Kim turned away so quick it made her dizzy. She steadied herself against the bureau’s edge to catch her breath. The room was silent but for the staccato of Duc’s nervous tapping. The apartment didn’t feel the same without the racket of the kids horsing around and their bubbling jabber. Sophia and Marcel wouldn’t have wanted to see their parents like this, she knew, and so she straightened up. She remembered her promise to them. She pulled a tape player out of the bureau drawer. She turned to him. “The kids made something for you. Do you want to see it? Or, actually, listen to it?”

The tape player was black and chrome and she laid it flat in the center of the coffee table. She pushed play and took a seat beside Duc on the sofa. They waited for the tape to start. Kim closed her eyes listening to the buzzing static. It hissed like a person’s last breath until the clapping began and her daughter’s voice lifted above the applause. She said, “Sophia was the lead in her school musical. It was called Annie. She had to wear a curly red wig.” The singing began and Kim happily sank back into the cushions.

Duc edged forward in his seat. He clasped his hands together and dropped his head over the device. Sophia’s voice was a brittle tinkle. It tip-toed along with timid steps. Kim saw Duc smile. He gulped and she could see him trying to decide what to say. Kim stopped the tape. “All the other parents have home movie recorders. But this was all I could afford. I thought hearing it would be better than nothing.” She pressed play again. Kim had been pregnant with Sophia when he went to war. He had yet to meet his ten-year-old daughter.

From the machine, Sophia’s soprano voice grew bolder and clearer. When she neared the climax, her lungs were thunderous. They pounded out the last tomorrows with the force of a hurricane. Kim remembered sitting in the school gym staring up at Sophia’s little body on that makeshift stage in complete wonder, chills running up her spine. She saw that it had the same effect on Duc. His jaw quivered. He cleared his throat and said, “She inherited your voice.”

“She might have inherited my ear.” Kim paused to think a moment. “But no, that voice, it’s an angel’s voice. I have nothing to do with it.” She wondered if he remembered the lullabies she’d sing to him when he couldn’t sleep nights, the circles she’d draw on his back.

Next on the tape recorder was Marcel saying a few words to his dad in Vietnamese. I’m glad you’re here and now you can come to my baseball games, he said.

Duc said, “Baseball?” He dropped three sugar cubes into his cup and then stirred cream into his tea.