Sam. I am so scared. She talked about dying last night. Father got angry with her and I just cried. This morning she acted like she had not talked about it at all.”
“I’m so sorry, Mai. How is Father?”
“He is quiet. When he is not with Mother, he sits by the koi pond. I am worried about both of them. If something happens to Mother … I do not know what will happen to him. He lost his teacher nine days ago and if he loses Mother …”
When my father dropped into my life, Mai was attending Portland State University and was about to graduate with a degree in business. My father, who is Mai’s stepfather, traveled to Portland to see her graduate. Over the years he kept abreast of his hometown by regularly reading the Oregonian newspaper online, and two years ago he came across a story about my mother’s death in a traffic accident. The story caught his eye because around the time he went into the service he had dated a young girl with the same last name. When he read she was survived by, at the time, a thirty-two-year-old son, Sam Reeves—his first name—as well as the same number of years he had been in Vietnam, he put two and two together. He was captured after only a few months in Vietnam, and if she had mailed him about being pregnant, he never received the letter. After he read about my mother, he would see my name ever so often in the online newspaper regarding a police case. He also found Internet sites about my martial arts and my competition years when I was younger. A few weeks before he came over, and probably the deciding factor in meeting me, he read I had shot an armed robber.
“Mai, I wish I could say or do something to make all this better. I hate to see you hurting.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, then, “You are doing something by being here for me.”
“I can say the same thing to you.”
I tell her about what happened to Mark and David, my new friend Rudy, and our run-in at the women’s clinic.
“How sad about Mark. I know he is a good friend; I hope to meet him some day.”
“When you come.”
“With Mother sick, I do not know when I can.”
“Don’t worry about it right now, Mai. There is where your head should be, with your mother. We’ll make it happen when the time is right. And I can always come back over.” Neither of us speaks for a moment. Then I hear her sniff. “Mai?”
“What did you call it … LDR?”
“Yes, we have a long-distance relationship. Some couples say they have an LDR when they live a hundred miles from each other in different cities. We live nearly eight thousand miles apart so we win the LDR. But no two hearts are more together than ours.”
She sniffs a couple of times. “That was good, Sam.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” We both laugh.
“Have you think—er—thought more about what you want to do?”
“Sorta. I thought I was pretty certain about resigning from the PD, but after talking with Mark at the hospital, I don’t know. My original reasons for joining the PD came rushing back.”
“We talked about it before and you said it was because you hate bullies.”
“That’s the simple reason, yes, although bully is a pretty feeble word for what’s going on. It angers me my friend was hurt because of who he is. Also, I’ve heard there have been a series of possible hate crimes. Most recently a black man was found lynched from a lamppost. I haven’t heard yet if it was a hate crime, but I’m betting it was.”
“Hate crime?”
“It’s an additional charge on someone who commits a crime against another person because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, and other things.”
“Oh yes. We talked about it once in a class at Portland State. I think the professor called it a bias? Yes, a bias crime. I think Portland had a lot of it.”
“There was a huge wave of it about twenty years ago. It seems like every twenty years or so, it flares up and there will be a lot of incidents for a while, and then it will die down again. To me, it’s bullying at its ugly worst.”
“It sounds like you decided. I think the protector in you is deciding.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just more confused than ever. And there’s another not so little issue. I don’t want to ever pick up a gun again.”
“You have to wear one, right? To be a policeman?”
“Yes, every officer must. There are desk jobs but still you must carry one.”
Mai is quiet for a moment, then, “When you were here you said you could live in Saigon.”
“I did, and I still think so. But I’m not sure Vietnam is where I’m supposed to be. Samuel, er, Father said he sees my destiny here, in Portland.”
“Oh,” she says in a small, disappointed voice. Mai holds our father and his beliefs in high regard. So do I.
“He also said you could end up here, in Portland. With me.”
“He did?” More perky. “When did he say it?”
“We had a long talk the night before I left. I certainly don’t have his ability to see, but I think things are about to change for all of us.”
“Mm.” Long pause. “Thinking about it makes me happy, sad, and scared.”
“Me too.”
My doorbell rings.
“Someone come?” she asks.
I scoot my chair back. “A little surprise for you—actually, a big one. Be right back.”
“Hey, Todd,” I say after opening the door. “Thanks so much for doing this. I would have come after her.”
“No problem, Sensei,” the big man says, stroking the white cat cradled in his arm. She looks lazily toward me and her eyes widen in recognition.
“Hi, Chien. Have you missed me?”
She meows and reaches a paw toward me.
“Aaw,” Todd groans. Then in baby talk, “I sure have, daddy waddy. I missed you sooo much I cwy and I cwy.” Todd stands six foot three and is a second-degree black belt.
“Uh, ooookay, Todd.”
He laughs and hands Chien over to me. She snuggles into the crook of my bent arm like it was designed with her in mind. “Like I said on the phone, I was coming this way, anyway.” He picks up a bag of cat food from the porch. “She went through two of these while you were gone. Eats like a Marine.”
Chien is rubbing the side of her face against my chest. “Just let me know how much I owe you for litter, food, and shredded curtains.”
“No charge, Sensei. The kids loved her and she didn’t hurt a thing. Of course, now I got to get them a cat. Have you ever noticed Chien is
