Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“So, we’re really going to Normandy,” he said, sounding very happy indeed. “If you can stay out of the line of fire long enough.”

Max had some pressing business to deal with, so I took his Cadillac and went to see Bart without him. But first I stopped by the house, as I promised Beto I would, for some things Bart wanted.

Auntie Quynh answered the door wearing a baker’s cap and apron, holding a pastry bag in a plastic-gloved hand.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” she said, leading me toward the kitchen. The counters were covered with trays of exquisite bite-sized pastries. “I’m just finishing up; Zaida will be here soon to get me. Big party tonight, you know, down in the Marina. Carlos and Trips are with Bart now, but we need them to come home and get ready to work tonight. We didn’t know how we were going to get Bart’s bag to him until you said you’d take it.”

She leaned toward me. “You know how Bart gets grumpy when things don’t go his way.”

“I do.” Eyeing the pastries on the counter, I said, “A couple of those would cheer him up.”

She handed me two little pink boxes tied with red string. “Top one is for Bart, bottom one is for you.” She pointed a finger at me and tried to look stern, but didn’t quite pull it off. “For after dinner.”

“Thank you,” I said. “What else do I need to take to Bart?”

“Come with me.” She pulled off her cap and gloves and untied her apron.

As we headed toward the back of the house, I asked, “Do you still have your bakery?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Auntie got old and retired. No, I just do this for Zaida a couple times a week. Otherwise, I’d just sit in a chair and rust.”

She led me into Bart’s bedroom, the sanctum sanctorum of the house, left untouched since the day Mrs. B died.

Quynh stooped quickly to get a pair of fleece-lined slippers from under the edge of the bed. Holding them, she slid open the closet doors, found a canvas overnight bag and put the slippers inside.

“Honey, there’s a checkered robe in the other end of the closet,” she said. “Will you get it for me?”

I slid the doors the other way and found the cotton robe on a hook at the end. That half of the closet was still full of Mrs. B’s clothes, neatly hung on hangers. After all those years, couldn’t Bart bring himself to remove them? Or was he just used to them being there?

Quynh carefully folded the robe I handed her and put it into the bag on top of the slippers. As I watched her, I said, “Auntie, does it bother you to talk about Vietnam?”

“Not so much.” She walked across the room and opened the top drawer of the dresser. “What do you want to know?”

“I remember when you came here, how sick you were at first,” I said. “I know you were in a re-education camp in Vietnam, but I never heard how you got out.”

“Just like Indiana Jones,” she said, taking a few pairs of white cotton socks out of the drawer. “When the communists took over Saigon, they sent me to work in the rice paddies because I was a capitalist-I owned a little market-and I had to learn how to be a hardworking proletariat. I stayed in that place maybe three years. Then one night, a man came into the hut where I slept and gave me a shot of something to keep me asleep, and then he took me away, up into the mountains.”

“He kidnapped you?” I said.

“He and his friends kidnapped a lot of people,” she said, packing the socks into the bag. “In that place he took me to, everybody had families living outside Vietnam. At first, I thought that we were put there for special punishment, but the others told me we were being held for ransom. Only, when their relatives followed instructions to deposit money in a certain bank account, the kidnappers asked for more. And more.”

“You must have been scared to death,” I said.

“At first, yes.” She packed reading glasses and a book from the nightstand before she went into the en suite bathroom for a toothbrush and other toiletries. She talked as she collected. “But there was food, I didn’t have to work in the rice paddies anymore, and no one beat me. Every now and then, someone did get out, so I just waited for my sister Trinh and Bart to do what they could. I knew Trinh would figure out a way.”

Bag packed, she zipped it closed and handed it to me.

“So what happened?” I asked, walking back to the kitchen with her.

“I told you, Indiana Jones,” she said. She put Bart’s little box of pastries inside the bag and handed me mine. “One day, a man I knew from our family’s village came with some money, American money, and said he wanted me to go with him. When the kidnappers said it wasn’t enough money, my rescuer whistled for some friends who ran in carrying M-16s.”

She smiled. “I guess it was enough guns.”

“They got you out?”

She nodded. “I rode on the back of a scooter to the sea. A boat came for me, and took me to a refugee camp in Hong Kong.”

“And that’s where you were when you called Bart,” I said. “And found out about your sister.”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s quite a story, Auntie,” I said. “It has both a happy and a sad ending. My mom and my uncle told me how hard your sister tried to get you out. I’m sorry she wasn’t around when it finally happened.”

“Yes, but it was Trinh who got me out,” Quynh said, very matter-of-fact.

“How so?”

“The man who rescued me,” she said, “he was always in love with Trinh. But our fathers were enemies so they were not allowed to see each other. It was for memory of her that he did what he did.”

“What was his name?”

I thought I knew the answer when I asked the question, but I was very wrong.

She said, “Thai Van.”

Beto’s sons, Carlos and Trips, were in chairs on either side of their grandfather’s bed, stockinged feet up on the bed, playing video games or texting or watching movies or whatever teenagers do on their cell phones. Bart was snoring like a hibernating bear. Both boys put their feet down guiltily and stood when I came in.

I whispered, “How is he?”

Trips, who was closest to me, came over and whispered back, “After all the tests he had today, he’s out for the count. If the nurses would leave him alone, he’d sleep through the night.”

“Auntie said to tell you to go home, shower, and get to the Marina,” I said.

He checked his watch. “What time is Dad getting here?”

“As soon as he closes the store,” I said. “I’ll wait for him.”

“Thanks,” Trips said, pulling on his shoes. “Grandpa gets a little crazy when he wakes up alone in a strange place.”

After they left, I unpacked Bart’s bag, put his book and glasses where he could reach them and the pastry box where he could see it. The slippers went on the floor beside the bed, and the robe I draped over the back of one of the chairs next to the bed. Socks and toiletries went into a night table drawer, and the bag went into the small wardrobe.

The room was dimly lit and quiet. The only sounds were people out in the hall and the steady beeping of the heart monitor. I sat down in the chair with the robe over the back and took out my phone. Jean-Paul had left a message earlier in the day, before I recharged the phone, telling me his flight plans. I checked my watch. If his plane left on time, he should be in the air at the moment. And because there wasn’t a second message telling me there was a delay, he most likely was in the air. He also told me that Rafael was picking him up at the airport. I left a text message asking him to have Rafael drop him at the hospital if his plane landed on schedule. I waited a few minutes for a response. When there wasn’t one, I knew his phone was turned off, so I texted Kevin. I told him where I was and asked if he could come right over; we needed to talk.