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“No,” says Tomohiro. “I mean I'll leave. This.” He makes a small and graceful gesture that manages to encompass the entire Pacific Northwest.

“You're going to move?”

“Yes, I am going to move.”

“Well, are congratulations in order? Are you retiring?”

“In a way, retiring, yes.”

“I see.” Leap realizes that it's not just nervousness he's sensing. Tomohiro seems frightened. “My mother will be very sad, I'm sure.”

“That is why I wanted to talk with you. One reason.”

“Have you told her yet?”

“I have not told her. I think, I don't want to worry her yet. She and I have things to discuss, and at that time, she will find out.”

“Okay,” says Leap, trying to keep up, “but—”

“I am in trouble,” says Tomohiro.

“Oh,” Leap says. “I see. Well, what kind of trouble? I'm sure she would—”

“No. No. I don't want to worry her. Leap, I am sorry I must ask, but this conversation is very important to me. Before we go any further, I must know it will be confidential.”

“You don't want me to tell Josette?”

“I require you do not tell anyone.”

If Tomohiro is in trouble, it seems odd to ask Leap rather than Josette for a favor. Leap has had the impression that Josette and Tomohiro are close. But Josette has enough on her mind, and Tomohiro would know that.

“Okay,” agrees Leap, “if that's what you want, I'll keep it in confidence.”

“Thank you. Please know I am not exaggerating. Believe me, I have spent many, many hours considering what to do in this situation.”

“Okay.”

“You have heard me talk about my niece?”

“Yes.”

“She is sixteen. I do not want to leave her, but I think she should stay here.”

“So you're saying you'll be taking a trip,” Leap One says, “and you need someone to look in on your niece?”

“Yes, but not quite.”

“All right.”

“I will be gone for at least two weeks. Then I will move, and I will send for my niece.”

“Okay. So you need someone to help her move?”

“Yes,” Tomohiro says, “that is what I mean, almost.”

“Why is this difficult?” Leap asks. “I can help. After all you've done for us, I'd be happy to. I'm pleased that you thought of me.”

“Thank you.” Tomohiro's voice is rough.

“What am I missing?” asks Leap. “Why are you concerned?”

“I want you to know I appreciate what you are doing. Very much so.”

“Of course.” Confused, but thinking the purpose of their meeting accomplished, Leap reaches for the sandwich that arrived as they were talking and takes a bite.

“There is another thing,” Tomohiro says.

“Okay.”

“I think it might be better if my niece did not live by herself while I am gone. I want to ask if, perhaps, she might stay with you.”

Leap lives in the house where Leap One grew up. He prefers solitude, but the house is large enough for guests. Tomohiro's niece is sixteen and presumably reasonably independent. She might not be too much trouble for only two weeks. Leap says, “Doesn't she have friends that she'd prefer to stay with?”

“I don't know their families,” says Tomohiro. “I am very sorry to ask.”

“It's okay,” says Leap. “She can stay with me. But can you at least tell me why you don't want to talk about your trip?”

“I would like to tell you more,” Tomohiro says, “but it's a personal matter. Not something I can discuss. But it is a good reason. Your trust is the difficult thing I am asking for.”

The strangeness of the modern world. There are so many tragedies in so many people's lives. For fifteen years, the Olympic Archipelago has been an oasis of relative calm. But the gears of the world grind on. Leap considers. And then says, “All right.”

“Thank you,” Tomohiro says, his relief visible.

“So when would all this happen?”

“Today, after lunch.”

“What?” says Leap. “This is too much, really.”

“As soon as possible,” Tomohiro says quickly. “Today would be best.”

Leap has already said yes and can see how much it means to Tomohiro. “Okay,” he says at last, “I can get a room ready, I suppose. I think you could probably bring her over this evening.”

Tomohiro's niece, Himiko, arrives late
that night. It quickly becomes clear that the change has surprised her. Himiko was told only that she would stay with a friend while Tomohiro is at a conference.

She seems very shy and stays in her room. Leap tries to message Tomohiro after Himiko's first night at the house, but he doesn't respond. On the second night, Himiko tells Leap Two that her uncle was frightened. They share their confusion about what might be motivating him. Leap admits that Tomohiro hasn't provided a list of family contacts as he'd promised.

Because Tomohiro hasn't responded to repeated attempts to contact him, Himiko and Leap One drive to his cottage. All of his things are gone.

