Chapter 7 Summary - Yellow Mittens and Early Violets (March 1972)

For the first time since her father's remarriage, Yuki is visiting her grandparents. She had come for the third anniversary of her mother's death. It is seven in the morning in mid-March, and Yuki is reading a magazine and putting on and pulling off her mittens - she had made them herself - as her grandmother, Masa, comes into the kitchen. On the floor are her suitcase and the violets she had dug up by the river. She is waiting for the bus, the first of which will only arrive in two hours - it is an hour bus ride from the village to Himeji and then a three-hour train ridetrain ride back to Kobe.

Masa remembers how, when she used to come each year with her mother, Yuki had...