It was an evening in October. Outside the hospital room window, the branches of the street trees had begun, just slightly, to change color. When I slid the door open and stepped in, Mrs. Seto was beside the chair, evening out the mouth of a paper bag she had finished packing with folded laundry.
"Oh, Ms. Sakurai."
"Good evening."
"Ms. Sakurai, um," Mrs. Seto said, resting one hand on the back of the chair.
"I've been thinking it's time to tidy up his apartment a little. We've been paying the rent all this time, and my husband has been saying we should give it up for now. When he wakes up—we can just rent a place again, that's all, but."
"Yes. Of course."
"If anything turns up while I'm sorting through it that he borrowed from you, I'd like to return it. If you can think of anything."
I thought for a while. The book came to mind.
"Well, I lent him a book. It was quite a long time ago now, but I never got it back."
"Do you remember the title?"
"It was my grandmother's, something she left behind. It's an old book."
As I answered, the thin wood grain of the paulownia box beside the Buddhist altar brushed the edge of my vision for an instant. I had always watched my mother's fingers straightening the folded corners of the paper on its lid. I never asked what was inside, and my mother never said. I moved on to the next breath.
"I'll look for it when I'm sorting things out," Mrs. Seto said. I bowed my head.
When I left the room, the branches of the street trees were raising a pale orange in the evening light. The smell of ginkgo nuts lay in a thin layer over the asphalt.
A week passed. As always, I took the evening train and pulled the handle of Room 408. The street trees went from orange to red, and from red to a darker color. The wind at the end of October grew a little cold at the back of my neck. There was still no word from Mrs. Seto about the book. I didn't press her either.
It was a weekday evening in November. When I slid open the door of Room 408, Mrs. Seto was standing beside the chair. A thin gray coat was folded over her arm, and a single paper bag sat at her feet.
"Oh, Ms. Sakurai."
"Mrs. Seto. You came by."
"I found the book we talked about the other day, so I thought I'd bring it to you. I came a little early, to match the time you usually come."
A single paper cup sat on the stand beside the bed. Tea a nurse must have left a while ago; no steam rose from it anymore. Mrs. Seto picked it up again in both hands. As if it were a teacup, she kept the bottom of the paper cup wrapped in both hands.
Then she bent down, took the book out of the paper bag, turned the cover toward me, and held it out. It was old and cloth-bound, the color faded thin at the edges. It was that book, the one whose page corners my grandmother had turned so many times. I took it in both hands. It was a little heavier than I had expected.
"Thank you."
"It had been sitting in the middle of his desk the whole time. Everything else was properly put away on the shelves or in the drawers, but not this. So I knew right away it was yours."
Mrs. Seto glanced once toward the bed, then brought her eyes back to the height of my face. Her gaze soon dropped to where the collar of my jacket met.
"Ms. Sakurai, um."
What came after hung for a moment in the white light of the room. Mrs. Seto didn't go on.
"—No. Thank you, truly."
"I'll be going, then."
The door closed quietly, and the back of the thin gray coat disappeared down the far end of the corridor. I set the round stool in its usual place and sat for a while with the book on my lap. I laid the pad of my right finger on his left wrist, right over the pulse. Today, too, the pulse was steady. Outside the window, the branches of the street trees let the dusk light through in thin lines. The weight of the book didn't move on my lap.
An hour passed and I left the hospital. I took the train, got off at my station, and walked the night streets. Inside my bag, the corner of the book pressed through the cloth against my hip.
I turned the key at the front door, took off my shoes, and set the heels side by side. I put the book on the living room table, but didn't open it. Just short of the motion of opening it, my fingers stalled. If I opened it, things between him and me would come to an end. Someday I would open it, but not today. The light settled thinly on the edge of the faded cloth cover. From the near side of the table, I looked at it for a while.