As Himiko walks slowly through the empty rooms, she says, “What happened?”

“I don't know.”

“He left me?”

“No. No, I don't think so.”

“Everything is gone. He's gone.”

“Yes,” Leap says.

“Even things he didn't like.”

Leap dreads accepting what is becoming painfully obvious. He follows her into the garden—rhododendrons, camellias, jasmine, roses. Two healthy rows of herbs.

“Could he be with your family?” Leap One asks. “Do you know where your family is?”

Himiko shakes her head, then says, “In Ulaanbaatar.”

“Okay, where? You know which city, but where in the city?”

“I don't know anything else. Or even if they're in the city, really. He was finding out.”

“Names, or . . .” Leap's voice trails off as Himiko watches him.

After a brief investigation, records
of travel to Central Asia turn up. Tomohiro has gone to Ulaanbaatar, of his own accord, and then purchased a general rail ticket. He is not a missing person. Messages to his central account bounce.

Himiko has nowhere to go. She is quite clearly crushed. She seems shy, but when she speaks she is decisive and opinionated. She will occasionally lie to see how people react.

When Himiko was six, her family sent her alone from Ulaanbaatar to find her uncle, Tomohiro. Growing up in Hawaii, Tomohiro had distinguished himself sufficiently in high school to earn a foreign-student scholarship at Keio University, in Tokyo. He earned a Ph.D. in psychiatry, then returned to Hawaii because the thought of living in another place deadened him inside. He found work at a community college. He would say he always knew where he wanted to live but had never asked himself why. Then his fiancée left him two days before their wedding and, for a short time, he went mad.

As he pulled himself out of a depression deep enough to destroy his standing, his reputation, and his sense of meaning, he felt a need to reinvent himself. Those were years of rising water levels, unprecedented hurricanes, and the coastal diaspora—a movement of populations that eventually included the exodus from Hawaii. The other survivors of Tomohiro's family, who had learned to be terrified of oceans, joined renewal projects in Central Asia. Tomohiro hopped a boat to the Pacific Northwest and secured a position as an apprentice gardener on a large estate in what was now being called the Olympic Archipelago.

When Himiko arrived, Tomohiro shared his small, meticulously clean cottage with her, and his firm insistence on meeting expectations. Not expectations around performance in school, but around making conscious choices.

“Always ask why,” Tomohiro reminded her tirelessly. Now she imagines that Tomohiro, who rescued her once, has left her with three strong guardians, the three Leaps. After several frustrating conversations with her friends, she asks if she can continue to live with Leap.

Leap enjoys her presence in the home, her unexpected perspectives. Josette takes to Himiko immediately and without reservation, and Josette is never wrong about people, so she herself says. When social workers finally come, Leap says Himiko can stay until she gets on her feet. Josette's attorney helps Himiko file for emancipation. Leap wonders whether this is what Tomohiro had in mind from the start. After her twenty-first birthday, Himiko joins Leap, and her body becomes Leap Four.

From four different childhoods, Leap
remembers different kinds of cruelty and different kinds of love. For example, Tomohiro could be relentless, keeping Leap Four awake all night, not allowing her to close her eyes until she finished her chores, a long and detailed list that he regularly updated. She must clean the kitchen floor. It was her job. She must clean once a week, and there are only seven days in a week, no more. If Tomohiro had high standards for what “clean” meant, then those needed to become her standards. And Tomohiro could put everything he had lost, all of the possible things that were impossible because she was with him, into a simple look. His lips would turn down, and his eyes would soften. Tomohiro never talked about what was in that look, but over the years Himiko learned some of it.

Leap Three's childhood was different. His parents didn't create schedules and task lists. They ridiculed certain things and offered sparse praise for others. During three years in rural Montana, he joined a clique that ran the social scene at the junior high. He became cruel because it felt like success. But memories of things he did followed him during the years after. A feeling grew of being without a reference—of not being able to trust himself. It wasn't until a college girlfriend told him that his smile resembled his father's that the pieces suddenly fell together. His family had operated through intimidation, like the clique.

He wanted to change something fundamental. He went into emergency medicine to help people. But it was the join with Leap that gave him real perspective. As Leap he could compare childhoods. Now Leap believes that any choice that moves you away from cruelty moves you closer to love.