The morning light of December twenty-fourth was dry and thin. The color of the asphalt and the color of the branch tips on the street trees had both been leveled by that dryness.
I had booked a wheelchair-accessible taxi on the same day the outing was decided. A white car was waiting at the end of the hospital's drop-off lane. An elderly driver let down the ramp without a word.
While we moved Toru into the secured space, we checked only what was necessary, in low voices.
I gave the destination. Saying the name of my own building aloud, to someone else's ears. My voice stopped once inside my mouth.
The taxi pulled away. The morning roads were still empty, and the bare winter outlines of the street trees slid past the window at regular intervals. The skin over Toru's cheekbone had taken back a faint peach color, only on the side where the heater's air reached it. The other cheek stayed winter-white. I brought my eyes back down to my lap.
After about twenty minutes we turned onto a familiar street. At the light just before my building, I asked, "Could you stop just before the brick-colored building along the canal, please?" A nod came back through the mirror.
The ramp went down, and the wheelchair was lowered to the edge of the sidewalk. "Well then, I'll wait nearby until it's time." I bowed my head and straightened the blanket. The taxi drove off. After the sound of the engine faded, the shadow of an old woman carrying a shopping bag slowly crossed the far side of the street.
An old, brick-colored four-story building along the canal. At the far end of the third floor, my apartment. I stopped the wheelchair at the edge of the sidewalk, a little short of the entrance.
I crouched beside the wheelchair. As I straightened the blanket at his collar, the yarn caught faintly against the back of my hand. At his neck, the deep navy stitches drew in the warmth of my palm, once.
I knitted this. A year ago in October, in front of the research building, I took it out of a paper bag and held it out to you. I got one stitch wrong, but I wanted you to wear it soon, so I kept going. More than the time it would take to undo it and knit it again, the one day of you wearing it tomorrow was, to me, what mattered.
On the night of December twenty-third a year ago, you wore this and walked this road all the way here.
"That night, we had hot pot, the two of us, didn't we."
My own voice was set down thinly in the cold air of the residential street.
"Winter vegetables, and pork. Whenever the steam rose, the condensation on the window ran one more streak longer."
By just that one streak, that winter had already leaned toward you.
"It was that night, too, that I lent you my grandmother's cloth-bound book."
The small round stain at the lower left of the cover. You stroked it just once with the pad of your finger. It wasn't so much that I wanted you to know what was in the book. I wanted you to have just one thing from my family's house.
"I was reading on the sofa, and before I knew it, I had fallen asleep."
"A gray lap blanket had been laid over me. I remember how happy your kindness made me."
When I woke, my hands were empty. The book had been closed and set on the low table, stacked on top of your bag. I could tell from where the teacup sat that you had slipped it from my hands without letting our fingers touch. The time I was able to sleep on, unnoticed, was, that night, the longest.
"Looking back now, that book carried your words, over the course of a year, all the way to me. It was only the other day that I found the bundle of letter paper tucked inside it."
I stood and looked up at the window of my apartment. The far end of the third floor. The curtains were closed. The creases were just where they had fallen when I drew them this morning on my way out.
"A year ago tonight, I was watching from inside this window as you went back down this road."
I had pulled the curtain open a finger's width and watched your back move away under the streetlight. I did see you stop, once. But whether you had looked up at the window, I never knew.
The third-floor glass threw back the morning light dully, hiding the inside behind a single sheet of white.
"Tonight, there's no one inside the window. Today, I'm the one looking at that same window from outside."
The place where you stood, and the place where I stand. Shifted by the one winter we had gotten through, they lay side by side.
"Whether I'll be able to come back to this room tomorrow morning or not, I don't know yet."
I stopped the thought there, half a step in. I crouched beside the wheelchair once more. Pretending to straighten the edge of the blanket, I brought the back of my hand to his cheek for just an instant. It was neither cold nor warm. I stood up.
I went around behind the wheelchair and rested both hands on the handles.
"Next, let's go."
My voice dissolved thinly into the air of the residential street. Only on "next" had it drifted a little toward the pitch of some stranger's voice.
"To the riverside, where we first walked together, just the two of us, that day."
I looked up one more time at the window at the far end of the third floor. The window from which, on this night a year ago, I saw you off from inside. I tightened my grip on the handles of the wheelchair.