“You come to the right place, eh. Come, come in,” she said. “The ozoni should just be about ready.”

He helped Mrs. Takahashi up and followed her into the house she shared with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, who were still asleep. She had lost Razor, and another daughter in childbirth. She seemed smaller every year, the top of her gray head barely reaching his chest, her clothes swallowing her up. Koji stepped into the small house, the air thick with the smells of ozoni simmering on the stove, the New Year’s soup that was eaten in the morning and made of miso, dry kelp, dashi, and yuzu peel. She made it her own by adding chicken or fish, taro, spinach, and mushrooms, leaving the toasted round mochi rice cake to place in each bowl last. It had always been Koji’s favorite way to start the New Year.

Koji paused at a photo of Razor as a young boy, sturdy and bull-like, holding up a cane knife with two hands pretending to cut. Even with her back turned to him, dishing up a bowl of soup, Mrs. Takahashi said, “He always had big dreams, eh, sometimes too big for his own good.”

Koji sat down at the kitchen table. In the quiet moment before the others would be up, he asked her, “Have you seen him?” She was the only other one who saw his spirit.

Mrs. Takahashi turned around and placed the steaming bowl of soup in front of him. With chopsticks, she placed the mochi on top. She brought another bowl and sat down across from him. Only then did she shake her head. “Gone,” she said. “I’ll see him soon enough, yeah. It’s time.” She looked up at Koji and smiled. “For you, too.”

“I never told him why I stayed with the cane work even after . . .” he said and then couldn’t finish.

Mrs. Takahashi smiled. “We make our own lives, Koji-chan, right or wrong, we have to live with our choices. The rest is no one’s business.”

Koji still felt the need to say it aloud. “The cane work was all I’d known, the only thing I was good at doing.”

“You never gave yourself a chance,” she said.

He felt the tears push against his eyes and looked down at the table. With her, he felt like a boy again. Cutting cane was simply a means to an end. The only life he ever wanted were all the days and nights he had with Mariko and Daniel. He couldn’t leave them to make the long trip back up the mountain to sit in a sweat-stink room of men whose fight he believed in, but not more than the life he was finally living in Hilo. He would never apologize for needing Mariko and Daniel. Still, it didn’t make his grief any less for failing Razor.