Thirty-Five

Lola coached Mai through the interminable process of getting a visa, the necessarily vague responses. For starters, the standard reason—visiting a relative—was to be avoided, given that the relative was in jail.

They agreed on a story that involved Mai visiting the University of Utah as a prospective student. “They’ll want proof,” Mai protested when Lola first suggested it.

So Lola spent a few minutes on the internet, falling back on a skill she’d acquired as a foreign correspondent when every dipshit official in every sweltering, flyblown office required a letter from a supervisor certifying her as an official representative of her newspaper. In her first forays overseas, Lola’s supply of such letters had proven pitifully inadequate, and so with her editor’s blessing she’d become an adept forger, blithely running off copies on the ancient one-sheet-at-a-time Xerox machines operating from market stalls. No one ever questioned the gray, tissue-paper quality of those letters as opposed to the sturdy and blindingly white sheets of American stationery upon which the original letters had been printed.

Now, she found a PDF of a University of Utah press release, downloaded the letterhead, and crafted beneath it a letter of invitation from a fictional university provost, telling herself that if no such person existed, it wasn’t really forgery. The letter went into some detail about the English-language classes Mai would be required to take before she began her intended course of study in … Lola looked a question to the girl.

Mai lifted one hand and made her fingers fly over the right side of an imaginary keyboard. “The money numbers. Miss Hoang shows me. What do you call it?”

“Accounting,” said Lola. “Smart choice. You’ll have a job,” she added, lest Mai had caught her tone. Lola filed her expense reports months late rather than deal with the math involved. If someone had ever suggested a career in accounting, she’d probably have punched the person. She added “CPA prep” to the letter and printed it out at the hotel’s business center, praying that no one would test the phone number or email address on her newly created stationery. No one did.

Visa obtained, there was the expense of another last-minute plane ticket, gobbling up whatever was left of her kill fee and putting her credit card decidedly beyond the point where she’d be able to dispense with the bill in a single payment.

Then, the endurance contest of the three separate flights, the added nightmare of middle seats in the middle section on the longest, Lola’s head rolling against the backrest in her half-sleep, craving the pills with an intensity that rivaled her grief over Charlie, aware of Mai rigid and wakeful beside her, nerves humming in anticipation of seeing her brother. Occasionally, when Lola’s eyes fluttered half-open, a tentative hand would land on her arm, accompanied by the question, “You’re sure? You’re truly sure it’s him?”

Lola wasn’t sure at all. All she knew was that Trang once had a sister. That he believed her dead. And that even so, he’d been intent upon visiting her grave. “It was important for him to honor her,” Tynslee had said in that befogged conversation when she’d revealed the existence of Mai—albeit, a Mai believed dead. “He didn’t even know the anniversary of her death. And there’s a big holiday where everyone is supposed to visit the graves. I forget what it’s called.”

“Tet,” Lola supplied, marveling at how quickly the word had passed from the national consciousness.

She had replayed the conversation with Tynslee into infinity. It looped through her head yet again, along with memories of her visit with Trang, as she twisted in half-sleep in the torture device masquerading as an airplane seat. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw his guileless mien, the trusting belief in his own innocence, and the accompanying belief that a simple “but I didn’t do it” would convince a judge and lawyers who’d heard the same protest several times a day for years on end.

Lola tried to remember the impulse that had propelled her to Vietnam. What had she hoped to find? The sister’s grave, proof that if one story was true, it would somehow make Trang more believable? And how would the miraculous discovery of a living, breathing sister affect things—if at all?

She shuffled the facts in her mind like a mismatched deck of cards, but no matter how many times she laid them out, she came up with a bad hand, one that only got worse.

Orphanages were full of children with dead siblings, certainly not as many as during the war, but poverty still took a significant toll. The photo she’d brought was so indistinct. Maybe Mai, aching for her own brother, was simply mistaken about the boy in the photo. Or—a darker possibility, one that a journalist’s natural skepticism demanded Lola consider—maybe there was no brother at all. Maybe Mai just saw an opportunity to come to the United States and grabbed it with both hands. Maybe she’d disappear as soon as they deplaned.

With that possibility in mind, Lola kept a watchful eye on the girl through Baggage Claim and Customs, trailed her into the ladies’ room, and insisted that Mai accompany her to the rental car counter. She brought Mai with her into the lobby when she checked into a motel—not the luxurious accommodations that Families of Faith had provided, but a suburban mid-range chain that was easier on her overstressed credit card. She hovered outside the bathroom door while Mai took a shower and skipped her own desperately needed ablutions, settling for a Navy shower at the sink and a change of clothes as Mai averted her eyes.

And, after far too much time, finally the drive to the jail, Mai’s fingernails digging long scratches in the rental car’s vinyl seats. Breath held as the guard scrutinized their identification, released in an audible whoosh when he waved Mai through.

He held up his hand to Lola. “One at a time,” he said.

Mai didn’t even look back, just hurried after her escort in the tiny, tripping steps mandated by her high heels.

“Five minutes,” Lola told herself. If Mai were quick to return, then her worst-case scenario would be realized. Trang wasn’t the right boy after all. Lola would have spent—her brain refused to calculate the exact amount of money, only that a comma was involved—all of her remaining cash, and more she didn’t have, on a fool’s errand.

But five minutes passed, and then ten, and at fifteen minutes, Lola slumped in her chair and closed her eyes, trying to imagine the reunion between brother and sister and whether it might mean anything at all in the case against Trang.