Later that day, after Mel had told him about finding Anh’s grave, he asked what she and Tien would do next.
“After Tien returns from her retreat, I expect that we’ll return to the States.”
“How long will she be gone?”
“A few days, perhaps a week.”
“So there’s nothing to keep you here in Ho Chi Minh City until she returns.”
“Only you.”
“I can’t stay. Even with the staff holding things together, I should return to the mountain. It’s where I need to be.”
Mel felt her heart constrict. She should have realized how ephemeral and impermanent these last few hours with Phil were. She’d conveniently ignored the reality of their divergent paths in life in the passion and wonder of rediscovering one another. She held back her disappointment that he would leave so soon. No regrets, she told herself. Even knowing that it was only this one night, she’d embrace it once again.
“I have a request,” Phil said, stroking the side of her face.
“Come back with me while Tien is in Da Nang. You said
yourself that I’m the only thing that keeps you here. You can write as easily on my verandah as you can in this room.”
Her rational side cautioned her that it would be all the more painful to leave him if she went with him now, only postponing the inevitable. But she had forsaken caution when she opened up her life to him that first night on the mountain.
“I’ll come.” She took another leap of faith, trusting that whatever happened in the next few days could only enrich their lives, no matter in what direction each turned.
She sent word to the monastery, packed up and left Vietnam, this time with Phil at her side.
The days she spent with him on the mountain deepened the emotional connection between them. In the evenings, she and Phil continued their conversations, delving into what had shaped and challenged them in the thirty years that had separated them. When she remarked that he no longer drank, he offered her the harrowing story of his descent into alcoholism and his subsequent climb to sobriety. In their bed at night their lovemaking captured what they had learned about one another, weaving their stories together in a way that bound them closer.
During the day when Phil was treating patients in the clinic Mel reached out to the Lahu women. Despite the language barrier, she was accepted into their circle, working beside them in the garden and learning to cook a vegetable curry spiced with galangal and chilies. Over the course of her stay she finished the new profile for the
Post
, a piece that she knew captured the complexity of the man and his work.
She wasn’t sure if it was the altitude or the clarity of the air or the simplicity of village life, but she felt invigo
rated, healthier than she had in years. She also felt a satisfaction that she hadn’t thought possible.
The end of the week loomed, and with it the pull of all the other threads in her life—her daughter, her work, her close-knit network of friends in Washington. Once again the rational voice intruded and she slipped into a contemplative, distant mood.
That night in bed, as Phil held her, he spoke aloud what neither of them wanted to face.
“When I came to you that night in Ho Chi Minh City, I told you I didn’t want to lose you again. This week with you has only reaffirmed for me what you mean to me. I know I am asking something extraordinary of you—to give up the life you’ve built for yourself. But I cannot bear to let you go this time. Be my wife.”
All of the limitations and expectations that had defined her life up until that moment crowded into the darkened room, grasping for her. But she turned inward and listened to the voice that had barely been a whisper in Saigon thirty years before but now was strong and confident.
“Yes,” she answered.
They made love, this time with an intensity and passion and understanding strengthened by the choice each had made to be with one another, a choice worth the cost.
The next morning, Tien called to let Mel know she was ready to leave Da Nang.
“Fly to Chiang Mai,” Mel told her. “I’ll meet you there.”
She picked Tien up at the airport and as they drove up the mountain she listened to her daughter’s experience at the retreat. She wasn’t ready to share with Tien what had happened until she’d had the opportunity to introduce her to Phil in the village. But she was convinced that once Tien knew him, she would understand Mel’s decision.
They arrived just before lunch, greeted by the soccer boys who escorted them to the dining room. After introductions, Tien got swept up into the lively conversation around the table and seemed at ease and at peace with herself.
When the meal was over, Phil walked Mel and Tien back to his verandah.
“I have something I want to show you, Tien,” he said as he reached for a thick photo album on the table, its cheap plastic cover dry and cracked.
“It’s a record of the final days of the orphanage.”
“How did you manage to save the photos?” Mel asked, remembering Phil’s capture and imprisonment in Cambodia after he left Saigon.
“I’d sent my mother the undeveloped rolls of film before I left Vietnam—a peace offering or a smoke screen, depending on how you look at it. I thought it would comfort her to see the children, knowing she was so worried about my decision to leave Boston. When I was imprisoned, the photos—and your
Newsweek
article—were all she had, so she put together the album. She saved it, and when she passed away my sisters found it and sent it to me.”
Tien’s eyes grew wide as she moved closer to Phil to view the album. There were photos of the villa and group shots of the different age groups of the children, all of which Tien studied carefully. Then Phil turned the yellowed page and showed her two photos, side by side. In the first, a baby in the arms of a young Vietnamese woman in a pale yellow
ao dai.
“That is you with your mother, Anh.”
Tien bent over the page, gasping.
“She looks like me!”
“This is another photo of you with Anh and Melanie. I took it the day before the evacuation.”
“This last item is the
Newsweek
article that sparked the babylift. Your mothers saved your life, Tien. Both of them.”
Tien looked across the table at Mel.
“I know that now,” she said. She reached out to Mel and Mel embraced her daughter. At that moment Mel felt the same force that had flowed from Anh so many years before, when she had entrusted Mel with her daughter’s future, her daughter’s life. That force was coming now from Tien, stronger as a result of her journey into the past and her acceptance of who both her mothers were and what they had done for her. Mel knew Tien would flourish; and she could tell from the perceptive, accepting expression in Tien’s eyes as she looked at Mel and Phil that Tien would understand Mel’s decision to marry Phil and join him in the mountains.
She wiped the tears from her eyes, tears of joy at all that she had regained on this journey—her daughter’s understanding and Phil’s love.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3175-1
A MOTHER’S HEART
Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders
of the individual works as follows:
THE PROMISE
Copyright © 2009 by Sharon Sala
YOU BELONG TO ME
Copyright © 2009 by Muna Shehadi Sill
A DAUGHTER’S JOURNEY
Copyright © 2009 by Linda Cardillo Platzer
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