🔹 Part 3
The courtyard smelled of jasmine and earth. Chickens scratched near the mango roots, and a faded wind chime tapped softly in the breeze. Jack followed her into a small house where time had left its fingerprints—peeling shutters, mismatched tiles, a wall calendar from 1999.
She moved with calm precision, like someone used to silence. No television, no music. Just the ticking of a fan and the steeping of tea.
She poured the amber liquid into small porcelain cups. Blue flowers bloomed on their sides—delicate, hand-painted, maybe older than either of them.
“My name is Mai,” she said.
Jack nodded slowly. “I didn’t know it back then.”
“I didn’t speak English,” she replied. “And I didn’t trust anyone in a uniform.”
He swallowed hard. “You remember that day?”
Mai set her cup down. “Very clearly.”
Her voice was soft, but there was something in her eyes—like a storm held just behind glass.
“I’d lost everything,” she continued. “My mother, my little brother. The temple had collapsed.”
“I remember,” Jack said. “You were barefoot. You didn’t cry.”
Mai nodded. “I couldn’t afford tears.”
They sat in silence. The clock on the wall ticked.
“I never stopped wondering if you made it,” Jack finally said. “I only saw you for a minute. But I remembered your face for decades.”
Mai looked down. “I didn’t die.”
“I can see that.”
She managed a faint smile. “But something did die that day.”
He knew what she meant.
Something had died in him, too.
––
She took out a photo album—leather-bound, frayed at the corners. He watched as she flipped through images: her as a teenager in a school uniform, later as a nurse in a small provincial hospital. A wedding photo—Mai in white, the man beside her wearing a soldier’s badge. Then two small boys in matching shirts, grinning in front of a mango tree.
“My husband died in ‘93,” she said. “Motor accident. I raise the boys alone.”
Jack nodded, his hands tight around his cup. “They look happy.”
“They are.”
He leaned forward. “Mai… I don’t know why I’m here. I signed up for the tour to see places I hadn’t seen since the war. But seeing you… it brought everything back.”
Mai didn’t speak right away. Then, quietly, “Did you come back to say sorry?”
His throat went dry. “Do I need to?”
“You were a soldier.”
“I was just a kid with a rifle. I didn’t bomb your village. I gave you food.”
“And left,” she said gently. “But you came back. That’s what matters now.”
Jack stared into the tea, watching the leaves swirl.
“I lost a buddy that day,” he said. “Davis. Took shrapnel saving a little girl. I didn’t even get his body out.”
Mai’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “It still haunts me. I don’t even know if the girl lived.”
She looked at him for a long time. Then stood, walked to a small wooden chest beneath the window, and lifted the lid.
From within, she drew out a box wrapped in cloth. Inside was an old photo—black and white, creased down the center.
It showed a girl standing in front of a Buddhist shrine. Holding a toy soldier.
“I found this in the rubble,” she said. “After you left.”
Jack blinked. That toy—it was Davis’s.
“I gave it to her,” he whispered. “The girl. Just before we moved out.”
Mai held the photo closer to her chest. “I’ve kept it all this time.”
Jack looked at her, his voice cracking. “Was it you?”
Mai looked away.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But maybe that doesn’t matter.”
Then she added, almost inaudibly, “We all carry ghosts.”
🔹 Part 4
The air in the room grew heavy, thick with silence and tea steam. Jack leaned back in the wicker chair, hands clasped in his lap, trying to stitch sense out of something unnameable.
A photo. A toy soldier. A name he hadn’t spoken in thirty-four years.
Davis.
He could still see the moment.
The sniper fire cracking like dry wood. The child frozen in the open street. Davis had lunged, not hesitated. Shoved her down. Took the round to the neck.
Jack had dragged him back behind the truck. Blood everywhere. The child was gone.
He never knew if she made it.
“You’ve kept that picture all this time?” Jack finally asked.
Mai nodded. “I didn’t know who gave me the toy. I was too young. But I knew it meant something. It was the first time someone had chosen to give instead of take.”
She placed the box back into the chest.
“My sons call it the lucky shrine photo,” she added with a faint smile. “They think it brings fortune. I never told them about the war.”
Jack looked at her, eyes glassy. “Sometimes I wish I could forget.”
Mai’s face turned solemn. “And sometimes I wish I couldn’t.”
––
Later that afternoon, Mai walked him through the small alleyways behind her house. Children played with sticks, chasing a plastic ball. One waved at her and shouted “Dì Mai!”
She smiled and waved back, her voice warm.
“You stayed,” Jack said. “All these years.”
“This is my soil,” she replied. “Pain grows here. But so does healing.”
At the corner, she stopped beside a small stone pagoda wrapped in faded red ribbons.
“My father was buried near here. But after the bombings, no one knew where the graves were anymore. So people build spirit houses. For the ones who never came home.”
Jack stared at the tiny altar. Someone had placed half a banana and three incense sticks in front of it that morning.
“My friend never came home either,” Jack said. “Davis. We couldn’t even carry his body. We were overrun by dusk.”
Mai looked at him. “Then maybe this can be for him.”
She lit a match and offered him a stick of incense.
Jack held it with trembling fingers. He knelt slowly, knees stiff, and placed it on the shrine. The smoke curled upward like a whisper.
“He liked country music,” Jack murmured. “Didn’t know how to use chopsticks. Always shared his smokes.”
Mai knelt beside him. “Then his spirit is not forgotten.”
They stayed there, kneeling side by side in silence, as the incense burned and dusk began to fall.
––
That night, as Jack lay in bed at the hotel, a monsoon storm broke outside. Rain pelted the window like urgent hands.
He reached for his journal—the one he hadn’t opened in years.
He flipped past old entries from Okinawa, Saigon, Denver. Pages filled with half-formed thoughts, names of the dead, drawings of fields that no longer existed.
Finally, on a fresh page, he began to write:
March 12, 2002 — Da Nang
Today, I saw a ghost.
She rode a bicycle and didn’t scream.
Her name is Mai.
She remembers. So do I.
Jack put down the pen.
Outside, the thunder rolled.
And in his chest, something long frozen cracked open.
