Saki crossed two names off her schedule on Wednesday morning with the clean satisfaction of someone whose plan was proceeding as intended.
She added brief notes beside each — trusted not assumed (Y) and foreground not furniture (T) — in the small, precise handwriting she used when something needed to be remembered accurately rather than impressionistically.
Then she looked at the remaining names.
Five more conversations. Five more specific fears that had been living underneath the order question, mislabeled and unaddressed, quietly making seven women tense at dinner tables and careful in hallways and polite in the particular strained way that people are polite when they are managing something they haven't yet found words for.
She drew a line under the next name on the list.
Yuki.
Shirosaki Yuki was, of all the people in the household, the one Saki had been most uncertain how to approach.
