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forward, knowing I was going to ask her about the cuts, how she got them. The flower heads lay in a pile on the coffee table in front of us.
    “Does it hurt them?”
    “What? Oh, no,” I assured her. She was staring at the short stems, ragged at their ends. She eased herself away from me as if I were something she’d broken off too.
    “Well, maybe a little,” I said, watching her mouth wilt at the corners. Her lips naturally drooped into a frown. “But no more than when they’re cut in full bloom,” I added, conscious of my own meagre smile.
    Sachi pointed to where the stems had leaked their bitter fluid onto the coffee table. “Look,” she said, and her voice quivered. “They’re bleeding.”
    I laughed.
    “My mom says they bleed to death when I pick them,” she said. A cruel thing to tell a child, I thought, just to keep a garden. She lowered her head and stared into her lap, where her hands figheted. Without thinking, I reached out and held one in mine. Her small fingers were stiff; they wouldn’t collapse inside my clammy palm. I wanted to say, they’re only plants; not flesh and blood, like you. I wanted to pinch her and hold her. I yearned for it. This was different from when Stum was a child. Holding him, my own body young yet, Ididn’t wonder then how it felt to be a mother, to have someone grow inside you.
    I’d held on too long. Sachi pulled away gently. I drew back, my hand hanging cold.
    “That’s why I picked your flowers instead of my mom’s,” she blurted with a mean smile. She could change in an instant; be almost pretty, then brutally plain. She bounded to the foot of the stairs, put one foot on the first step, glanced back at me with my pounding heart. “The fan sounds tired,” she whispered, blowing on her finger.
    I tried to draw her back to me, bringing out my ikebana things from the dining-room cabinet, clattering the porcelain vase onto the coffee table to drown out the whine from upstairs, but she stayed put. She watched me trim and stab the short rose stems into the kenzan. Hesitantly she made her way over. “Earth, moon, stars,” I said, and I hastily held a cluster of leaves this way and that under the flowers. “My mom says it’s heaven, earth, and man,” she said, and I felt the heat in my cheeks telling me I’d got it wrong. Then she leaned in close to the three roses and moved her lips slightly, whispering again. “They’re dead now,” she said. Then, after another moment, asked, “Can I go now, Miss Saito?”
    I watched her from my window as she waded into the field. For an instant I thought about calling Keiko to say her daughter had been with me, in case she was worried, as I’d be, wondering why Sachi was late. But Keiko wouldn’t like it, not one bit, me knowing more about her daughter than she, even for an hour one afternoon.
    Sachi dawdled through the field that day, stopping to gaze up at an electrical tower gleaming in the light. She slidher hand along the rail, along its edge. If Keiko could see, she’d be yanking the girl away from the tower, back home, disgusted with her brooding and dawdling.
    The memory of her in the field, looking a little lost, looking everywhere but back at me to find her way, stabbed at me. I kept telling myself that it was Tam and Kimi who were in danger, not her, but I couldn’t help fearing that something was happening to her, at this very moment, when I couldn’t be with her. I couldn’t help telling myself that if I had kept Sachi close, these terrible things would never have happened—a ridiculous thought that made no sense. My living-room, where I always waited for her visits, felt empty without her; even the sound of Papa upstairs became a comfort I’d had and lost: a bridge that once held my weight, now collapsed. I felt useless.
    Slowly I made my way up to his room. He was sleeping deeply, his breathing clear and even with the drops Dr. Honda had prescribed over the telephone last night. “You fuss too much,