Yuka holds Reina’s hand, saying some words softly in Japanese. I can’t help it—I think of the bomb again, of children Reina’s age sitting on their mothers’ laps—of radiation in the glass of water—

“Is this your first time to Hiroshima?” asks Yoshio, handing me a glass of beer. I set down the water.

“Thank you. Yes.”

“And where are you from?”

“California, the Bay Area.”

“I went to Stanford,” he says, sipping his beer.

Reina stands up behind Yuka and begins touching her earrings, one by one, as though counting them up and down, down and up.

“Yes, he major in Business and music,” says Yuka. I’m struck by how she looks and sounds exactly the same here as she did last night when we lay in bed. “He play the flute in the Hiroshima Symphony. And the shakuhachi.”

“What’s that?” I’m glad I have a question to ask, a focus to take. I feel like I’m not quite inside my skin.

“It’s an ancient flute,” he says “Would you like to hear?”

“Yes, please.”

When he’s in the other room fetching the flute, all I can say is: “Yuka?”

Reina is now trying to braid Yuka’s short hair.

“My parent old, need me,” she says as though answering an unasked question. “I come back here one day. But for now, okay.”

“But—your daughter?”

“Hiroshima safest city for child,” she says. “No bomb here second time.”

Yoshio puts the instrument to his lips and closes his eyes. A plaintive wave of sound fills the room. I immediately recognize the sound, one that I think of as ancient and beautiful yet very, very sad. As he plays, Reina braids and unbraids her mother’s hair. I wonder if Rose would come here, to raise children with me in the safest city in the world.