Chapter 11 — The Chorus of Those Out of Rhythm

On a rare Sunday morning, when there is no practice schedule, Thu An wakes up early, makes two cups of coffee, and brings one cup to her mother's room. Mrs. Nguyet was still lying in bed, but awake, her eyes looking up at the ceiling with a familiar pensive look recently.

"I think today is the right time," Thu An said, placing the cup of coffee on the bedside table, her voice gentle but firm. "Mom promised to tell me about 'last year' that dad wrote in his diary. I think, after everything that's happened in the past few weeks, maybe we should talk frankly, about everything, including the night dad died."

Ms. Nguyet sat up, leaning her back against the headboard, her hands holding a cup of hot coffee as if looking for support. "Okay," she said softly, "please sit down here."

Thu An sat down on the edge of the bed, waiting, and Ba Nguyet began to tell, her voice was slow, sometimes hesitant, as if she was digging up memories that had been buried for too long.

"Five years before you were born, I was pregnant with a child. The baby - I believe it was a girl, although the doctor couldn't confirm it at the time - died when I was seven months pregnant. A sudden high fever, no one could have predicted it. After that, I fell into a dark period, not speaking, not eating, almost not wanting to live anymore. It was music, it was the piano your father brought home and put in the room, that pulled me back."

Thu An sat quietly, her hand clutching her coffee cup tightly, feeling a stream of complex emotions welling up in her heart — grief for a sister she never knew existed, and a new understanding of the roots of her mother's obsession with music.

"From then on," Mrs. Nguyet continued, her voice trembling, "music was no longer a hobby, it was where I escaped from pain, proof that I could still create something beautiful after losing the most precious thing. When you were born, I loved you so much, but I was also afraid — afraid that if I let go of music, even for a little while, that dark abyss would come back to swallow me, and then, I wouldn't be anymore." strong enough to be your mother too. That's why — not the right reason, but the real reason — I never dared to leave the choir, even when I should have been with you more."

Thu An was silent for a long time, childhood memories rushed back into her head with a completely different perspective - the evenings she sat alone waiting for her mother to come home, the times she saw her mother rushing to leave home to catch up on practice, now wearing a new layer, no longer simple selfishness, but the fear of a woman who once stood on the brink of collapse and tried everything to never fall there again.

"What about the night Dad died?" Thu An asked, her voice trembled slightly, touching the deepest wound in her heart. "Why was mom still on stage that night?"

Ms. Nguyet closed her eyes, as if trying to suppress a physical pain. "That night was a charity fundraising performance. Mom promised the organizers and the whole group that she wouldn't miss it. When you called to tell me that dad was hospitalized in the emergency room, mom..." She stopped, tears began to roll down. "I looked at my phone, saw the missed call, but at that moment I was standing in the middle of the stage, the baton raised, the whole choir waiting for my signal. I had a moment — just a moment — of hesitation between running to the hospital or finishing the performance. And I made the wrong choice, Thu An. I made the wrong choice, and I've had to live with that choice for the past fifteen years."

"Why did you choose to stay?" Thu An asked, her voice choked, the question she had carried with her for half her life was finally said out loud.

"Because I'm scared," Mrs. Nguyet replied, looking straight into her daughter's eyes, not avoiding her. "I'm afraid that if I leave the show midway, the feeling of failure, the feeling of not being able to keep my promise, will push me back into the abyss I tried to escape from after losing my first child. It was an irrational, selfish fear, and I traded it with my last moment with my husband. I don't have any excuses that could make it right, Thu An. I can only tell you that I regretted that decision every day, throughout. the past fifteen years."

Thu An burst into tears, the tears that had been suppressed for twenty-five years finally flowed out. Mrs. Nguyet reached out to hug her daughter, and this time, Thu An did not push away, she leaned on her mother's shoulder, crying like a child, letting all the resentments, hurts, and unanswered questions finally be released.

"I'm sorry for blaming you all these years," Thu An whispered between sobs. "I didn't know my mother carried such great pain."

"No, you don't need to apologize," Mrs. Nguyet replied, gently stroking her daughter's hair like when she was a child. "You have the right to be angry at me. I was wrong, and you have to suffer the consequences of that wrong choice of mine. What I want now is not for you to forgive immediately, but just for me to understand, so that we can both start again, little by little."

Mother and daughter sat embracing each other for a long time that Sunday morning, the gentle sunlight filtering through the window, shining on their tear-stained faces but also bringing with it a rare relief - as if a burden that had weighed on both of them for fifteen years had finally been put down, not completely gone, but light enough for them to be able to move forward together.

After a while, Ms. Nguyet wiped her tears, stood up, and went to the wooden shelf where the old photo frames of her and Doan Minh Vu were placed. She picked up the photo frame, sat down next to her daughter, and they both looked at the smiling face of the man in the photo.

"Your father is the only person I've ever told everything about," Mrs. Nguyet said, her trembling fingers lightly gliding across the glass. "He never blamed me, even though I knew he suffered a lot because he had to shoulder the burden of raising the children alone while I was busy with the choir. He just always said, I needed time, and he would wait until I was ready. But I was never truly ready, until he died, and by then it was too late to say thank you to him for all that patience."

"I remember the evenings when dad sat and did homework with me," Thu An said, her voice softened, a sad smile flashing across her lips. "Dad always said mom was busy with something important, even though at that time I didn't understand what 'important stuff' was. Now that I've heard mom tell it, I understand that dad tried to protect me from having to see the painful part of mom's story, and at the same time tried to keep me from hating mom too much."

"He did a lot better than mom," Ms. Nguyet said, smiling softly through her tears. "Maybe that's why you're still here, sitting next to me now, instead of leaving a long time ago."

"I was really planning on leaving," Thu An admitted, her voice quiet. "For many years now, every time I visit my mother, I always tell myself that this will be the last time I try. But something is different this time, maybe because I see your hands shaking, and I suddenly realize, if I don't forgive right now, there may not be another chance."

Mrs. Nguyet squeezed her daughter's hand tightly, saying nothing more, just letting a warm silence envelop them both, a silence that was completely different from all the oppressive silence that had existed between them over the years.

That afternoon, mother and daughter cooked a simple meal together, something they hadn't done together for a long time. Thu An stood next to the kitchen, clumsily chopping vegetables according to her mother's instructions, while Mrs. Nguyet sat on the chair next to her, her hands shaking slightly but still trying to season the seasoning according to her memory. No one mentioned the morning story again, but they both clearly felt that something had changed in the space between them — softer, closer, as if this small kitchen, for the first time in many years, had truly become the place of a complete family, even though there were only two people left.

"Your father likes this dish very much," Mrs. Nguyet said as she tasted the pot of soup, her voice was gentle, not as heavy as what she had just said that morning. "I haven't cooked it since the day he passed away."

"Then from now on, I'll cook more often," Thu An replied, smiling, and for the first time in many years, that smile no longer carried any resentment, only the pure warmth of a child gradually rediscovering his family.