Silent Honor(121)

He shook his head then, thinking of all they'd been through, all of them. Even poor Tak hadn't made it. “I came back a number of times, but you were never here. I kept asking the neighbors.” And then she realized that he was the soldier the neighbors had mentioned.

“I thought you were the sentry, coming after us. … I think they're looking for geishas.” She smiled at him.

“That wasn't what I had in mind,” he said, devouring her with his eyes, remembering Tanforan, as they both did. “Or maybe it was,” he said softly, and then Toyo tugged at his hand just, as Peter was about to kiss his mother.

“Do you have chocolates?” he asked, looking bored, and Peter shook his head.

“No, I don't. I'm sorry, Toyo.”

“The other one did,” he said with a look of annoyance, and Peter looked at Hiroko again, forgetting their son for just a moment.

‘I'm sorry …” he said to her, “for everything … for all of it … for everything you had to go through … for my not being there with you …for not being there for him….” He looked at Toyo. “For your parents. Hiroko, I'm so sorry….” His eyes were filled with love and tenderness for her, his own miseries entirely forgotten. He was just so happy he had found her.

“Shikata ga nai,” she said, and bowed low to him, reminding him of the phrase she had said to him before, so long ago, at Takeo's. It cannot be helped …shikata ga nai. …Perhaps not. But it had been so difficult for everyone and it had cost them so dearly. “I love you,” he said, as he took her in his arms and kissed her slowly, and then with all the longing that had filled him for three and a half years. It was hard to believe they had been apart for so long, and together for only moments before that. She remembered their time at Tanforan, the hours he had spent with her, talking to her, and their moments in the tall grass, hidden from everyone …the Buddhist priest who had “married” them in the brief ceremony that no one but they would ever honor. They had come through so much, and so far, and at last the days of shame and sorrow were over.

He smiled at her, and then looked down at their son, and even he could see how like him he was. And then Peter bowed low to her, as her father had done to Hidemi years before. And she bowed low to him and smiled, as he remembered her when they met, in her kimono.

“What are you doing, Mommy?” Toyo whispered.

“I am honoring your father,” she said solemnly, as Peter took her hand, and then his, and they walked slowly into her parents' house. And she knew that somewhere they, and Ken, and Tak, and Yuji were watching. “Arigato,” she said softly, thanking Peter, and all of them, for all they had shared, as she closed the shoji screens gently behind her.