“Fear,” said Tom quite suddenly. “Fear can be hidden, out of sight . . . sometimes. After 9/11, no one wanted to fly—at least not right away. My wife, Ida, said she was staying put, but I booked flights and began to take trips, several trips. I realized later that I did so in the spirit of trying to cheat death. A bad thing had happened. An unthinkable event. An unthinkable series of events. I told myself: I will board a plane; I will fly without fear. Could this horror possibly be repeated? I flew to visit our son, Will, in Edmonton. After that, I flew to New York to see a Rockwell exhibition at the Guggenheim. With that trip, I was showing solidarity with our American friends. But I did not fly without fear. Many of us who flew during those early days after 9/11 were frightened. But we were watchful, too. We were on the lookout for odd behaviour. In airports, in rows of seats on planes. You know what I mean? I could see others watching. Trying not to be obvious. Men were sizing each other up—including me.”

“I do know what you mean,” said Addie.

“I didn’t fly until several years after 9/11,” said Hazzley. “I lost all desire to travel.”

“A whole range of feelings was experienced during that time,” said Tom. “So much was public, but much was also kept private. I never discussed my feelings about this with Ida.”

What he did not say was that there were other things he hadn’t discussed. Nor did he say that Ida had been the most honest person he’d ever known. When he’d occasionally learned, after the fact, that he’d paid a price that far exceeded the value of an acquisition, did he tell her? No. She’d have been upset. So he’d fudged the accounts once in a while, to save himself an argument. Oh, it was all small stuff. But truth needed a break every now and then, he’d told himself. He had wanted to tell that to Ida, but the circumstances were never quite right. How would he have started such a conversation? So he told occasional lies, but only when necessary. Didn’t matter; she never knew.

Or did she? Did she expect him to reveal every fib he’d ever told, no matter how tiny? One truth he was certain of was that Ida had loved him. And later? Had she loved him later in their marriage? The way he loved her? They were together many years, and they’d done all right. They’d been friends, real companions.

“I’ll tell you something that wasn’t obvious to me, at least not at first,” said Chiyo. “And this has nothing to do with 9/11. I suppose you could call it a moment of overwhelming emotion. A few years ago, I learned that a rerun of Snow Falling on Cedars was coming to the repertory theatre in town. I had never seen the film—I was in my early twenties when it first came out—and asked my mom if she wanted to see it, and she surprised me by saying yes, though she rarely went out to a movie. She preferred to watch DVDs her friends brought to the house—a lot of them were films from Japan. I mean, maybe she and my dad went to movies when I was a baby, but I kind of doubt it. I did tell my mom a little about David Guterson’s story because she hadn’t read the novel. I knew she’d be interested, and I asked if she wanted the book from the library. But she said no; she didn’t feel the need to read it in advance.