Chapter 4
Aiko Keeps the Kettle
Aiko Mori opened her shop before Imani knocked.
“Your father called,” she said. “He is a poor liar when worried.”
The shop occupied a narrow storefront between a tailor and a bakery. Books waited in neat piles beneath sheets of clean paper. A kettle stood on the same shelf where Imani remembered it from childhood, though the kettle itself had been replaced three times.
Imani had first come there at thirteen after the library closed early. Walter's shift at the bus garage ran until six, and Aiko had let her sit at the back table with homework. The biscuits had led to questions. The questions had led to lessons, evening classes, and eventually a year studying in Nagoya.
There was no sudden brilliance to reveal. There had been years of getting things wrong in front of someone who expected her to try again.
Now she placed the auction image on the table.
Aiko put on her glasses.
“Where did you get this?”
Imani explained the dinner, the wager, and the visible wording. Aiko listened until she reached the four names.
Then the older woman sat down.
“I translated that letter.”
Imani stared at her.
“For the auction?”
“For Willow House. Many years ago.”
Willow House had been a community arts center near the old ferry terminal. Imani knew its name from Walter's stories: music in a drafty hall, cheap classes, a kitchen where people argued about tea and borrowed folding chairs. The original building had closed after major water damage. The arts trust still ran programs from smaller rooms across the city.
“The panels were there?”
“For years.”
Aiko stood, went to a cabinet, and returned with a photograph. People sat around a long table covered in paper cranes and food. Behind them, gold panels caught the light from a high window.
Six Windows of Rain.
“Philip Harlow offered dry storage and repair help when the building became unusable,” Aiko said. “I helped translate the correspondence with the workshop. I was not one of the people who signed the arrangements.”
“Did he buy it later?”
“I don't know.”
The answer came without hesitation, which made Imani trust it more.
“Do you still have the translation?”
“Perhaps. I kept work copies badly then. I had a shop, a husband with heart trouble, and too much confidence that other people had proper files.”
She touched the photograph's edge.
“The woman who painted the birds was Setsuko Endo. She hated being called a master's wife as though that explained her hands.”
“The catalog calls Masaru the artist.”
Aiko closed her eyes briefly.
“Masaru ran the business. He also did finishing work. The panels involved several people.”
As a child, Imani had thought every book in the shop belonged to Aiko. She remembered feeling astonished when a customer collected a repaired atlas and carried it away.
“You let them take it?” she had asked.
Aiko laughed then, not unkindly.
“They let me look after it.”
The distinction had shaped the shop. Names went on envelopes. Loose pieces stayed with the book. If a customer left a note in a volume, Aiko asked before reading beyond what the work required. Imani had learned those habits before she understood their purpose.
Now she watched the older woman search the cabinet. Aiko knew where most things were, but her hand hesitated over a drawer of photographs.
“You don't have to find it today,” Imani said.
“I know. I want to see whether my memory has given everyone better clothes.”
She brought out a picture: Aiko standing outside Willow House with a tray of cups, her hair blown across one eye.
Imani smiled.
“It hasn't.”
“That blouse was fashionable.”
“I'm sure you have evidence.”
Aiko laughed, then grew quiet again. There, someone had written the date and the name of the event on the back. Kindness from someone who had not expected the picture to become important.
Imani turned it over only after Aiko nodded. She read the names, realizing that the room had contained more lives than any one recollection could hold. She would need to leave room for all of them.
Imani looked at the gold in the photograph. In the restaurant it had seemed expensive. Here, above paper plates and a child's bent head, it looked used.
“We need to tell the trust,” she said.
“We need to ask what they have.”
Aiko set the kettle on.
“And you need advice about the million before you promise anyone what to do with it.”
Imani laughed weakly.
“You think he'll pay?”
“I think you should behave as though a promise needs checking.”
Outside, the bakery delivery arrived. Aiko went to move a stack of books away from the shared doorway. Even with an old question returned to her table, the morning still required space for bread.