He crumpled the letter in the fury of his fist. She bit down so she wouldn’t cry. She fought off the sinking suspicion that he was hiding something from her. She feared that perhaps he had another woman.

That night Kim wore her brand new silk pajamas to bed. She wanted him to be hers again. She thought back to their lovemaking in the rain beneath a canopy of pines on their honeymoon. She wanted him to know how much she loved him. But he didn’t reach for her the way she thought a man would naturally reach for his wife. She lay on her side of the bed. He lay on his.

Duc was the only man Kim had ever been with. She thought about that fact while she stared sleepless into the dark. Before he came she had imagined them making love and then staying up until daylight confessing all the things that had happened in the years apart. The girls she worked with at Lee’s Nails told her to take a week off work. “Take a break from doing other people’s nails and get your nails done girlfriend!” They said, “Get dolled up.” “Send the kids to camp.” “Make the apartment the dream haven that man’s been fantasizing about while stuck in a roach infested cellar.” She saved up and followed each exacting detail because her friends said it would be like a second honeymoon.

When Kim thought about her wedding night, she found her fingers wandering to her breasts. She always relied on the same images, the way his hand had looked splayed on her belly, his set jaw, the sound of his breath.

Outside their apartment, the bus squawked to a stop. Beside her, Duc began making sounds, moaning. He straddled her and she could feel his erection on her leg. She liked the familiar weight of him. Her body opened and warmed to his touch. Kim’s hands were still under her shirt. She sighed in sync with his movement. But in the next moment, Duc began kicking violently. She tried to free her hands to wake him. But before she got a chance, he’d covered her mouth airtight until she could barely breathe. With his other hand, he clenched her throat and she tried to push him off but couldn’t. She tried to scream but her voice was muffled. The harder she tried, the less breath she had especially with his weight on top of her. And then with the hand that had been on her mouth, he shoved her head into the pillow. He pulled her hair, found her ear, yanked it. She finally managed to scream, “Ba! Ba!” He pressed his fingers into the hinge of her jaw. He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before or just now recognized her for the first time. He kept blinking before finally releasing her.