Her whole body warmed at the memory.

  For as long as she knew Tom, she was aware how much the Golden Hours had helped those who had made it their life’s work. First her father-in-law, then her husband, and then Jack. Now she saw how her daughter was rediscovering its magic through showing Bảo how each minute pushed one of the clock’s hands forward.

  She smiled. What she wanted to tell Tom, but she’d wait until they were alone, was that his heart was the melody she loved most to hear. She listened to its beating against his chest every night, and it still filled her with wonder.

  CHAPTER 59

  AS THEIR ENGLISH LESSON CAME TO AN END, ANH TOOK HER marbleized composition book and neatly tucked it into her bag. Dinh studied her movements like a bird-watcher, every gesture of her hand, every quiet glance gave him pleasure.

  He had always believed one had to harvest life’s little joys where you could find them. A perfect noodle broth, or a smile from a stranger. When he came to this new country, not knowing a single soul, his mind still haunted by nightmares of his journey and the year and half spent in the refugee camp, the small piece of joy here had always been Anh.

  On the days he could coax a smile from her, he felt as if he had won a mountain of gold. And on those few afternoons he managed to make her laugh, he felt like he had been crowned an emperor.

  And now, after living under the same roof with her for three months at the motherhouse, he wished every day for one more brick of joy, so that eventually he could build her a house with all those blocks of happiness.

  He imagined the three of them, Anh, Bảo and himself, underneath this imagined shelter, forging ahead to begin a new life in America.

  A comfortable ease fell between them as they waited outside the library for Sister Mary Alice to pick them up. Dinh lifted his head and felt the warm caress of sunshine on his skin.

  “How is Bảo enjoying his new bicycle?” Dinh asked, sinking his hands into his pockets.

  Anh had told him days earlier how Grace had offered Bảo a spare bicycle that had once been Molly’s.

  “I’m concerned the color might bother him,” Grace said, elaborating that the bike was a deep violet shade with a white leather seat embossed with flowers. “But it’s in our garage for him if he’d like it.”

  When Grace rolled the bike out for Bảo to examine, he wasn’t at all disappointed by the color, rather it delighted him. She had no idea that back in Vietnam he had learned to ride a bicycle on only wire frames.

  Bảo ran his hand over the shiny metallic finish. A huge grin appeared on his face.

  “Like Wonder Twins,” he beamed, noticing the color was the exact same shade as the twins’ uniform.

  Bảo hopped on the bike and gripped its handles, paying no attention to the circle of embossed flowers beneath his seat.

  “He loves it,” Anh informed Dinh. An enormous smile now emerged on her face. The sight of her lips made Dinh forget all the mistakes he had made with their English tutor. It felt like another brick of happiness had been offered to him. And he accepted it greedily.

  CHAPTER 60

  SOON BẢO WAS RIDING NEARLY EVERYWHERE ON HIS NEW BIKE. He had never experienced such a smooth ride, with the firm black tires rolling beneath him. He rode down to the beach club and met Molly for a game of shuffleboard. He accepted Sister Mary Alice’s invitation to have a small basket put on the handlebars, and he began doing errands for the motherhouse in exchange for pocket money, saving every nickel and dime that he earned except for the occasional pack of gum. But the best news was when Anh told him about the possibility of working a few hours each week at the Golden Hours.

  “Grace says you can help wind the clocks, and maybe also help clean the tools and put them back in the drawers.” She went over and tousled Bảo’s hair. “Jack said he’d be happy to show you how all the timepieces work.”

  Bảo’s shoulders straightened.

  “I’ll work hard.”

  “Yes, you will,” Anh agreed.

  “And I’ll learn to fix watches, just like Dad fixed radios.”

  Anh looked at Bảo’s expression, joy glinted in his eyes. Her nephew never once mentioned the wounds on Jack’s face. He only saw the possibility of learning something new from a person willing to share.

  * * *

  Bảo loved having the wind on his back, his bottom lifting off the leather seat as he perched with his weight forward, coasting down the winding hills toward the center of town. It was a thirty-minute ride to the store, but he never felt tired.

