Auntie Nori put a plate of Inari sushi and cups of green tea within reach. The sushi rice wrapped inside sweet soy-marinated tofu was always one of his favorites. Up front, Jelly had switched on the radio, and the market filled with the low hum of an orchestra playing.

“Koji all right?” Nori asked, a look of concern darkening her gaze.

“He’s fine,” Daniel said. “We went for a walk on Onekahakaha Beach yesterday. He should be completely back on his feet in a day or two.”

Nori shook her head. “Just wait until he gets better. He’s going to hear an earful.”

“It was an accident, just as much my fault,” Daniel said. “He’ll be fine,” he added, and then changed the subject. “We had a long talk at the beach. I asked him about my father’s return.”

Nori looked up at him knowingly. “He told me you knew.”

“It was Mama who first mentioned seeing him,” Daniel said. “She thought I was my father the day I gave her the checkup. She said Koji was there on the beach with him, kept asking why I didn’t return to my family.”

“Mama,” she whispered, “always rescuing strays.” She sighed and began to talk. “Franklin always caused drama, yeah, even when he didn’t try. It was in his nature, eh, so different from Koji.”

Daniel nodded; he couldn’t agree more. He wrapped his hands around the clay teacup. “I need to know,” he said. “What did my mother tell you about the night my father returned? How did she react? Uncle Koji said she never saw him. Did she want to?”

All of a sudden it was as if Daniel couldn’t stop; he wanted to know everything. He must have been ten or eleven back then, and he’d been clueless. How had his mother dealt with the loss all over again?

Nori picked up an old union meeting flyer on the table and folded the sheet in half. “You were young when he left, but you remember how difficult it was for your mother after your father disappeared.”

Daniel sighed. He saw his mother again; how thin she’d become and how she couldn’t stop moving. Sometimes he heard her in the middle of the night walking back and forth from one end of the house to the other.

“The fool left her without a word, yeah, leaving nothing but an empty place in her heart, the terrible kind of missing that comes from not knowing. All the questions left unanswered. I don’t think she ever let go of that feeling. Who could blame her, eh?” Auntie Nori asked. “But you kept her going, and time, yeah. And later there was Koji, who’d been waiting for her since the first day they’d met. In the end he filled a good deal of the emptiness she felt.”