“They were taken by someone. Someone very cruel.”
“And they beg? Nothing else?”
“They play games for money.”
The tongs continued to poke and prod. “I haven’t seen them,” replied the scallop seller. “Not that boy and girl. Mind you, there are dozens like them on this beach. If your boy and girl are in Nha Trang, you’ll find them here. Stay close to the water and you’ll find them.”
“Do you—”
“Don’t ask around too much, dear. This city is better for answers than questions. And people will talk. Maybe the wrong people. Just open your eyes. And see that boy and girl before whoever took them sees you. That’s the trick.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you from Saigon?”
“I live there now.”
“And him?”
“He’s American.”
The woman smiled, using her tongs to set the opened shells on a folded piece of newspaper. She speared a scallop with a bamboo chop-stick and handed the steaming morsel to Thien. “I remember when the Americans came,” she said, preparing to give Noah a scallop. “I was a girl. Living in Saigon. They rode in big trucks and they gave me so many sweets.”
“Oh, that scallop is delicious.”
“It ought to be, dear. My husband brought these in last night. As far as men go, he’s not bad. He once found me a pearl. And he finds enough scallops that I’ve never had to sell it.”
“I hope you never have to.”
“That would be a nice surprise,” the woman replied as she organized her wares. She stood up. “Stay here for two days. If you don’t find them in two days, they’re not here. I’ll also poke around. Come back to this spot tomorrow, at this time, and find me. I may know something.”
Thien thanked the woman and watched her walk toward a distant pair of beachgoers. “Here,” she said, handing a scallop to Noah.
He ate it quickly, eager to start searching, envisioning Mai and Minh and what they might be enduring. “Do you think . . . they think we’ve abandoned them?”
“I do not know. They have always been abandoned. They probably think that we are no different.”
“We need to find them. Soon.”
She nodded. “I will drive. You look. If we see them and can get them to our scooter, let them sit between us. Put Minh on your lap and I will speed away.”
“Speed away?”
“You have never seen me drive fast.”
“And you could drive fast with four people on the scooter?”
“If we find them, and Loc starts to chase us, I will drive like the wind. So please hold on to them.”
Noah ate his last scallop. After she finished hers, he offered her his hand and helped her up. “Do you know something?”
“Do I know . . . what?”
He started to lead her toward the scooter. “In Iraq, we saved some people. Some people worth saving. And that felt good.”
“We are going to save Mai and Minh.”
“But we also lost some good people. And they’re never coming back. And if something goes wrong . . . you run. You get the police. Don’t wait for me.”
“No, Noah. We are together. We are a team.”
Stopping, he turned toward her, raising the bill of her cap so that he could kiss her forehead and then her lips. She put her arms around him and he felt the press of her body against his. “Don’t worry, Thien, about leaving me behind. I’ll find you.”
She traced the scar on his forehead with her fingers. “I do not want you to get hurt. You have been hurt too much already. So I will stay by your side. I will protect you.”
“You can’t—”
“I will not leave you. I am not afraid.”
“Maybe you should be.”
“Maybe. But did you see Tam . . . when she was dying?”
“Yes.”
“She was so brave. She hurt so much, but she was so brave.”
“I know.”
Thien watched the waves tumble, wondering if Qui and Tam were still together. “Mai and Minh are brave too. They are alone and they have no one. All they want is to go to school, to be safe, to be children. Is that too much for them to ask?”
“No, it’s not.”
“They only want to be happy.”
“They will be happy.”
“Mai wants to paint with me. I promised her that we would paint together.”
“Iris showed me the rainbow.”
Thien sniffed, her eyes glistening. She thought about painting with Mai, about how a girl who lived in filth wanted to create something beautiful. “Mai and Minh . . . they are the dragons. They are the ones who will look after us, who will make the world a better place. And I will give everything I have to bring them back. Just as I will do anything to protect you.”
He kissed her, tasting the salt of her tears. “Then don’t get hurt. Your smile, your songs, those are the things that protect me. Do you understand?”
