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Where am I? It was winter. No, I've done that. It was spring.
Margaret Atwood, from The Blind Assassin
Misaki felt excitement well up inside her as she watched the members of the Tsusano family come up the mountain with the rising sun, the chilly spring wind slipping between her clothes. They had come to see her and also help with rebuilding, despite her insistence that it wasn't needed. She couldn't say that she wasn't glad they came anyway.
She spent the rest of the morning catching up and smiling brightly, genuinely. (A voice in the back of her head whispered about the dimples she was showing off but would never see on her eldest son's face anymore.)
‘‘You have changed, child,’’ her father said with a softer smile on his face than hers. And she knew that he was glad to have made the right choice, even if it had broken her heart, all those years ago.
They both watched her children crowd around their grandmother.
Later that day, after putting them in bed and bidding her visiting family goodnight, she slipped into bed shortly before Takeru did too.
The moon cast its silver light on her face. ‘‘Beautiful,’’ her husband whispered, almost reverently. And she did feel beautiful, inside and out, like she hadn't in over a decade.
She was both sharp and soft. No longer the shadow girl who wielded her daughter with pride nor the woman faking sweet smiles to contain the lightning inside of her, longing to lash out.
She was Matsuda Misaki. (Mamoru) Hiroshi and Nagasa and Izumo's mother. Setsuko's sister-in-law. (Sometimes she still felt like crying at the way the younger woman cared about and for her.) Takeru's wife.
She felt effortlessly human in her husband's embrace.