  When he arrived that first afternoon, Tom had just left for home and Jack was hunched over his latest repair.

  He took off his magnifying visor. Beside him, Hendrix got to his feet and trotted over to greet the newest visitor.

  “Hey, welcome,” Jack said over the hum of his cassette tape. He quickly lowered the volume, Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” faded into the background “I’m glad you were up to helping us out here.”

  Bảo smiled and bent down to rub Hendrix’s fur. “I want to learn,” he said as his eyes scanned the workshop.

  “Do you remember how to wind the clocks like Molly showed you?” Jack pointed to the doorway that led to the showroom.

  “Why don’t you start in there? That’s where Tom started me off, before I learned the bigger stuff.”

  “Okay,” Bảo answered. “I start there.” He gave Hendrix one last pat and then stepped into the next room, where he was greeted by the sound of a dozen minute hands ticking in perfect synchronicity.

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks, every time he arrived at the Golden Hours, Bảo tried hard to do his best work. He cleaned the tools in disinfectant and organized them with care. Sometimes when he laid things out at Tom or Jack’s workstation, he thought about his mother—how she’d always tended to every object in their family altar with such tenderness and respect. In the same way she’d brought him up to honor his ancestors, he wanted to show his reverence for the two men who now made it possible for him to work at the store.

  Sometimes, as he worked alongside Jack, he sensed a small ripple in the air, like a puff of breath on his shoulder. Bảo felt his father’s voice whispering how proud he was of his boy. Though it was more of a sensation than a tangible experience, Bảo knew it was real. And when Jack showed him a few simple tasks like how to replace a worn leather wristband or a broken buckle, he felt one step closer to believing this new place could become his home.

  But one afternoon as he rode toward the Golden Hours, two boys started heckling at him. Buddy and Clayton had just stepped into Kepler’s to get two egg sandwiches to take back to their fort, when Bảo rode past them.

  Bảo didn’t understand what the word faggot meant when the one with the red hair shouted it at him. But he did understand the spitting and the venom with which the word was hurtled into the air.

  And when the lankier of the two figures, the one with the short, cropped blond hair, had taken a small rock and thrown it in his direction, he got that too. The rock missed Bảo’s ankle by inches and ricocheted off the bike’s metal fender.

  “Who rides a friggin’ purple bicycle?” Clayton muttered, tearing off a piece of the roll with his front teeth and swallowing it hard, his Adam’s apple pulsating like a little toad trapped in his throat.

  “A dumb gook, that’s who,” he sneered.

  Clayton crumbled the wax paper from his sandwich into a tight ball and threw it at the metal waste bin, missing it by a foot.

  “I bet my uncle killed a shitload of ’em when he was in ’Nam,” Buddy boasted. He kicked the curb with the toe of his sneaker. “And now they’re in our own backyard. My mom said a whole boatful of them came over and are staying up the road with some nuns.”

  In the sunlight, Clayton’s eyes looked eerily transparent, as if the blue color had been drained liked pool water, leaving them nearly white. Buddy looked up at him in quiet awe. Everything about him appeared dangerous and cool: the dungarees that hung below his hips, the white T-shirt with the small tear at the hem, and the Puma sneakers. Even his Texas accent made him sound tough. As Bảo pedaled faster away from them, Buddy hung on to his friend’s every word.

  CHAPTER 61

  ON THE KITCHEN TABLE OF THE GOLDENS’ HOUSE, A SINGLE sheet of yellow paper announced the annual fundraising dance at the high school.

  Katie lifted the paper and smiled. Last year, she’d gone on her mother’s insistence and found herself standing alone awkwardly with her friend Millie, who was nice enough but wasn’t much of a spark plug of fun. But just yesterday, Linda Atkinson, the most popular girl in her grade—who she’d managed to become friendly with at the beach club due to their overlapping lifeguard shifts—asked her if she was planning to go.

