🔹 Part 7
Two days passed. Jack didn’t visit the usual tourist stops. No marble mountains, no war museums, no riverside restaurants with set menus for Americans.
Instead, he stayed close to Mai’s home.
They sat beneath the mango trees each evening, sharing quiet conversation and simple meals—grilled fish, steamed rice, pickled vegetables in tiny dishes. Her younger son, Bao, had warmed up to Jack, showing him how to peel lychees without crushing them.
It was strange, Jack thought—how comfort could come in unfamiliar places. How healing might begin not with answers, but with witness.
“You’ve become part of the rhythm here,” Mai told him one morning, watching him help her sweep the front path.
“I don’t know what I’ll tell people back home,” Jack said. “That I found a ghost and she made me tea?”
She smiled. “You’ll know what to say when it’s time.”
But that time was coming fast. His return flight loomed two days away.
––
On his second-to-last evening, they walked to the edge of town, where a small graveyard overlooked a flat stretch of flooded rice fields. Most of the tombs were simple—concrete mounds with sun-bleached names and incense holders blackened by time.
Mai stopped in front of one near the back.
“This is where my husband is buried,” she said. “He served for the South. After 1975, life was… hard. No pension. No respect.”
Jack knelt beside the grave. There was no bitterness in her voice, only quiet fact.
“I loved him,” she said. “But I don’t believe we only get one chance at love.”
Jack looked up. “You believe in second chances?”
She nodded. “Or at least in the courage to open the door again, even if no one knocks.”
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
That night, he didn’t sleep. He sat on the hotel balcony, a light breeze cutting through the warm air.
He watched the empty streets, thought of the war, thought of the boy he was and the man he had become.
And thought of her.
––
The next morning, Mai wasn’t at her house.
The gate was locked. The bike was gone.
Jack waited. And waited.
Finally, a neighbor told him she’d gone to visit her aunt in Hội An and wouldn’t be back until the next day—after his flight.
He felt a weight sink into his chest. He wasn’t ready.
Back at the hotel, he packed slowly. The souvenir shirt stayed folded. The war museum brochure remained untouched.
As he zipped up his bag, he found the last thing he’d brought with him—a sealed envelope, addressed to no one.
It was a letter he’d written months ago in Iowa. A letter to himself. To the version of Jack Callahan that had never left Vietnam in his mind.
He sat at the desk, tore it open, and read:
*If you’re reading this, it means you went back. I don’t know what you’ll find there. Maybe nothing. Maybe too much.
But I hope you see her. The girl. And if she’s alive—if she survived—tell her thank you.
Because knowing you saved someone… might just save you too.*
Jack folded the letter again. Then reached for another sheet of paper.
This time, he addressed it:
To Mai
And he began to write.
––
He left the envelope with the neighbor. “Please give this to her tomorrow.”
The woman nodded. “Of course.”
He didn’t ask if she’d read it. In this place, some things were sacred.
And then he climbed into the airport van and didn’t look back.
Until the van reached the bend in the road.
There, near the corner, stood Mai.
Not waving. Just standing beside her bicycle.
She raised one hand. A simple gesture.
Jack lowered the window.
They locked eyes.
No words.
But everything that needed to be said passed between them like light.
And then she pedaled away.
🔹 Part 8
The plane lifted off from Da Nang with a low roar, banking east toward the clouds. Jack stared out the window as the coast fell away—green fields, snaking rivers, red-tiled roofs shrinking into memory.
He had come expecting history. Maybe even closure.
He hadn’t expected her.
Back in Des Moines, spring hadn’t yet arrived. Patches of snow clung to curbs, and the wind still carried a bite. Jack’s small house looked unchanged—same porch swing, same mailbox he’d built in ’89. But something inside him had shifted.
For three days, he didn’t unpack the suitcase. He couldn’t bring himself to fold away Vietnam like a pair of worn socks.
Instead, he sat on the back steps with a mug of coffee, holding the stone carving Mai had given him—the child’s face etched in river rock.
She’d said it was to remember the girl she used to be.
He wondered what she remembered when she looked at it.
––
At night, he began organizing the boxes in his garage. Military papers. Old medals. Photographs that no longer held pain, only distance.
In one envelope, he found the dog tag of a fallen comrade. In another, a rusted Zippo lighter engraved with:
“This too shall pass.”
He placed them gently in a shadowbox frame, then hung it in his hallway.
Not as trophies.
But as markers.
Of who he had been.
And who he still owed something to.
––
A week passed. Then two.
One evening, as Jack returned from the grocery store, he found a letter in his mailbox.
The handwriting was unfamiliar. But the postmark said: Vietnam.
His heart jumped.
He opened it right there on the porch.
Dear Jack,
You forgot something. Not the stone. Not the memory. You forgot your own words.
When you said you didn’t know what to tell people back home—I think maybe you were wrong. You have a story. And I think it wants to be told.
You gave food to a hungry child in a city falling apart. You gave a moment of kindness in a world full of fear. And then you came back. Not as a soldier. But as a witness.
The past doesn’t need to vanish. It needs to be seen. And spoken.
If your people want to listen, maybe my people will too.
You know where to find me.
— Mai
Jack read it twice.
Then again.
A breeze stirred the trees in the yard. Somewhere nearby, a lawnmower buzzed to life. But Jack heard none of it.
His fingers tightened around the paper.
He walked inside, pulled a yellow legal pad from the drawer, and sat at the kitchen table.
And slowly, he began to write:
Hue, 1968.
Her feet were bare. Her eyes were too old for her face. She didn’t run, didn’t cry. She just looked at me like I didn’t belong on this planet. And maybe I didn’t. But I gave her everything I had in my pack. And in return, she gave me thirty-four years of wondering.
The words spilled out.
Not for glory.
Not for pity.
But for truth.
Because she was right.
The past didn’t need to vanish.
It needed to be seen.
