Part 6
Richmond, Virginia — November 2002
The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and old memories.
Outside, leaves drifted down like burnt letters. Jack Turner sat at the oak table, turning a bamboo bird over in his palm.
Across from him, Lena poured tea into two mismatched mugs.
She was thirty now. A mother herself. But in her father’s eyes, she was still the baby in the photo he had once clutched while bleeding in the mud of another world.
“Dad,” she said softly, “you haven’t said a word since you came back.”
Jack looked up.
“I’ve been trying to find the right ones,” he said.
That night, they sat in the living room, fireplace crackling, lights low.
He told her everything.
The mission. The missile. The fall.
The jungle, and the boy who should’ve hated him.
Lena listened without blinking, hands folded in her lap. Jack’s voice stayed steady — low, even — but cracked only once.
When he spoke about the baby photo Minh had found. About how it changed everything.
About how it had saved his life.
He pulled the photo from his wallet. Still there. Soft with age.
“You were three weeks old,” he said. “You never knew, but you were the reason that boy didn’t turn me in. You gave me a face he couldn’t shoot.”
Lena took the photo with trembling fingers.
She stared at her younger self — so small, so unaware.
Then she wept.
Later, she looked at the bamboo carving he’d brought home.
“Did he really keep my picture all these years?” she asked.
Jack nodded. “Close to his heart. Same as me.”
She smiled through tears. “Then maybe he knew me better than I thought.”
The next morning, Lena found Jack in the garage, sitting beside an old trunk.
Inside were faded uniforms, maps, medals — and one envelope she’d never seen before.
“This,” Jack said, handing it to her, “was the letter I left with Minh. I made a copy for myself.”
Lena opened it slowly. Her father’s handwriting was smaller back then. Straighter. But the words hit like thunder:
“To the boy who saved me:
You could’ve walked away. You had every reason to.
But instead, you chose mercy. I’ll carry that for the rest of my life.
My daughter will grow up knowing your name.
Because of you, she has a father.With everything I am,
Jack Turner.”
Lena pressed the letter to her chest.
And whispered, “I want to meet him.”
That night, Jack called Minh. A translator helped bridge the gaps. Minh laughed when he heard Lena’s voice over the line. She called him Chú — uncle.
He liked that.
Minh’s granddaughter spoke some English. They talked about school, about the carving Jack had brought back. They asked if Jack would ever come again.
He promised he would.
Weeks later, Lena hung a new photo in her hallway — two men, shoulder to shoulder, older now but smiling. Between them, two grandchildren holding hands.
War, frozen in the background.
Peace, framed in the center.