“How . . . how do they protect you?”
“Because they take away some of my pain. Better than any drug. Better than any drink. So don’t get hurt. If you care about me, if you want to protect me, then you can’t get hurt.”
She nodded, rising on her toes to kiss him. “Soon I will sing to you again. Just to you. And then you will see Mai and Minh, playing on the seesaw we built. And there will be other children. And they will laugh, and run, and learn. And we will be so blessed.”
His lips touched hers and he pulled her closer, feeling her, adoring her. “You . . . you saved me, Thien. And I think . . . I know I’m falling in love with you.”
“Please do not stop.”
“I won’t.”
“Because I feel the same.” She glanced at the city. “And now we are going to save Mai and Minh—the dragons who have been stolen from us. No matter what we have to do, we are going to save them and bring them home.”
TO IRIS, THE OFFICE SEEMED LIFELESS, though Sahn sat in the chair next to her. She’d never felt so alone, not even as a little girl, when her father didn’t return as promised. At least then she had her mother and her books. Now she had no one, and her books seemed only to tell lies, to fashion worlds and people who suddenly seemed so trite. Had her favorite writers ever really suffered? she wondered. Had they watched a child die? Had they walked the streets and seen people on the cusp of starvation or insanity? Did they have any inkling about the true nature of the sorrows that they brought to life on the page? Maybe, maybe not, she thought. Certainly some novels had made her cry. So maybe those authors had suffered. Maybe they knew about the ache of loss. Or perhaps they were simply good storytellers, able to create emotions and thoughts that they’d never experienced.
Whatever the case, Iris wished that she could find solace in something, whether books or work or memories. But she couldn’t. Tam and Qui were dead. Mai and Minh had been kidnapped. Everything that she’d wanted to accomplish was in danger of being destroyed. Her father’s wishes, and her own dreams for the center, would be meaningless if Mai and Minh weren’t found. Nothing could ever replace the hole that their disappearance would leave in her. She would go on, of course. She’d open the center. But it would always be a hollow place for her, a place of haunting memories and unfulfilled spaces.
Having not slept all night, Iris sipped some strong tea. She pinched her thigh, trying to rouse her sluggish mind. “We should call the station again,” she said, turning to Sahn.
He opened his eyes, dragging his thoughts back into the present. “What you say?”
“Can you please call them again? Maybe something’s changed.”
“I speak with them three time already.”
“Please? Please make the call.”
Sahn sighed. “Once more. But then we wait for them to call here.”
“Thank you.” Iris picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Nha Trang police station. She handed the phone to Sahn. She listened to him talk softly but firmly. His face, usually so expressionless, depicted frustration, then anger, then satisfaction. As she often did, Iris wished she could speak Vietnamese. She’d take lessons, she promised herself, as soon as the center was opened.
Sahn handed the phone back to her. She set it in her lap. “Well? What did they say?”
“They are looking.”
“Do you believe them?”
He nodded, pleased by the response of his countrymen. “They are trying.”
Iris reached between them and took his hands in hers. “Could we call the other cities again? And the smaller towns? Maybe someone saw something.”
Sahn tried to remember the last time a woman had held his hands. It must have been my mother, he thought, probably the day before the bombs fell. To his surprise, he didn’t mind Iris’s hands gripping his. “I call them,” he said, wishing he could see her face clearly, if even for a moment.
She squeezed his hands.
“Cam on.”
“You . . . you speak Vietnamese?”
“Only a few phrases. And ‘thank you’ is one of them.”
“You say it just right. Perfect. Who your teacher?”
“No one. I’ve just been listening. On the street.”
“You want learn more?”
“I do. Very much so.”
He straightened, proud that she wished to learn the language of his ancestors. “After children are back, I teach you one word every day. Okay?”
“That would be wonderful. Really wonderful. I want to learn. I just haven’t had time.”
“Vietnamese easy. Not like English. English give me headache. Vietnamese sound like . . . like birds talking in a tree. So nice. You be happier here when you speak Vietnamese. Then you have less problem. Then everyone smile at you.”
