First Snow on the Inland Sea

The ferry to Maejima ran four times a day in summer and twice in winter, and in November of that year — the year my uncle died — it ran sometimes only once, depending on the wind.

I had been sent to bring him home. He had been living on the island for nineteen years in a small house above the harbour, and the family had decided, in the way families decide such things, that he could no longer live there alone.