After I put him to bed, I clean up the kitchen and try not to think about where Franklin might be, what bar or card game he’s fallen into. He just came home and he’s already left us again. By the time I go to sleep, its past midnight and he still isn’t home. By 2:00 a.m. I hear the front door open, his noisy shuffling through the house to the kitchen. He staggers down the hall and there’s a short pause before our bedroom door opens.

“Baby?” he says. “Baby, I’m sorry, eh, I got caught up. We’ll go out for dinner tomorrow, I promise.”

But I turn away from him and his cigarette and alcohol stink, close my eyes tightly, no longer listening.

A New Year: January 1–2, 1936

A New Year

January 1–2, 1936

45. The Beating Heart

45

The Beating Heart

By the time Koji drove back up to the plantation, the sun had set low across the mountains. He’d been gone for two weeks, though it felt longer. He touched the raised scar on his forehead and knew how lucky he was. He felt better, coughing less since Daniel urged him to quit smoking. Nori and Samuel had tried to convince him to stay in town until after the New Year, but Koji couldn’t be swayed. There’d been something pulling at him to return to Puli since the bombing. “Be back soon, yeah. I promised I’d visit Kazoku village on New Year’s Day,” he’d told them. “A turnaround trip,” he added, knowing the lava’s flow toward Hilo was escalating and they were running out of time. Still, he needed a night back at the plantation to check on the cottage and to sleep in his own bed. Nori let him go with a promise that he’d be back down in the next day or two. Koji left shortly after, stopping by to see Mama, who remained in a state of deep sleep, Daniel called it. He saw it as straddling life and death.

When Koji finally pulled in front of the sugar train cottage, it was like returning home to an old friend.