Laura Beth told me everything at the kitchen table. Takashi had died of a sudden illness, leaving her with a baby and a family business that his brothers wanted to control. Ashamed and frightened, she hid the loss from me, afraid I would say I had warned her. To protect her son’s inheritance, she kept working his company’s accounts, and each year she sent me a share, wanting me to be safe even if she could not come home.

The cash upstairs was the company’s emergency reserve, which his brothers had demanded she hand over without records. The doorbell was them. Laura Beth opened the door calmly, and I stood beside her. A lawyer she had hired, Mr. Sato, arrived minutes later with the signed will naming her son the sole heir and the documents proving the money was legally accounted for. The brothers left in silence.

That night, Laura Beth cried on my shoulder and said she had never stopped missing home. I told her I would never have said I told you so, only that I loved her. Her son, Kenji, showed me his drawings, including one of a woman at a Christmas table with an empty chair. He had been told that chair was for his grandmother.

We flew home together that spring. Laura Beth deposited the money properly and set up a trust for Kenji, and she kept a small share for my care. Now every Christmas the empty chair is filled, and the table is loud. I no longer worry about the word “well,” because at last it is true.