Her wanting to know the specific amount surprised him. “Almost eight hundred thousand yen. Her family loaned her the money.”
“You’re finally free to do anything you want.”
Again her comment took him aback. He didn’t know how to reply.
“I would understand if you decided not to live with us anymore. Especially after what Riku did.”
“The only reason I’d leave is if you feel I’m an imposition.”
She looked at her lunch as if seeing it for the first time. They ate in silence. When they finished, she thanked him for introducing her to Miyoshi-an. “I’m afraid I ruined the mood,” she said. “You shared good news with me, after all. You must wonder what’s going through my mind. I’m wondering myself, actually.”
“Let’s just try to enjoy Kanazawa together.”
She smiled faintly. “I’ll try not to let myself worry.”
The sun poured down as they made their way around the landscape garden. Now that they had eaten, Mariko wanted to see where Sedge had helped the injured heron back in March.
That evening they dined at Huni, an izakaya near their apartment where Mariko found herself interested in, for Riku’s sake, the sophisticated Buddhist and Shinto carvings the owner had made. Afterward she stopped Sedge on the riverside and said, “I’d like to see where you used to live. Is it too far to walk to?”
“Nowhere’s too far to walk to in Kanazawa. But we’ve walked a lot today.”
“When I’m with you I’m not tired.”
He took her hand. “Why do you want to see it?”
“I’m curious about where your life was before we met. But if it makes you uncomfortable, let’s not go.”
“No,” he said quickly, “it’s fine.”
They walked through the Kazuemachi geisha district. The long path there ended at the Kobashi bridge, where a loud croaking across the river stopped them. There was just enough light to see a large tree in the concrete river wall. Sleeping in the middle and lower branches were a dozen herons. Two perched close together opened their wings to each other and more deafening croaks filled the air. Sedge and Mariko watched them until the mosquitoes that gathered over the river during the summer buzzed in their ears.
Mariko suggested the herons were a good omen for them. “Good things always happen after we see herons together.”
When they reached Korinbō, Sedge showed her the hotel where he and Nozomi had met. He pointed across the street to the apartment Mariko wanted to see. “We lived on the fifth floor, in the corner unit overlooking the street.”
Watching her gaze lift to the apartment window, Sedge didn’t expect to feel so composed after all that had happened to him here, both yesterday and in the more distant past.-
“Someone lives there now,” she said. “It has curtains in the windows and the lights are on.”
“I would imagine so. It’s been a long time since I moved away.”
He recalled the day he moved out. Even then he had felt the absence of his life between its walls, the sadness of a ghost wandering through its former existence. He was struck now by that sadness. Standing beside Mariko, he wondered if she, too, were to disappear, would he feel the same dark void as when Nozomi had left him? The thought left him newly shaken.
“Why did they leave us?” Mariko said.
He scanned the other windows to see which apartments had no one living in them. He couldn’t tell in the dim light, and in any case it didn’t matter.
She pulled at his arm until he faced her. “Did she explain anything at all?”
“Not in any way I could understand,” he said in frustration.
He suggested going back. They cut through the Daiwa department store and followed the path around the grassy area skirting Kanazawa Castle Park. As they turned at Imori Moat, Sedge glanced back at the way they’d come. Beyond the open space they’d walked through, Korinbō, rising in the distance, threw the bright lights of its buildings across the far half of the sky.
He had lived in Kanazawa for nearly six years. But already home had become someplace very far and different from here.
They saw and did things in Kanazawa that they’d never seen and done together before. Sedge didn’t push again for them to discuss any serious subjects. After what he’d told her about meeting Nozomi, dealing with their lives beyond these moments didn’t seem urgent.
They drove back on Sunday after eating a kaiseki lunch in a hundred-year-old restaurant on Mt. Utatsu. When they returned to her car he told her, “I’ve never been so happy to spend money at an expensive restaurant.”
“It helped,” she reminded him, “that we stayed for free at Shinji’s apartment. But you have to promise not to squander the money Nozomi returned.”
“You must think I’ve been terrible not to ask about Riku,” he said on their way back to Yamanaka Onsen. “He’s been on my mind, but I didn’t want him to hang over us this weekend.”
“He’s been on my mind, too.”
“Have you told him about his father?”
“Before he left for Echizen I told him we may see him again soon. All he did was shrug. I’m sure it bothers him, though.”
“When does Riku come back?”
“Tonight. I’ll pick him up at Kaga Onsen Station between eight and nine.”
The road they were on would soon merge with a highway connecting Ishikawa to Fukui. But here it was a curving, rolling road that alternated between one and two lanes, surrounded by rice fields and offering occasional views of Hakusan, which rose jaggedly almost nine thousand feet to the east. When they reached the highway, he couldn’t keep his thoughts about Riku to himself any longer.
