“As a matter of fact, she said she didn't know.” Mari burst out laughing. “You see, Sarah had been having her cake and eating it, too, for quite some time. She was dating an old childhood pal from Boston at the same time she was dating Yoshihiro. It's like these stories you hear about guys who live out in the country having one girlfriend at college and one back at home, you know? Sarah was doing the same thing, except that hers was the international version. Apparently Yoshihiro only found out about all that after he'd arrived in Boston. And of course he was Japanese, right? So he knew that he'd eventually go back to Japan, and from what I can tell it seems like he drew back from her on his own. But Sarah kept him from going. So for the last six months the three of them were totally tangled up, evidently it was all a huge mess. And Yoshihiro really didn't like that kind of mess, right, and so he was probably running away the whole time, that's probably how he made it through, except that when you're overseas—I mean, there probably wasn't anywhere for him to run, was there? He didn't have anyone he could turn to, after all. But then you think about Sarah—how she got to know Yoshihiro just after she'd arrived in Japan, and how she grew to like him a whole lot . . . I'm sure that must have been terribly hard for her, too. Back then, back before there was anything between Yoshihiro and me, she used to talk to me about all that fairly often. About how she already had a steady boyfriend in Boston, and about how she did like Yo-shi-hi-ro a whole lot, except that the two of them were from different countries, and though for the time being she was here studying in Japan she'd eventually be going back, and about how hard that would be. That kind of thing. Yoshihiro said he didn't know whether Sarah's pregnancy was real or whether it was just a big put-on, but that even if it was true, which seemed kind of unlikely, it was almost definitely the other guy's child. That's what he said.”

“I had no idea about any of this,” I said.

But even as I said this I was putting certain things together.

Of course the pregnancy wasn't the only thing I hadn't known about. I'd never even been told that Sarah had a boyfriend in Boston. That day Sarah and I had talked—had that dream she'd told me about been something she only wished for when she was in Japan, something she only told me about because I happened to be her boyfriend's kid sister? Maybe she wanted to act out the role of the older brother's perfect girlfriend for me, just for me, the innocent sibling? I remembered the way her translucent golden bangs had looked as she did my homework for me. Her unclouded eyes. No, that hadn't been it. She'd really meant what she was saying. The sparkle in her eyes told me that she really wanted to believe everything would work out all right. . . . Or maybe her boyfriend in Boston was the sort of businessman type that she had described to me. Could it be that all my brother did was put a little twist in Sarah's life, and then vanish?