“He ask me to recite you poem he translate from Chinese. The most famous poem by Li T’ai-Po, who live twelve centuries ago. But I don’t remember all English words.”

“Try,” Nola said.

“A pot of wine among flowers.

I alone, drinking, without companion….

… I dance, and my shadow shatters and becomes confused.

In my waking moments, we are happily blended.

Ming-Ji paused, collecting the words like butterflies in a net. “This is important,” she said.

“… For a long time I shall be obliged to wander without intention. But we will keep our appointment by the far-off Cloudy River.”

The portentous words left Nola breathless. Her nerve endings jingled with Daniel's message of promise. “Thank you. It’s beautiful,” she managed to say. Oh, yesss. They’d keep their appointment by the river. Cloudy or not, she’d be at the Potomac.

The truck grazed a sharp turn, and Nola was thrown into Ming-Ji’s lap. In her arms, Lulu stirred, then kicked a leg out from under the blanket.

“It okay; wake up,” Nola said. She tickled the little cheek. “Mommy’s here.”

Ming-Ji rummaged in her satchel and took out two soda-sized cans of baby formula. “I bring this for her. Use them only when we have no milk.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I couldn’t get baby formula even in the Western drugstore. It must cost a fortune on the black market—”

Her words were cut by the sight of an oncoming eight-wheeler that filled the width of the road as a curve was rushing toward them. On the left, a cliff towered. On the right, the gaping blackness could only be a sheer drop. “Watch out!” she yelled as she braced her legs and tightened her arms around Lulu.

The old man hit the brakes and the truck swerved, dipped to the side, and almost turned over before he yanked hard on the steering wheel and, tipping to the other side, got them back on the road. “Hee-hee-hee,” he laughed. The eight-wheeler was now behind them. Lulu cried at Nola's sudden squeeze.

“It’s all right,” Nola cooed. “We’re going home.” Home. She tried to calm herself with mental images of her Colorado ranch, where in years to come Lulu would learn to ski and ride horses. She would play with Gabby’s children.

“Where are we going?” she asked Ming-Ji.

“South. But very far.”

“What will happen once we’re south?”

“Leave China. Safe for baby.”

Nola tried to reconstruct the map of China. To the south, the vast South China Sea opened to the Pacific Ocean.