Koji sensed his uneasiness but didn’t push. Something had to bring Daniel home from that big, fancy hospital in Chicago. Koji watched Daniel but he quickly looked away, just as he always did when he was a boy and wasn’t ready to talk. Instead, Koji smiled and stepped forward to hug him again, strong and firm.

Koji would never let Daniel slip through his fingers again.

12. The Green Bungalow

12

The Green Bungalow

The morning after Nori visited Mama Natua, she walked down Kamehameha, past the wharf and up the road toward the green bungalow to see Daniel. She carried a palm leaf basket filled with freshly baked coconut tarts. She hadn’t seen him since his welcome home party. With the eruption causing so much commotion, she hadn’t even been able to check to see if he’d settled in comfortably. Now that the air had cleared, her impromptu visit also included a special favor to ask of him.

The sky darkened and the air smelled of rain by the time Nori arrived at the bungalow. She knocked on the front door, a part of her still hoping to see a young, teenage Mariko behind the screen when it opened. “About time, yeah,” she always said, even when Nori was early. They’d hurried to her bedroom to do homework or gossip about boys and school. School had always been Nori’s solace. She loved the peaceful sounds of the classroom, the click, click, click of the chalk on the blackboard, the turning of pages, the wind rattling the windows, and the rustling palm trees outside. She loved math, the solid numbers that made complete sense to her when everything else didn’t. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing seemed like simple rules for life. The classroom walls were painted a soothing pale green, with a clock over the door and speckled gray tiles on the floor.

Nori sat one desk away from Mariko. Between them sat Samuel Okawa, who always smelled salty like the sea, and often fell asleep in class sitting up, his eyes closed, his sudden snore waking him as the class erupted in laughter. When it happened, Nori watched Samuel’s cheeks flush with embarrassment and felt bad for him. She wasn’t the only one who kept secrets. She learned he’d been going out every night on his father’s fishing boat, working in the darkness before dawn while everyone else slept, hours and hours before school started. Only Mariko knew her deepest secret that she loved school and being as far away as she could from home and her drinking, fighting, furious parents, and how she often wished they were dead.

* * *

Nori knocked again. A few moments passed before she heard quick footsteps and the door swung open.

“Auntie Nori,” Daniel said, his voice full of surprise, “good morning. It’s good to see you. Everything okay?”