resolve to stand up and walk away; he considered what it would mean if he went upstairs with her.
They sat in strained silence. Then, out of nowhere, he thought again of her going to hotels with Mariko’s husband. Had they ever come together to this one, right under his nose?
Instead of answering her he asked, “Where’s Kōichi?”
“I don’t know. I assume he’s still in Fukushima.”
“He’s not back in Yamanaka Onsen?”
“I have no idea. I don’t want to know anything about him now.”
They were silent again for a long time. Nozomi suggested again that she ask the hotel if they had a room available. “I’m willing to reserve it for two or three days even, if you want me to.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What wouldn’t be good about it? We could make it good.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think . . .”
“Why not? I’d do anything to make you forgive me, Sedge.”
“It wouldn’t be right, that’s why.”
“I don’t understand.”
But what he meant when he said it wouldn’t be right had to do with Mariko. It wouldn’t be right to her.
“I want to make it right, Sedge. I want one little chance. Do you really feel so vulnerable with me?”
Nozomi’s suggestion was what he’d wanted for so many months. What if he went upstairs with her, just for one night? What did he care if Nozomi suffered for it later?
At that moment he grieved for her. For if what she’d told him about her suffering was true, he had the advantage over her of being able to leave her here and find stability, even love, in Mariko. Without her, he knew he would go upstairs with Nozomi and lose himself in her, which was to say lose everything all over again. He understood with rare clarity that he owed Mariko a debt of gratitude and maybe more.
“Why does my forgiveness matter?” he said, feeling anger well in him. “Because of the money?” When she didn’t say anything he continued: “Don’t you see you’ve only set yourself up to feel about me—about us—the same way you felt about Tetsuya for all these years? You’ve done the same thing, and you’ll never get out of this cycle you’re trapped in. You sacrificed me—us—for a wisp of the past you failed to chase down. You turned what we had into Tetsuya.”
She stared out the window a long time. “I understand why you think that, but it’s different. For one thing, you’re alive. And I hope we can find a way to move forward somehow. With your forgiveness, initially . . .”
Tightness formed in his chest and he massaged it as he replied: “I don’t believe you’re sorry for what you did. And you don’t want us to be back together. Though I wish you did. It would make me feel better even if it were hopeless for us to move in that direction.”
“No matter what I do, there’s no way I can fix things?”
“Fix them how? How do you fix something that’s been smashed to a million pieces?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You still haven’t explained why you did what you did, sacrificing our happiness for the sadness you went through twenty-five years ago, without so much as talking to me about it. I was forced to leave that apartment we lived in for how many years together—six? I had to close our shop by myself and pay our taxes with money I could only get by selling everything we had and begging the rest from my friends. I was forced to live in Yuki and Takahashi’s ryokan and feel indebted to them in the most miserable way.” He paused before adding, “But one good thing came out of it.”
Nozomi’s eyes pulled away from him. “My brother told me.”
“It was poetic, don’t you think?” He waited, cruelly he supposed, for her to answer. When she didn’t he said, “She and I are still together, you know.”
“It may be unfair of me to say, but I don’t want to hear about it.”
For the first time since he’d seen her again, he wanted to laugh. But he refrained from this, and also from telling her more about Mariko. He had nothing to gain by hurting her.
“I’m alone now, Sedge. If you don’t want to see me anymore, I intend to leave again. It’s easier to start over where I can reinvent myself.”
