Chapter 7 — Summer After the Rain

Linh stopped by the cemetery before going to look for records, her shoes were muddy because the road leading to it had not yet been cemented. Her father's grave is under a crocodile tree, the green foliage casts cool shade on the new stone stele, but the base of the stele has grown moss, tiny green spots clinging to each inscription. She brought a bouquet of flowers her mother used to like - light purple bougainvillea wrapped in old newspaper - put them down and sat down to talk as if he was just going to buy medicine and would return before dark.

“I will sell the theater,” she said, her voice trying to remain decisive even though she couldn't believe what she had just said. “If you want to object, then go back to your dream.”

Minh stood far away, not smiling. He brought a small red plastic chair and placed it next to the crocodile tree, saying that the dead don't need a chair but the living do. Linh told him not to turn the cemetery into a cafe. He replied that he didn't want to either, but her legs looked like they were about to go numb from squatting for too long on the wet ground.

Linh asked if her father had ever talked about her mother. Minh said he always kept a blue box on top of the cabinet in his office, but after the funeral the box disappeared, as if someone had cleaned it up too quickly. Linh doesn't know that. She was in the city, only returning to pick up paperwork, and had never opened her father's room since the day he passed away, afraid that the door would open more things than she could bear.

“He's waiting for you,” Minh said.

“You can't talk like you know everything.”

"I don't know everything. I just know that people often clean their house too quickly after a funeral."

Linh turned, her eyes searching. Minh looked down at his soiled shoes, his toes gently rubbed a small pebble, saying that his mother had passed away two years ago, and that he had thrown away most of her things in one day because he was afraid the house would still smell of medicine, a smell that he couldn't bear to smell again. He then found a letter in his old shirt pocket, when it was too late to keep the other items. The letter said she didn't blame him, but he still regrets it to this day. Every time he recalls it, his voice still chokes a bit.

Other people's tragedies do not make Linh's pain any less. But it made her understand that Minh didn't fix things because he had nothing to do. He fixed it because he couldn't bear the thought of something broken being left alone, as if each screw he tightened was a way to atone for what he had accidentally thrown away.

The South Bank project office was located in a two-story house painted cream, gray with dust and time, and has a sign "Urban Development Consulting Center" with a few letters peeling off the frame. The door was locked, the glass covered with dust so thick that you couldn't see inside. Hau asked the neighborhood security guard that the office had been moved after the flood, but upstairs there were still several filing cabinets that no one had taken. Minh asked for the key by promising to repair the fan for him, and Linh signed a paper pledging not to lose tables and chairs. Her signature trembled slightly because of nervousness.

They found dusty rolled-up drawings, yellowed timesheets and an old tape recorder among the messy papers. On the cover of the machine is labeled with a ballpoint pen: "Emergency meeting - no submission". Linh plugged in a new battery, her hand shaking as she pressed the play button. The hissing sound lasted like the sound of wind blowing through a chimney, then a man's voice rang out: "The outlet must be opened before the water level crosses the red line." Another voice replied: "Not yet, there is still the southern residential area."

Minh pressed stop. The room was so quiet that you could clearly hear the ceiling fan swaying overhead, a steady creak like the heartbeat of the abandoned house.

“Maybe it was some other meeting,” Linh said, even though she didn't believe what she just said.

“So why hide in an abandoned office?”

A stack of papers fell out when Hau pulled the drawer, causing dust to fly up, making him cough. That is the list of evacuated households. Linh's mother's name appears at the bottom of the page, next to a note in red ink: "Ha Vang rescue team — do not return to the meeting point." Linh's father was marked as "voluntarily staying", those two words were like a sentence hastily written on a rainy night.

Linh wanted to tear the paper, her hand was squeezing the edge of the paper so tightly that it was wrinkled, but Minh held her hand. He pointed to another line: “Lan Tran — field secretary.”

They followed Lan's old address to a tailor shop near the bus station. The steady sound of a sewing machine running echoed from inside the shop. The landlady said Lan had quit her job and was now teaching children to read in a neighboring commune. When she heard Ha Vang's name, she was silent for a long time, her hand stopped in the middle of the needle, then took out an old brown envelope from the drawer.

"She said if someone from Mr. Khai's family comes to ask, give this. But make sure it's someone who wants to know the truth, not someone who wants to sue someone."

