“Snowing,” I repeated.

Dr. Kizawa left instructions for you to rest, eat a light meal of broth and soft tofu, and to halt your teaching for a month or two. To me, he said to send for him immediately once the pain returns.

“Returns?” I asked, as I walked with him to the front door.

“Yes,” he replied, his face showing me what he had hidden from you.

Death is the ending to all of our stories, Yakumo, and yet its arrival can still manage to surprise and unsettle, like a child’s cry in the forest.

Seven days later, on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1904, the 37th year of Meiji, you awoke at six thirty in the morning, earlier than usual, to birdsongs rising from the bamboo grove. I helped you dress in your yukata and tabi, and you took your morning meal in the writing room. As you sipped your bowl of broth, you told me that last night you had dreamed of a faraway place. It was not a country where you had been before, but it was familiar to you all the same. There were blackbirds there, the sky dotted with them, as if they were gathering. Perhaps you had followed them to that place or they had followed you. You were on a mountainside, green with low trees, the underside of their leaves flickering silver, flowers wild with the color of morning light, nearby an unseen sea. You said that the breezes there carried with them the scent of butter, thyme, and honey. You closed your eye and took in a deep breath, as if these scents were here in Ōkubo.

I breathed in as well. I smelled only bread toasting.

Kazuo and Iwao were at the table for their morning meal, waiting to see whether Papa would join them that day. Foster Mother encouraged them to begin without you, and they did, taking heart in her suggestion that, perhaps, Papa will join them tomorrow. Kazuo then came to the writing room to wish you “Good morning, Papa,” before he and Iwao headed to school.

“Pleasant dreams. The same to you,” you replied and kissed Kazuo on both cheeks, as if he were Suzuko or me. He pulled away from such an open show of affection, and he looked over at me to explain your words and your action. I had nothing to offer him, except to signal with the eyes that it was time for him to go.

You spent the day in your writing room, looking out at the garden. The cherry blossoms had dropped their petals overnight, transforming a small patch of Ōkubo into a silver world. You asked me to walk with you out to the West Indies.

“Tomorrow, Husband,” I replied.

“Yes, tomorrow,” you agreed. “It is too cold today, Sweet Wife.”

It was not, Yakumo. I shivered all the same.