He had wondered for weeks after if Franklin had really left, worried that he might return asking for more money from Mariko. The fear followed him like a shadow, but weeks led to months and the dimness finally cleared. Franklin may have thought he killed him that night. Either way, he was unlikely to ever return.

“The Sunday you came to the house all beat up, it was during that time, wasn’t it?” Daniel remembered. “You were moving so slow that day. You couldn’t play catch with me that afternoon like you always did.” Daniel sat quiet for a moment before he said, “I should have known something was wrong, I was old enough.”

Koji looked at Daniel. “You were just a kid, yeah.”

“I was just a kid in so many ways. When I was younger, I sometimes wondered why my mother was with you and not with my father anymore.

Koji hesitated a moment. “A fair question.” He then said,

“I couldn’t ask my mother; I didn’t want to make her sad, so I kept quiet. There was a small part of me that always thought when I went to the mainland for college that I might see him there again. That’s one of the reasons I studied so hard. Foolish, right?”

“No more than any of us,” Koji said. “Your mother meant the world to me. She always did.”

“I know,” Daniel said.

Koji looked away and out the window. “We’re wasting a nice morning, yeah. Let’s get some air, eh.”

He opened the door to the truck and gingerly stepped down. The clouds had cleared as he squinted against the bright sunlight.

Ghost Voices

Ghost Voices

MARIKO, 1918

Koji usually stops by during the week when the sugar train is being unloaded, but I haven’t seen him since last Sunday, when he returned to Puli in the early hours. The night he left I was awakened by a voice in the wind that sounded so much like Franklin’s I got up from bed to look out the window just as Koji’s truck drove off. It’s funny how the mind can play tricks, yeah. And still I’ve had this nagging feeling follow me for the past week.