Kira sighed. “Okay, now your hair is in your tea. You’re a mess.”

“I don’t care.”

I heard her sit in the chair across from mine. “Muir.”

“What.”

“Muir.”

I lifted my head. I forgot sometimes, because she was so kind, and sometimes so hurt and vulnerable, how fierce her appearance could be when she needed it to. Ears pierced, all tattooed, dressed in black from her boots to her shredded tank top, hair up and away from the stern look on her face, now so familiar, unwilling to put up with my bullshit. Not content to let me suffer.

My friend.

I kept my head up. “Francine wants to adopt me.”

Kira sat back. “She does?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“She offered.”

“She did not.”

“She did.”

“Well,” Kira said. “That is…I mean. Can’t say I’m not surprised, she’s never…Doesn’t mean you have to let her.”

“She promised she wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“No one ever keeps their promises. Ever.”

“Okay, but isn’t this one more like, I promise I’ll never take you to Disneyland, oops, I guess we’re going—surprise!”

“No,” I said. “Adoption isn’t like going to Disneyland. At all.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wish…it could be.”

“Kira. She lied to me.”

She put her hands on the table. “Or maybe she just really likes you and wants to be your home to come back to, no matter when or where you go?”

I glared down into my tea.

“What?” Kira said.

I shook my head.

“Oh, all right, I get the silent treatment now? Muir. Muiriel.”

I sat.

She stood. Untied her apron. “Hey,” she called into the kitchen, marching behind the counter. “I’ll be right back, I have an emergency.” She tossed her apron onto the glass pastry case, grabbed her wallet, and stood beside me. “Let’s go,” she said. “Now.”

“I’m not done with my tea.”

She got a paper cup and lid, poured the tea in, and held the door open.

“I’m only going because I feel like it,” I said as I stepped out into the sunshine.

“Oh, I know,” she said, and dragged me to the bus stop.

—

The late-spring morning was cool and bright at the trailhead to the bonfire beach. In the trees at the path we had walked with Sean to the water, I stood now with Kira in a clearing before a long stone wall, shaded by a low wooden roof, curved like ribbon, beneath the words Nidoto Nai Yōni: Let It Not Happen Again.

Photographs and words were embedded in the wood, black-and-white images of Japanese American women and men and children, teenagers at the high school, families and homes and pets and farms and shops. Pictures of people living what looked like a beautiful, happy life.