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with his own two hands was torn apart. Two of the walls were dismantled, the splintery wooden boards missing. The truth began to present itself. Maybe he had always known. The girl rushed into the dark hut as if her heart were waiting for her, black hair streaming like a flag. What does she think is here, Tu asked, but the old woman just followed her granddaughter inside.
    There was no reason to go in. The room was empty. No sign of his wife or mother. The ashes in the fire pit were long cold. A few pots and woven baskets hung on what was left of the walls. Underneath a shelf a broken jar lay empty. In a corner a tin bucket sat half full of water, his mother’s empty hammock swinging in the breeze.
    Tu sank down in the dirt. He waited for the tears to come, but nothing came. He and Bà had always been close. Somehow she had always sensed him, had always known what was happening to him even when they were apart, the scar on her chest often hot to the touch. The sugar-apple orchard was still smoldering, the orchard Bà’s pride and joy. When the tears still wouldn’tcome, he sat back. A strange feeling of hopefulness fluttered in his stomach.
    Then he heard a scratching, the sound of fingernails scraping on a door. He jumped up and ran through one of the missing walls, tapping on the floor with his foot. When he found the spot, he dropped to his knees and began moving the dirt with his hands. He lifted a board, the earth yawning open. The girl raced around and around the room, her hair flying, but when she saw who it was, her face dropped.
    Bà rose out of the earth, her eyes completely white.
Mon chéri
, she said. Tu felt like a child as the tears wet his cheeks. Within minutes Bà had a fire going and some leftover rice boiling in a kettle.
    And so they waited, each for their own reasons, each with their own thoughts. Bà sat with her dragon pipe clenched between her lips, the pipe’s eyes burning as she scoured an old pot with sand, her face still grimy from her internment. Qui and Huyen were off in one of the remaining corners, the old woman untangling her granddaughter’s hair. To Tu this was the makeshift vigil for his dead wife. He sat in what was left of the doorway looking off at the mountains. Even in the moonlight, ash still hung in the air. He thought of the first time he’d ever seen her. It was evening. She was riding her bicycle. In the road a small boy was driving three water buffalo to their night field. For a moment she stood up on her bicycle, pumping hard to pass the boy and his animals. Then her hat blew off as if plucked from her head by an invisible hand, her long black hair flying loose in the wind as she kept pedaling, the hat sailing behind her and landing in the road. He watched as the lead buffalo stepped on it. How she had gotten off her bicycle and walked back, picking up the smashed thing in her hands. Thinking she was all alone, she had cradled itin her arms. But he had been there, watching from a ditch by the roadside where he had been relieving himself. Her hair blowing loose as if she were standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. It had only been last year. She was sixteen.
    Then somewhere in the long night a noise began. The sound of something banging, a door slamming shut over and over. At first the sound was faint, then the noise changed and filled the air. Tu looked to his mother, unsure of what he was hearing. Even Bà with the things she knew that she shouldn’t know moved her head from side to side as if tracking a housefly and waiting for it to land. Outside, the night was filling with bats.
    Qui was the first to locate the noise. She pulled herself up out of the dirt, moving like a woman out of balance, chest-heavy, her stained shirt glistening in the moonlight. In the doorway she stepped over Tu and walked outside to the mound of earth. At the foot of the sugar-apple tree she cocked her head and closed her eyes. She stood holding her hands in