Nori and the Hilo Aunties had been excited all week. Daniel’s letter said he would arrive back in Hilo on the steamer Lanai that evening from O‵ahu. Nori knew how proud Mariko would have been. Her son had left the island at eighteen for a mainland education, and was returning a full-fledged doctor. Daniel was one of the first Japanese in his medical school and the first Hilo boy to become a doctor. The entire community knew how hard he had studied to be accepted into a mainland university. Along the way, his triumph had also become theirs. There’d been so many obstacles—from cost to the distance—but Daniel did well on his exams, and his high school teachers had written him glowing letters of recommendation. Along with the scholarships he received, it felt destined to be.

Nori smiled. Daniel was returning a big-shot doctor now, who hadn’t been seduced away by Chicago and all the big-city temptations. Even when Daniel was a boy, Nori knew he would succeed and make them all proud—he was driven in that way, a good student who cared for every stray dog or hurt animal, even before he realized he wanted to be a doctor. Along with her two boys, Wilson and Mano, who had followed their father into the Okawa family fishing business, she always considered Daniel to be her third son, more so after Mariko had passed away from cancer. She knew it would have to be his own decision, but Nori had selfishly hoped that he would return to Hilo town. So many other young people who left for O‵ahu, or the mainland, had forgotten their Hilo roots only to return as strangers, or not at all.

Nori felt another tremor just as she leaned over to put the last plate into the icebox. She had filled it with a few dishes Daniel liked—chicken and taro, lomi-lomi salmon, and coconut haupia, the sweet gelatin he loved as a kid, just in case he was hungry during the night. She didn’t dare to make his favorite, Portuguese chicken, which no one in Hilo made as well as his mother. Nori straightened and suddenly felt Mariko’s presence right there in the kitchen with her. She was still everywhere—in her stained teacup in the cupboard; in the empty chair against the chipped Formica table; in her faded, flowered apron that still hung inside the pantry door. They had shared so many important moments right there in the small, warm room ever since they were young girls. Nori wiped her hands on a dish towel and once again heard the echo of their voices circle around her.