After the dōjō and a shower, I spend lunch with Mariko in her apartment. When she answers the door, she’s genial, almost cheerful, and it’s such a marked contrast to all of our previous lunches that I can’t help but feel hopeful. Maybe Mariko and I will be friends after all. There are times when I’d give anything to go back to the days before Koichi died. Everything was so much better then including my relationship with her. But we can’t go back. I need to stop hoping and wishing things were better.
Instead of eating at the table, she sits me down on the couch with a bowl of food and gets out her tablet so we can browse through pictures of my parents. She has so many of them. I thought my mother hated having her picture taken, but it appears she only liked having photos taken while she was drinking.