Kim hauled out the heavy photo album after this. She wanted the old photos to stir up the old memories. Unfortunately, except for the photos of their children, Duc remained dazed and vacant-eyed. She would be pointing at someone, telling him who was living, and who was dead, or even worse divorced, and then she’d look up to find him staring out the window. Even the photos of their honeymoon in Da Lat seemed to bore him.

The black birch that leaned past the apartment ticked against the glass. The branch occasionally swiped the pane with the whoosh of the wind. The leaves jingled like chimes until they smooshed up flat against the window, covering the sun, darkening the room, throwing shadows over his face.

“This must be too much,” she said. She gave him a stack of letters tied in red string. “Here, you can read about everyone at your own leisure.” They were letters from the men he once commanded. The postmarks were from Berlin, and Sydney, Paris, and Cape Town, though most of course came from Santa Ana, California otherwise known as America’s Little Sàigòn. Duc took the bundle and wedged it behind a cushion.

She said, “You know I’m your wife. You know we can talk about anything, right?”

“Of course, you’re a good talker,” he said. He looked down and scratched at his elbow. The back and forth of his fingernail made a starchy sound. She watched dried flakes of skin rain on the armrest. It reminded her of the scratch-off lottery tickets she stopped buying the day Duc arrived.

When she asked him, “How did you get out? Do you want to tell me what it was like?” He punched at the cushion on his lap. Then she tried with small talk. Did you get to read much? Didn’t you once say there was a garden? Did the food get better? What did the labor involve? And then she asked something although she couldn’t quite remember what. She remembered that the wind had picked up causing the branch outside to bang against the window. It slammed so hard she feared the window breaking. When the window didn’t break, she thought it might be too windy for a picnic after all. Kim forgot what she had said to him though it must have been the wrong thing to say. Because the next thing she knew, he’d put both feet on the coffee table and kicked the whole thing over. The tea, cream, sugar, cups and saucers all went crashing down. The table legs stuck straight in the air like a dead bug on its back.

Duc holed up in the bedroom. Kim dialed immigration services. They transferred her to a counseling hotline. Her hands were still shaking while she sat on hold. The counselor said it was common. Duc was shell shocked, post traumatic stress disorder they called it. She could make an appointment for two weeks time. Until then, said the voice on the other end of the line, “Be patient. Ten years is sure to change a man.”