Daniel had just turned six, too young to understand what had happened when his father abandoned them. By the time Daniel was eleven or twelve, he was often waiting at the train station for Koji, wanting to know everything he could about Franklin. They sat on the old wooden bench just across from the tracks and talked, while Koji waited for his crew to unload the sacks of sugar from the railway cars and cart them across the road to the harbor.

Then one afternoon when Daniel was thirteen, he finally said, “Tell me how I’m like my father.”

Koji looked at him and gathered his thoughts. He paused to light a cigarette. “On the outside, you look a lot like him. Tall and skinny, dark eyes and a thick head of hair, movie-star island-boy good looks,” he said. He inhaled and exhaled smoke. “You’re athletic like him; you got his speed and agility. His stubbornness, too. The rest, everything on the inside, comes from your mother. Lucky for you, yeah,” he added.

“Why did he leave us?” Daniel had asked bluntly. “Was it because of me?”

Koji’s eyes widened with surprise. He sucked on his cigarette, taking his time to answer, smoke rings rising into the air and disappearing. “Oily hands,” he finally said. “Shame your father could never hold on to anything. His leaving had nothing to do with you. He let the only two good things in his life slip through his fingers, you and your mother. Some men just like that.” He dropped the cigarette and snuffed it out angrily with the toe of his boot. “He looked for ways to lose things. Lucky for me, yeah, I get to see you grow up and make your mother proud.”

Koji shook his head at the memory. How could he have given Daniel such a rational explanation for something so irrational? At the time, Koji had confided in Razor that he wanted to tell Daniel that his father was a bigger son of a bitch than any of them realized. He wanted to fuel the boy’s anger, but Razor helped him to understand that he couldn’t do it. Neither of them would feel any better, and it only would have made Mariko’s life more difficult. Days, weeks, months turned into a year, and Koji saw Franklin’s absence in the deepening lines on Mariko’s face, and how the light in her eyes had dimmed, breaking his heart too.

* * *

In the station, Koji sounded the train whistle again: a short, short, long wail filled the air, the same greeting he used when Daniel was young. Moments later, he jumped down from the car in his T-shirt and baggy pants.

“Look who’s here,” he said, and wrapped his arms around Daniel in a big hug.

Daniel smiled. “Good to see you, Uncle Koji,” he said. “I wanted to thank you again for the new model railcar. Looks just like your engine.”