Kim readied herself to sharpen her ears, train her eyes. On the other side, he switched on the overhead fan. She pressed her ear even harder against the door. The whirring blades drowned out his movements. Outside the traffic horns blared. She shrugged her shoulders then shuffled away in her slippers.

At the kitchen sink washing plates, she cursed the fan, its camouflage effect, its ability to snuff out any bridge between how he could go from flossing teeth to tearing down her sun-flowered shower curtain. How he could go from relieving himself to then slamming the toilet lid with such hatred she’d find it fractured in two. How he could go from brewing ginger tea to the sobbing cries she now heard slipping through the static murmur of the vents.

At the airport, she saw he was darker from the sun. He was skinnier from the lack of food. But mostly, he looked the same, walking through the terminal gate, tall and handsome, carrying all his possession in that one military green duffel bag. She’d wished then that she hadn’t sent Marcel and Sophia to summer camp. Now though, she exhaled relieved.

Kim and Duc had written letters throughout the years. She thought it odd now that she hadn’t asked more questions, harder questions. But truth was she welcomed the love letters. When the transparent sheets arrived from Vietnam, she got to trade in the exhaustion of life as a single mother in a foreign country for the easy past. Duc wrote about how he had once pursued her. He wrote about their mating games and rituals: Friday night movies, Saturday night durian shakes, Sunday morning coffee.

After an hour in the bathroom, Duc returned to the kitchen. He stood stiff, composed, a soldier’s soldier, the officer that he’d once been. Both his upper and lower eyelids were swollen. He held his chin up though his eyes stayed downcast. He tried to shake off her gaze in a spastic jerk the way a dog might try to shake off water or dislodge a flea. He squeezed lemon into his now cold tea and then asked for honey.

She offered to brew him a new cup. But he said, “Do you have any or not?” He drummed the spoon on the lip of the cup.

“It’s really no problem,” she said. The silver spoon clinked against the counter. The lemon wedge dropped in the trash with a thump. The lid clapped shut.

From prison he would write, “You are my heart.” “I’m staying alive for you and the kids alone.” “When we are together again we will…” and they were always glorious dreams.