“It’s not possible,” Mrs. Takahashi said now. “We searched everywhere. My husband even went back to Newcastle to look. He wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Wilson said.

“You’re mistaken. It was someone else you saw.”

“I’m not mistaken, Kim. I don’t know why you didn’t find him. Maybe your husband came before your son got to ­California, or after he left. Raymond was there. I swear he was.”

“Tell me what happened,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. They were both sitting now, Mrs. Takahashi on one side of the little table, Mrs. Wilson on the other, the two woman flanking the window through which bright yellow light glowed without direction or angle.

“I am,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I have.”

“From the beginning.”

Mrs. Wilson’s body seemed, for the briefest moment, to slump, to drain, before righting itself again, the spine once more in a long ruler-straight line from waist to head. “It was a long time ago,” she said now, and when Mrs. Takahashi began to speak again she lifted a hand and the other woman fell immediately to silence. “But I’ll try,” Mrs. Wilson said.

When she began again, Mrs. Wilson indeed started at the beginning, although it was not quite the opening scene I have supplied here. In her retelling, she was told that Ray had returned by her orchard foreman and had only seen him from a distance—perhaps in town or in Auburn a few times—so that there was, in effect, very little to tell.

“You have to remember everything,” Mrs. Takahashi said.

“But I’m sorry I just don’t.”

“Who else did he talk to?”

“I don’t know, Kim.”

“Where did he stay?”

“I’m not sure.” She paused then. “Maybe at the church? I know some of the Japs—I’m sorry—the Japanese stayed there. At least that’s what I heard.”

“The Methodists?”

“No, I meant the Buddhist church. But yes maybe the ­Methodists too.”

Mrs. Takahashi looked at her for a long moment, the expression on her face one of absolute wonder. “So they knew?” she said after a time.

“Who did?” This came from me, my question exploding out without warning so that both women turned immediately to look as if they had forgotten I still remained in the room.

“The Japanese,” she said.

“We just thought he went back to live with you,” Mrs. Wilson said then. “You know. He was there for a while and then we just didn’t see him anymore.”

She shook her head. “He never came to us. I don’t understand why he would go there at all.”