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and the four of them trooped off to the elevator.
    The Inoues got off at the fourth floor in a flurry of farewells. Just as Misao and Tamao disembarked and were standing in front of the door of their eighth-floor apartment, the telephone inside began to ring. Hastily, Misao jammed the key into the door, dashed down the hallway, and flew over to pick up the phone in the living room. But when she lifted the receiver to her ear, the line went dead.
    â€œOh dear, they hung up,” Misao said. “It might have been a call about Mama’s work. I hope they’ll phone again.”
    Tamao was busy playing with Cookie, and didn’t exhibit the slightest interest in her mother’s missed call.
    As Misao was replacing the receiver in its cradle, her eyes were drawn to the pale pink memo pad next to the telephone. There was a small white bird feather resting lightly on top of it. Misao picked up the feather between two fingers and held it in the air, level with her eyes. On closer inspection, she noticed that the white shaded into gray at the very tip. She remembered that while Pyoko, the little Java finch, was still alive, she had come across feathers exactly like this one every time she tidied the birdcage. But how did it come to be here, after all this time?
    Still holding the feather, Misao let her gaze wander out to the balcony. The birdcage was still there, right where she’d left it. Maybe there had been an overlooked feather on the bottom of the cage after she’d given it a final cleaning, and the wind had carried that single feather into the living room? No, the cage was tightly wrapped in a plastic trash bag, and secured with a twisty tie. Even if they had somehow neglected to close the sliding-glass doors all the way and an incredibly strong wind had been blowing during the night when everyone was asleep, it was still hard to imagine a scenario in which one stray feather could have been extracted from the bag-enclosed cage and carried into the apartment.
    â€œUm, Tamao?” Misao called out.
    Tamao stopped cavorting with Cookie and looked over at her mother. “What, Mama?” she asked, with an expression of perfect innocence on her face.
    â€œLook what I found,” Misao said.
    Tamao cocked her head and came running over, waving a plump arm in the air. “Oh!” she said happily, as she took the feather from her mother’s hand. “That’s Pyoko’s! So I guess Pyoko was flying around in this room, too, Mama!”
    Misao didn’t reply. Scowling grimly, she snatched the feather from Tamao’s grasp and tossed it into the kitchen wastebasket.

 
    3
    March 19, 1987
    â€œMy old lady’s in a rotten mood,” said Teppei’s younger brother, Tatsuji. He had returned from the hostess bar’s pay phone looking like someone whose mind is miles away: present in body, but definitely not in spirit. “It’s because I went out drinking last night, too, and came home late again.”
    Tatsuji had only been married for about a year. The woman he chose as a life partner had been the belle of the university tennis club they both belonged to. Maybe it was because he had pursued her with single-minded persistence until she finally agreed to marry him, but he seemed to be perpetually in the doghouse at home.
    â€œIn that case, maybe we should call it a night,” Teppei said, glancing at his wristwatch. Ten o’clock. It had been months since he and his younger brother had gotten together like this, and after they’d shared their respective bits of news there didn’t seem to be anything left to talk about. Tatsuji worked for a giant food conglomerate, while Teppei had been on the creative side of the advertising business for many years, so their jobs didn’t really provide much common ground. Beyond that, though, Teppei simply couldn’t enjoy hanging out with someone who was constantly fretting about staying on his wife’s good