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and blushed. When Terayama-san smiled, she drew the image of Aimi’s sweet, innocent face into place over her dry, cold lips and smiled back, for she knew that Terayama-san was all that stood between her and exile and death and darkness, and she was afraid.
    When, a mere six weeks after we had arrived at the home of my father’s dearest friend, Nakamura Suzume’s mother told her that Terayama-san had asked her to marry him, and that her mother had said yes, Nakamura Suzume said, “I am so pleased for you both.”
    And deep inside, the real Suzume, who had told herself that such a thing could never happen, that Terayama-san and Mother would never do it, screamed louder and louder.
    The morning after I had been informed of their engagement, I had an accident. A silly, clumsy accident, nothing more. As I peeled fruit at breakfast, my knife slipped, opening a long, shallow cut on my palm.
    Blood welled up as I stared in shock, and pain sang through my hand. Then there was a rush of . . . something. Something like happiness, or peace, or relief. It made me dizzy.
    “Suzume.” My mother reached around the table and caught my arm. “What have you done?”
    “It is nothing,” I said softly.
    “Wrap it in this,” Terayama-san said, passing me a cloth. He sent the serving woman to fetch a girl from the kitchens who knew how to dress wounds, and when she arrived, she cleaned the cut and applied a salve and assured my mother that it would not scar.
    Terayama-san sat back with a nod. “There,” he said. “There is nothing to worry about.”
    “Be more careful,” my mother said severely. “You could have —”
    “Don’t fuss, my dear. Suzu-chan is sorry.” I would have been grateful for the interruption, except that he did not look at me, did not see me. He interrupted not because he wished to shield me from Mother’s fussing but because he wished all her attention to be his. Skillfully he drew her into a conversation that, as usual, excluded me.
    For once I did not listen to them with resentment. I was listening to the quiet inside me. For the first time in weeks, the screaming had stopped.
    “I will go to the stables and look at the new mare,” Terayama-san announced casually a little while later.
    “Then perhaps I should look at the fabric for my new gown. . . .” Mother said, half to herself, a look of secret happiness on her face. I guessed the new gown was expensive. Far more expensive than anything my father had been able to afford for her.
    Terayama-san’s eyes sharpened, and his face went blank. “Do you not wish to come with me?”
    Mother blushed, a little flustered, but not frightened. “Oh! I — I do not pretend to know much of horses. I do not think I would be useful.”
    “Your opinion is always useful to me,” he said, gaze fixed, unblinking. I was reminded again of the cat at the mouse hole. Any time Mother displayed lack of interest in Terayama-san, he acted as if she had challenged him. The more she pulled back, the more he wanted her with him. It was as if it were a game. He stalked his prey carefully, giving it the illusion of freedom without ever truly risking its escape.
    When had this game begun?
I wondered. In the ruins of Father’s house, when Terayama-san had offered so generously to save us? Or before that? Perhaps it had been during Mother’s mysterious visit to Terayama-san’s house, before she had returned home to find everything destroyed.
    The visit she had found time for when she should have been visiting her aunt, or at home with her husband and family celebrating her daughter’s birthday. The visit that was supposed to have been here at his house but which none of his servants seemed to know anything about.
    “If you would really wish for my company,” Mother said finally, smiling and pleased.
    She had never looked so at my father. But then, I realized, my father had never wanted her with him when he worked. He had shut himself in his study and demanded complete