Anne didn't ask if there had been news of his father. She knew there hadn't. And her father had said again that it was obvious Hiroko's friend was dead. It was a damn shame and he was sorry.
Hiroko waited another month, and went back to the city with them, and then she gave them her notice. Anne was moving to New York for a year, to be near her sister, and go to parties and meet people there. And Hiroko had learned that she could get passage on the U.S.S. General W. P. Richardson to Kobe in mid-October.
Even she had no illusions by then. She hadn't heard from Peter in fourteen months. And the war in Europe had been over for five of them. There simply wasn't any way they wouldn't have found him, if he were alive. And she admitted as much to Reiko when she called and told her she was leaving for Japan to see her parents.
“It's hard to believe we lost all three of them, isn't it? Ken, Tak …and Peter.” And she had lost her brother too. It was so unfair. They had lost so much, and others had lost so little. She couldn't help thinking of the Spencers, even though they had been so kind to her. But they had scarcely noticed the war, except for the fact that it had improved some of their investments. Their son had been 4-F and had stayed home, their son-in-law had been kept in Washington during the entire war, and none of their daughters had lost husbands or even boyfriends. Anne had made her debut during the war, and she had graduated in June, right after Germany surrendered. All nice and neat and clean and simple. Maybe that was just the way life worked sometimes. There were those who paid, and those who didn't. And yet, in spite of that, Hiroko had to admit she liked them. The Spencers were good people, and they'd been wonderful to her and Toyo.
But Reiko was very worried about her going to Japan, especially alone with Toyo, but there was no one to go with her, or provide her escort.
“I'll be all right, Aunt Rei. The Americans are over there. Things will be fairly well controlled before I get there.”
“Maybe less so than you think. Why don't you come here instead, and wait until you hear from your parents.” But she had already tried to reach them, by telegram. It was impossible. Everyone had told her there was no way to contact anyone there. And she owed it to them to go to see them. It was time for her to go home now. They had their losses too, and despite the shock it might give them, she wanted them to see Toyo. He was their grandson and he might comfort them a little after losing her brother.
And when Sally got on the phone, she told Hiroko the news. She and Tad were expecting a baby.
“You didn't waste a minute,” Hiroko said, and Sally laughed shyly, sounding very young and very happy.
“Neither did you,” she dared from three thousand miles away, sounding like the old Sally that Hiroko knew and alternately loved and hated, but this time she laughed good-humoredly.
“I guess you're right.”
But Sally's mother had already warned her not to ask Hiroko about Peter. The situation was hopeless.
She spoke to Tad and congratulated him too. The baby was due in April.
And the day before she left for Japan, she called them again, and this time she had a long, serious talk with Reiko. She was worried about what would happen to Hiroko in Japan, if things went wrong and there was no one there to help her.
“I'll go to the Americans and ask for help, I promise, Aunt Rei. Don't worry.”
“And what if they won't help you? You're Japanese, you're not American.” She was always on the wrong side somehow. To Hiroko it seemed ironic, but it terrified Reiko.
“I'll figure something out,” she promised. “I'll be fine.”
“You're too young to be going there alone,” Reiko insisted.
“Aunt Rei, it's my home. I've got to go back now. I have to see my parents.” Reiko didn't dare suggest to her that they might be gone too, but Hiroko was well aware of it. She needed to know what had happened, just as she did with Peter. But in his case she had to accept what she couldn't discover on her own. In their case, it was different. They had relatives and friends. She had had a fife there and someone would know where her parents were.
“I want you to contact me as soon as you can,” Reiko made Hiroko promise.
“I will. It must be a real mess over there though.”
“I'm sure it is.” The stories about Hiroshima were unbelievable, beyond awful. But Hiroko was going nowhere near there, or Reiko would have objected even harder.
And then, regretfully, she and her cousins said good-bye, and that night Hiroko packed their things in her small room, feeling sad as she did it. She really hated to leave the Spencers.
And in the morning, Anne's father surprised her. He handed her a thousand dollars in cash, as a bonus, in addition to her salary. To Hiroko, it was a fortune.