When Karen can’t think of anything else to say, they sit in a silence that she mistakes at first for a kind of quiet consolation.

Then June says, “Do you know why he keeps coming back? It’s because he thinks there are no consequences. He’s not afraid. So we must make him afraid.” There is a stony resolve in her voice.

“Should we tell Father?”

June dismisses the notion with a curt shake of the head. “He would go too far without meaning to. And worse, he’d get caught. We’d lose everything, of course.” She lifts her daughter’s hands and squeezes them. “You keep practicing, yes? Grow your strength. The world is full of boys and men like Ricky Stokes, and you’ll have to deal with them. But for now, let me take care of this one.”

Karen nods, feeling she must acquiesce to the calm insistence in her mother’s voice, the subtle grip of her hands.

“And we won’t tell Father?” she asks.

“We won’t tell anyone.”

In the days and weeks that follow, Karen no longer sees Ricky Stokes outside her house at night. She doesn’t see him at school or around town, and for several days she worries about what her mother might have done to him. She hears speculation around school that he’s been sent away for some reason or other—house breaking or vandalism. Others say that his mother’s latest boyfriend threw him out of the house after a violent argument, or that he got into trouble with a drug dealer and had to leave town. Every few months, someone will claim to have spotted him a few towns over, wiping tables in a pub or stacking shelves in a supermarket; such news will be met with rapidly diminishing concern. By the end of the school year, his absence will no longer be felt, and in due time, he will be all but forgotten by his teachers and peers.

HONG KONG, 1941

Eventually Jun-Jun and the idiot boy will climb out of the ditch and cross burnt fields. They will discover that everyone they know is dead.