For a moment, she couldn’t name the emotion welling up inside her. When she did identify it, an insane part of her wanted to laugh—because it was pity. For this ridiculous man on his knees in the snow, for this blind, self-centered woman who had been married to him for fifteen years and never seen him for what he was. Fifteen years and she had never once looked at Takeru as someone who might need her help. Or if she had, she had shut it down—it’s not my place, not my responsibility, not my family.