  “I’m not sure,” Katie answered, trying to sound cool. “Last year, it was a bit of a drag.”

  Linda rolled her eyes and blew a small pink bubble with her chewing gum, before snapping it back like a salamander catching a fly. “I know, right? But my mom’s making me go and help her sell cupcakes as part of my punishment for coming back late from my curfew last week.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Linda glanced at her wrist. “We have to be back on our shift in ten minutes. But think about coming, we could sell the cupcakes together then maybe go out for ice cream or whatever afterward.” She stood up and stretched her long tan arms above her head and adjusted her blond ponytail. “Please try to come, Katie. It’d be so much better if I had a friend there.”

  * * *

  Friend. Just the sound of being called Linda’s friend was thrilling to her. She took the yellow paper and tacked it to the family’s bulletin board before writing the word Dance on the wall calendar just as Grace came into the kitchen.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  Katie swung around and smiled at her mother. “The PTA dance. Linda Atkinson asked if I wanted to sell cupcakes with her there. Her mother’s baking them for the fundraiser.”

  “Shelby Atkinson’s daughter? I didn’t know you’ve become friendly with her.” Grace was honestly a bit surprised, considering the girl had always rebuffed Kate’s birthday invitations back when they were in elementary school. And Grace recalled how once Linda said no, an avalanche of other girls suddenly responded saying they couldn’t attend either.

  “Well, since we started lifeguarding, we’ve become friends,” Katie said.

  “Oh, that’s a new development.…” Grace responded, trying to contain her suspicions. She had an old-world sensibility bred into her which made her believe Linda’s true nature had showed at a young age.

  “It’s just she wasn’t that kind to you when you were back in—”

  “Mom!” Katie cut her mother off. “That was ages ago, and why can’t you just be happy she asked me to go with her?”

  Grace’s head ached. No one had told her parenting a teenager could be this relentless. She bit her tongue, trying to stop herself from saying things that she knew would only spiral into another fight with her eldest daughter. Didn’t Katie understand she only wanted what was best for her? That she didn’t want her to have her feelings hurt. She could almost anticipate the scene at the dance with Linda asking Katie to hang out with her until someone better and more socially advantageous came along.

  What was it about American motherhood that seemed so paradoxically different from her own experience of being a daughter back home in Ireland? She would never have dared to speak back to her mother, even though there were times—many times—she had wanted to say something about a particular unfairness or frustration but held her tongue out of respect. Her childhood was filled with swallowed words and buried emotion. But here in America, children filled the air with their every thought and feeling. The space between her and Katie often felt so thick, she could barely breathe.

  But before she could explain herself to her daughter, Katie had stormed out of the kitchen. Grace heard her daughter’s feet stomping loudly on the stairwell as she headed toward her room. The door slammed and Grace looked at the clock. It wasn’t even 10:00 a.m. yet, but she already felt weary.

  As much as she longed for the laziness of summer break, she now craved school starting and the structure it brought with it.

  Minutes later, when Molly stumbled into the kitchen in her pajamas, her face still drowsy with sleep, Grace tried to think of something that would make both of them happy.

  “How about we go down to the drugstore for some new notebooks and pencils for school?” she suggested while pouring milk into a bowl of cornflakes.

  “I need a new backpack too.”

  “Well, we can take a drive down to the Foxton Mall for that, and maybe some new shoes too …”

  Molly perked up. “No saddle shoes this year, Mom, okay? I want penny loafers.”

  These were requests that were easy to fulfill. Grace stood in the kitchen and poured herself a mug of coffee, while upstairs she could still hear Katie’s angry footsteps and the slamming of her bedroom drawers.

  * * *

  Bellegrove High School, with its brick facade and flat roof, was a testament to 1960s functional architecture. Gone were the neoclassical pillars that flanked many of the neighboring towns’ schools that were built in the 1930s or ’40s. Through the heavy doors, past the rows of metal lockers, and down the long corridor was the school gymnasium, where the PTA dance would be held. Even after the long summer break, the scent of school lunches and teammate perspiration still clung to walls. Katie sprayed a little perfume on her wrist, hoping to fill her nostrils with something more delicate than the scent of hamburger and gym socks, before she headed out to the dance.

