The royalties from her biography had ebbed, and Mr. McDonald had suggested that it was my turn now. He said that a book published under my name would attract great interest with readers abroad and here. He proposed that I expand upon what I had already recounted for Mrs. Wetmore. Mr. McDonald already had a title in mind, Yakumo. He suggested the English word “reminiscences,” which Kazuo said was akin to “memories.”

“What is the difference?” I asked Kazuo, and his reply showed him at fifteen to be very much your son.

“Poets have reminiscences. Mothers have memories,” Kazuo declared.

So, I began again, Yakumo, but this time without you.

If your Elizabeth at twenty-eight could travel the world on her own, then Setsu at forty-one could tell a story without you, Husband. To equate the two acts may not be entirely sound, but so be it. That is what happens when you are the first to sleep. Those who remain awake are free to act and to act singly.

Setsu is hungry.

Setsu is angry.

Setsu has your hat.

With Shigeyuki again as my scribe, I returned to Matsue for the last days in the house in the shadows of the Castle:

As the winds whipped through those rooms of wood and paper, rattling them like dried seedpods, you looked around you, shivered, and declared that you were happy to be departing for southern climes. I had never imagined a life on the island of Kyūshū and in the city of Kumamoto, as I had never imagined a husband named Lafcadio Hearn, but your destinations were now also mine.

“Double the salary, Sweet Wife,” you had said. “Teaching hours will be longer but not by much.”

“I see,” I replied.

“You see? You mean ‘Good news!’” you corrected me.

“Good news!” I echoed.

“We will send for the house of Inagaki. You will not be lonely in Kumamoto City for long, Sweet Wife.”

Yakumo, you did not offer to bring with us the three members of the house of Koizumi. Perhaps Nishida-san had spoken to you about the San’in Shimbun article and the disgrace that it had brought to my birth family’s name. Nishida-san might have advised you that while marriage between a British national and a Japanese national was not binding under the laws of either country, a wife in name would be better than a rashamen in public, given your position as a teacher and your reputation as a scholar and writer. That conversation might have prompted you both to depart for Kitzuki to consider your next steps, Yakumo. That conversation might have prompted you then to send for me.

Do you remember, Yakumo, how Nishida-san had reddened when you asked him to interpret the word “honeymoon” for me? I thought he would run out of the inn and into the sea, when you insisted on explaining to me—which meant Nishida-san explaining to me—what the Western ritual of “honeymooning” entailed. By the end of that night, when even I drank sake, I laughed out loud when you raised your cup “To our honeymoon!” and we three said, “Kampai!”