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with Aunt Bitsy when her grief was not so raw.
    Storm wrote some notes down for Wang’s sake and went to his office. “I’d like to go through some of his things when the family can get together, if you don’t mind. Maybe next week?” she asked.
    â€œNext week’s fine. We won’t start moving things around until then anyway,” Wang said.
    His secretary popped her head in the door. “Senator Maehara is here.”
    â€œSee you at the meeting later, Storm,” Wang said.
    Storm walked away and once in her own office, closed the door and slumped at her desk. Hamasaki’s office felt empty of his presence, the way a house does when the realtor shows it after the family has moved away. Dust motes were already dancing in his absence.
    A few minutes later, Storm blotted at her eyes and took a deep breath. She walked back down the carpeted hall to Hamasaki’s office where she gathered up the four gaudy mugs and took them back to a cluttered corner of her own domain. She closed the door, picked out a clean one, and made herself a cup of Hamasaki’s favorite tea from his stash in the office kitchenette. With her feet up on her desk, she gazed at the back of the door and felt incredibly alone.

Chapter 6
    The telephone interrupted her contemplation. “Hello,”
    Storm mumbled.
    â€œI called to see if we could cheer each other up.”
    â€œMartin! Can you get away for lunch?”
    â€œThat’s why I called. David can drop me at the office in a half hour if you’ll give me a lift home.”
    Martin was just what she needed. In the past, they had always been able to bring each other out of a slump or get one another out of trouble. When Martin was a junior in high school, he got suspended for designing book jackets that were funny as hell, and usually obscene. It was a huge family crisis: shame, shame. Hamasaki nearly sent Martin to military school. But Storm loved Martin’s clever, raunchy sense of hilarity and she had finally been able to point out the humor in the situation to the distraught father.
    It was the least she could do for Martin; she hadn’t told Hamlin what happened after she got the tattoo. She never revealed to anyone that she had hidden a bottle of narcotic painkillers from her dad’s long illness in her underwear drawer. The day after her sixteenth birthday, when she’d cut her hair a half-inch long and dyed it purple, Martin had burst into her new bedroom. He’d marched right by the unpacked boxes and tipped the glass of water she held over the pile of pills she held in her hand.
    Forty minutes after his call, Martin pushed open the door. She dropped her pen, stood up, and threw her arms around him without the restraint they’d had to show at the memorial service. They held each other tighter than usual, then both stepped back, stifling tears.
    He pressed on his eyes with a thumb and forefinger and punched her in the arm with the other fist. “Stop it. Dad wouldn’t want us to be morose. He’d be happy to precipitate a family reunion. By the way, you look like shit.”
    â€œGee, thanks. You don’t. Where’d you get that tan? Has Aunt Bitsy scolded you about it?”
    As teenagers who liked to surf, Storm got very brown and Martin got freckles, which was unusual for a person of Japanese ancestry. The Nisei, or second generation Japanese in Hawai’i, still prided themselves on pure, white complexions. Even before the data was out on skin cancer, Bitsy had followed her children around with bottles of sunscreen.
    He waved off her question with a self-conscious chuckle. “Hey, Chicago has beaches, too.”
    â€œI’m glad you’ve got time to enjoy them.”
    Martin took her arm. “How long do you have for lunch?”
    â€œI can get away with an hour or so. The whole place is still moving in slow motion.”
    â€œMe, too.”
    A note in Martin’s voice made Storm