With the muffled impact of the door came another gruff guttural call from upstairs, a sound that was almost a growl but which was followed by a voice that was recognizably Evelyn’s, although high and agonized, this time intoning actual words: “Homer?” she called. “I need you!” Then came her husband’s name again, the pain in her voice a wavering of agony and despair and exhaustion, but Homer Wilson moved not in the direction of the stairs but to Kimiko’s side, his hand on her elbow. “Tasukete! Tasukete!” he said, and for a moment she merely thought that she had somehow translated his simple statement—please help or even save me, he might have said in English—into Japanese, but then he said it again and she realized that he, Homer Wilson, his eyes red-ringed and wet with the threat of tears, was speaking in her own language, leaning toward her, exhausted, terrified, entreating. She might have run in that moment, might have turned and retreated down the thin path that ran from the Victorian to their small, squat country home on the slightly lower rise of the opposite hill, but she did not, instead telling him, telling him and Homer too, in ­Japanese, that she would go, then mounting the dark stairs to the open doorway, where she found Mrs. Wilson staring at her from the twisted sheets of the bed. “Please get it out of me,” she said then. “Oh God please get it out of me.”