“Playing basketball, or in a card game, at the beach or upcountry, and later, your mother suspected other women when he worked on the other islands. He never kept time, always kept your mother waiting, or just never showed up. Shame, yeah, Franklin had everything, things always came easy to him. But in time you saw there was something, something always missing inside.” Nori cleared her throat. “Never knew how lucky he was to have your mother. For years Koji watched on the sidelines, helped her when Franklin was away and he wasn’t cutting cane. Right until that night your father returned, yeah, when he carelessly took so much away from Koji.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked. “I know he was hurt in the fight.”

Nori turned back to him. “Koji didn’t tell you everything then?”

He looked at her confused. “What didn’t he tell me?”

Nori fingered the rim of her teacup. “Razor died the same night Koji was knifed by your father. Koji was supposed to be at that union meeting; he had promised Razor. That night, Koji not only lost his best friend, he was never able to get his cane cutting swing back after being cut. Not long after, he quit cane cutting for good. That’s when the Puli manager asked him to run the sugar train.”

Daniel sat back in the chair, stunned. His father’s return had irrevocably changed Koji’s life forever, and he never said anything. He’d never really known how Uncle Razor died. The last time he’d seen him, Razor, a strong, stocky man who always made his mother laugh, had come by the house to see Mariko. Daniel was in the yard, bat in hand, practicing his swing. It was windy that day, and on his way back out, Razor had stopped to watch his swing before changing Daniel’s grip on the bat. “You’ll hit farther now, guarantee, yeah,” Uncle Razor said, and winked. “Just don’t tell your Uncle Koji I showed you my secret; he’s wanted to know since we were kids, yeah.” Daniel never did tell, and never saw him again.

“He never told me,” he said.

Auntie Nori reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. He looked down at the small, round scar on the back of her hand, the dark brown of a kukui nut. He’d always meant to ask her how she’d gotten it.

“The cane work would have ended given time, yeah, but Razor was a hard loss, the guilt runs through his blood,” she said. “You and your mother kept him going.”

He’d known his uncle all his life, but he never knew the man. “So my father took everything away from Koji,” Daniel said.