“You want me to come meet you at the airport?” I asked.

I had the idea it might be very relaxing to cut school and go to Narita.

“Sure, if you've got nothing else to do. I'll treat you to lunch.”

“You don't have to do that. My schedule's open. Is there anyone you want me to ask along? How about those girls who came to see you off?”

My brother's voice reached me through static.

“Actually . . . could you ask Mari?”

Mari.

For a moment I wasn't able to connect the name my brother had said with the person—our cousin, Mari. I struggled to think who he could mean.

“Mari? Why her?”

“She's sent me some letters, you know, and then six months ago she came to Boston. She and Sarah and I had dinner together. Just give her a call, okay?”

I realized then that my brother was starting to fall for Mari. He wasn't even trying to hide it. He'd just come right out and given me her name.

In fact there had been something between them ever since they were small, something that pulled them together even when they were paying no attention to each other at all. Something that would probably make them fall in love sooner or later. As they got older, each time they fell in love with someone else, that something became increasingly concentrated.

I called Mari and asked if she wanted to go to Narita. She said she'd go. She explained that she'd stopped by Boston on her way back to Japan when she made a trip to New York.

“We had dinner one night. The three of us, him and Sarah and me. Sarah had really changed. She was terribly thin, and very adult, and she didn't say very much. She didn't smile at all. Yoshihiro was just like he always is, just as cheery as always, and you had the feeling that he just went on being the same Yoshihiro no matter whether he was in Japan or Boston. You felt that in the way he acted toward Sarah, too. But Sarah looked completely worn out. Just Sarah. I'm not sure why. I just know that I had the feeling that things were over between them. . . . It bothered me, so I wrote Yoshihiro a letter when I got back to Japan. But the letter I got in reply was just a regular letter. Sarah's doing very well, and she's a really nice girl, and I sure do miss Japan, and I'm dying for a taste of cod roe, that kind of thing. I remember thinking, God, Yoshihiro's a really great guy. And that's really how I felt. He'd never say anything bad about Sarah to me, the girl who'd sat there surrounded by Boston's clear night air, staring right at him, the girl who'd started liking him. I'd gotten sort of drunk on all that traveling, but when I got that letter I thought about things again, and I felt like some of the dirt I'd had inside me had been washed away, just a little, and so I sent him a postcard apologizing. He really is a good guy.”