“Everyone already smiles at me. Except you, of course.”
The corners of his mouth rose slightly. “No believe everything you see.”
“So your frown is really a smile?”
“Just learn Vietnamese. Then my headache will go. And we can talk as many as you like.”
She picked up the piece of paper listing the phone numbers of the police stations in nearby cities. “Are we going to find them, Sahn?” she asked, scanning the long list of numbers. “Please tell me that we’re going to find them. I’ve been praying that we will. Praying so hard. But I just . . . I really don’t know.”
He sighed, watching the curly mass of her hair float before him. “Yes,” he finally replied. Aware that she was seeking encouragement, that she needed it, he added, “Loc is no smart. He should take them far from here. But he is no smart and he is lazy. So he will go to Nha Trang. I know his kind. Their life is like a . . . pattern. They are easy to see, even if my eyes no work. I catch hundreds of these men. These cowards. And we soon catch Loc. And he never see the children again.”
“And when we do that . . . will you do something else for me?”
“Do what?”
She leaned closer to him. “Spread the word on the street. Let everyone know what happened to Loc. What he did and what happened to him. Tell them you’re with me. And that no one is ever going to hurt another one of our children.”
Sahn nodded slowly, thinking again that she was a mongoose. “I tell them this and more.”
“Cam on.”
“Khong co chi.”
Iris nodded. Though still sick with worry over Mai and Minh, she no longer felt so alone. Sahn might be old and nearly blind. He might have once killed Americans. But he was her ally, perhaps even her friend. And he’d protect what she held most dear.
After dialing a number from the top of her list, she handed him the phone. As he began to speak, she patted his knee twice, closed her eyes, and tried to think of anything else she might do to bring Mai and Minh home.
ABOUT TWO HUNDRED MILES TO THE northeast, Mai and Minh walked along the white-sand beach that dominated the shoreline beside Nha Trang. The beach appeared to go on forever—an immense, curving world that housed countless discoveries. Crabs scurried before them. Silverfish darted in the shallows. Palm trees swayed in the breeze. Though the city could be heard and seen, it seemed secondary to the beach. The sea, which stretched into the horizon, was the color of the sapphires that Mai had once seen in a storefront window. She thought the sea looked infinite, in some ways like the sky at night. Only the sky was one-dimensional, whereas she could stick her toe in the sea and look out across waves that never ended.
Though normally the sight and feel of the sea would have prompted Mai to run and play, she knew that Loc was near, and she couldn’t forget how the mustached man had put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. His touch had made her feel cold and violated. She hadn’t wanted his hand on her skin, but he’d touched her all the same. If Minh hadn’t jumped to action and distracted the men, Loc’s cousin would have touched her more.
Feeling panic rise within her, Mai reached for Minh’s stump, holding it tight. “We have to escape,” she said. “Today. Tonight might be too late. Please, Minh. Those men are mad at you for winning the game. And Loc’s cousin . . . he . . . he scares me. I don’t want to see him again.”
Minh nodded, studying their surroundings, wondering if they should pay someone to drive them far away.
“Stop it, Minh! Don’t stand there and pretend that you can’t speak!”
He turned toward the sea. “Loc is on the sidewalk by the street,” he whispered. “I could hit him with a stone.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t want him to see me talking.”
“Please, Minh. I can’t stay here with him. I’m too scared. Can’t we just leave? Get on a bus and leave?”
“He’ll see us.”
“What if we went to the police?”
“I don’t trust the police. He’ll bribe them.”
“Maybe it’s time to take a chance. Maybe they’ll help us.”
A Westerner walked toward them, and Minh lifted up packets of postcards that Loc had bought for them to sell.
Knowing that Loc was watching, Mai tried to smile at the foreigner. “Good morning,” she said in English. “You like postcards? Maybe it time for you to write your mother. I think you away from home for long time. Sure, sure, she want to hear from you.”