In the envelope was a photo of the dike gate and a copy of the maintenance report. The last line of the minutes was dated and the ink was completely different from the rest. Minh recognized the handwriting of the person who signed the receipt of goods for the South Bank project, his face darkened.

On the way home, the afternoon breeze blew coolly through the small street, Linh asked Minh why he still helped her even though it could drag the whole town into trouble. Minh put his hands on the handlebars of his bicycle, thought for a moment, his eyes looking far away at the river.

"Because if the theater gets destroyed tomorrow, I'll lose my job. If the truth gets destroyed, I'll lose my reason to fix anything."

Linh laughed even though her eyes were stinging, her sleeve quickly wiped the corner of her eyes. They cycled through a road with puddles of water reflecting the orange-red afternoon sky. For the first time, she saw An Binh as more than just the place where her father died. It is also a place where many people are trying to hold back the parts they have not yet said, like broken pieces of the same mirror.

They returned to the theater at noon, the hot sun shining on the corrugated iron roof, making the entire hall extremely hot. Linh opened her father's room, the smell of old paper and rotten wood rushed out as the door was pushed open for the first time in months. On the table is a book recording expenses, next to the ticket purchase receipt. No blue box. Minh looked under the cabinet and found a loose brick, slightly higher than the surrounding bricks. Then they dug out a small metal box, inside was a picture of eight-year-old Linh smiling widely and missing a front tooth, a faded butterfly-shaped hairpin from her mother and a piece of paper with only two words: "Wait for Huong."

Linh held the piece of paper, her hands were cold. Her mother's name was Huong. She wanted to call right away, but her mother's phone number had long been changed. Every time Linh asked, her mother said the old things were no longer important, her voice always drifting away like a boat avoiding a reef.

Hau ran in, panting, and told Mr. Phuc that he had sent a notice on the street that the Ha Vang theater was about to be sold. People started arguing right in front of the market gate. One person wrote that Linh's father once fled when the flood came. Others said he was the first person to stay. The two opinions argued so loudly that Mrs. Nam had to take action.

Linh looked at the photo of her father placed on the table. His eyes in the photo were serious but gentle. She felt both pity and anger. A person can do many good things while hiding a truth that causes his child to lose his mother. She didn't want to turn him into a hero or a villain. She just wanted to know what he chose, and why he never gave her a chance to understand.

Minh gave her a cup of hot tea, the steam rising. She drank, wincing because it was too bitter. He said it was tea left by the dead, the kind of tea Linh's father used to brew so strong that no one else in the house would drink it. Linh asked if it needed to be thrown away. Minh said no, just add sugar.

Linh added two spoons, stirring well until the sound of the spoon hitting the cup became slower. The tea is still bitter, but drinkable. She wrote in the book: "Tuesday: the funeral is not over yet because there are unburied questions."

Linh backed up the photo and minutes at night, the desk lamp clearly illuminating every ink stain on the paper. She sent one copy to the lawyer in charge of the will for records, one copy to her mother, and one copy to keep in the theater's safe. Minh posted a list of places where documents were kept on the wall, telling him that if he forgot, he could just look there. Hau asked if he could keep his math test, because he was afraid of losing it before submitting it. Mrs. Nam said it was a private matter, not to be mixed with the town's history, although her voice could not hide the amusement.

Before turning off the lights, Linh sat alone in her father's room for a while, the metal box still open on the table. She looked at the photo of herself when she was eight years old, trying to remember how she felt that day, but only a blur remained, as if looking through wet glass. She wondered if her father, when he hid this box under the loose brick, had ever imagined her sitting here, years later, alone in the middle of the night, trying to piece together what he hadn't said. That thought both warmed her heart and made her angrier at him, for letting her have to navigate every step on her own in the darkness when he could have turned on the light beforehand.

Minh knocked on the door and gave her a cup of warm water before leaving. He didn't say anything more, just stood in the doorframe for a moment, watching her put each item back into the box in the correct order they found it. When he closed the door, Linh heard the sound of his motorbike starting in the yard, then fading away along the dark road. She sat a moment longer in the light of the table lamp, her hand on the piece of paper "Waiting for Huong", and for the first time she allowed herself to think that perhaps waiting was also a way of loving, even if it was the way that made the person left the most painful.