Read When the Cherry Blossoms Fell for Free Online

could carry. I could only ship two things.”
    Ted turned to Michiko. “Did you bring me a present?” he asked.
    â€œYour present is our safe arrival,” Sadie scoffed.
    But Michiko had an idea. She dashed over to her carpetbag, took out her orange and put it behind her back. “Close your eyes,” she told her uncle as she walked towards him, “and put out your hands.”
    Michiko placed the bright lopsided ball in them. “Now you can open your eyes.”
    For a moment, Michiko didn’t understand the lookon her uncle’s face. She thought, at first, that he was going to cry. Then he lifted the orange to his nose and drank in the pungent aroma of the peel. “Thank you, Michiko,” he said, giving her a hug. “I can’t remember the last time I had an orange.”
    Over his shoulder, Michiko could see her mother’s face. She was smiling, and Michiko knew that she would be
yasashi
with her again.
    â€œSo what have you been eating lately?” Sadie asked Ted.
    Ted bent his arms upward to flex his muscles. “Potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes,” he said. “I’m desperate for a bowl of
miso
soup.”
    â€œWe all are,” retorted Sadie. “Goodness knows where we’ll get Japanese food out here.”

Six
Houses in the Orchard
    Michiko hauled off her cotton nightgown. Yesterday’s clothes lay on the floor in a pile. Her mother hadn’t put clean ones out for her. She pulled on her long-sleeved blouse and buttoned it up before stepping through the elastic waist of her wool skirt. This is what she usually wore to school. It felt odd wearing school clothes on a summer vacation.
    Michiko wiped the fine dry dust of the road from the toes of her shoes. She slapped her socks against the foot of the metal bed to rid them of the brown rings before putting them on. Hiro stirred. She picked up her shoes and tiptoed downstairs.
    The rough wooden surface of the kitchen table lay bare. Where was their embroidered cloth? Two small red enamel bowls sat alone with a pair of chopsticks across them. One bowl was half-full of rice, the other of green tea.
    Michiko lifted the bowl of snowy white rice to her face to breathe in the sweet aroma. It was cold. She looked around. Where was the bowl that held her egg? There wasn’t even
shoyu
on the table. Michiko always dribbled the dark soy sauce on top of the thick yellowyolk. Then she stirred the large staring eye with her chopsticks and poured it over the hot steamy rice.
This is a very plain breakfast
, she thought. She poured some of the cold green tea over her rice and gave it a stir.
    â€œOhayo,”
her grandfather called out, hearing her move in the kitchen. He sat on the verandah in a wooden chair facing the sun, whittling. “You slept a long time, my little cherry blossom.”
    â€œGood morning,” Michiko said as she moved to the steps to put on her shoes. The sun was bright, but the air was cool. She was glad of her long-sleeved blouse and warm skirt.
    She walked to one end of the verandah and leaned on the railing, facing the field of crumpled grey grass. The other side of the dirt road was dense with trees.
    â€œWe should be grateful,” Geechan said.
    Now Geechan is saying it
, Michiko thought as she turned to him.
    Geechan gestured to the right with his knife. “We have an orchard,” he told her. “Next spring, we will have a grand
hanami
.”
    Michiko glanced at the rows of short, gnarled trees sprouting small green leaves and shrugged.
Geechan doesn’t understand we are only on vacation
, she thought. But he often didn’t understand things about their life. He lived the same way he used to live in Japan, and Sadie complained about it a lot.
    She heard her mother’s and aunt’s voices coming from the side of the house and went to investigate.
    Sadie was busy tying a rope between two of thesmall, stunted trees. A large white apron covered