  Grace had volunteered to help with decorations earlier that afternoon and had come home happy to report that the gym had been transformed into a Hawaiian oasis, replete with huge paper flowers made of colorful streamers and fake tiki torches that someone had made from old wrapping paper tubing.

  Katie was just relieved her mother’s volunteer work had ended earlier that afternoon. There was nothing she wanted less than having her mother hover around her while she and Linda sold the cupcakes.

  She happily slid into the front seat of the family’s Pontiac, her father perched at the steering wheel listening to John Denver on the radio.

  “You look so grown-up, sweetheart.” It was hard to see her walk toward the car in her pink top and denim skirt. If he blinked, he could have imagined Grace, twenty years earlier, though perhaps wearing a longer hemline. He could smell she was wearing perfume too.

  “Thanks,” she answered matter-of-factly. She pulled the sun visor down, glanced at herself in the mirror and reapplied her lip gloss.

  “We should go, Dad. We don’t want to be late.”

  * * *

  Several blocks away, Clayton grabbed a clean T-shirt from his drawers and pulled it over his chest. His father’s breath, heavy with the scent of Marlboro cigarettes and Jack Daniels, was still in his nostrils. He couldn’t believe he had actually agreed to go with Buddy to this ridiculous dance at the school. But he realized it wasn’t the actual dance his friend wanted to attend, it was the opportunity to get closer to Katie Golden.

  Clayton, however, had no interest in spending one minute longer than he needed to in that dumbass high school. He hated every part of it. The dented lockers, the glass cases with the decades’ old trophies, and the cafeteria with its pathetic long metal tables and benches.

  But if he had to choose between spending the night at home with his old man and his whiskey breath and his insults, or the evening hanging out with Buddy to see if he could get to second base with that girl, he’d choose the latter.

  After all, Buddy had promised him they’d leave after an hour and just head over to the fort.

  “We should definitely have a few beers before we go,” Buddy puffed, trying to sound cool.

  Underneath his bed, in his utility bag, Clayton had already stashed four cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Buddy promised he’d bring four more.

  He swiveled around, hoisted the bag onto his shoulders and headed out the door, his father cursing at him as he slammed the screen door shut.

  CHAPTER 62

  OUTSIDE, IN THE HIGH SCHOOL PARKING LOT, THE SCENT OF maple leaves fills the early September air. Katie lifts one of the Tupperware cases of frosted cupcakes from the back of a long brown Lincoln. Linda’s mother turns off the ignition key, slides a hand into the neckline of her silky, polyester blouse and adjusts her bra strap, before checking her lipstick in the mirror.

  “You got that, girls?” Mrs. Atkinson, with her clingy top and high-rise pants, wants to be at the dance probably as little as the girls do. But Adele has made sure all the women in the PTA participated in the annual fundraising dance.

  “And don’t stack them on top of each other. I don’t want the frosting to get smudged. I spent hours redoing the ones that Linda tried to decorate.”

  Linda, her eyes lined in dark pencil, her lips swiped with lip gloss, makes a face.

  “Come on, let’s just go set up,” she mutters under her breath. Katie beams, absorbing every word of her new friend, basking in her newfound popularity.

  “Sure,” she says, and her face is bright like the moon. “I’ll follow you inside.”

  * * *

  The gymnasium has been decorated with ropes of streamers. Electric-blue-and-white crepe paper twists and loops across the border of the room, where banners announce the championships Bellegrove High has won over the years. Outside the doors, the PTA committee has set up long tables where cans of soda and platters of homemade chocolate-chip cookies have already been placed. Linda and Katie set down the trays of cupcakes and pull off the plastic covers.

  “Oh, now, don’t those look delicious, girls,” Adele says, peering down at the perfectly frosted tops. “Did you do all of this, Linda?”