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No more powder-blue uniform. No more fatigues either.

She missed both. In Vientiane, she was supposedly a stringer.

“You’ll sell mostly to Henry Weldon. He’s a stickler.

I’m afraid you’ll actually have to file a story now and then,” said Ned.

Ivy didn’t mind. She slapped some words together, and Henry fixed them up and wired them out.

If a byline of hers ever appeared anywhere, no doubt it was due to Henry calling in favors, as she intentionally put nothing of substance on paper.

Unlike Ned, Henry wasn’t a stickler about language, didn’t dwell in the linguistic shelter of feeling and encounters .

“Spreading that fucking mess into Laos now,” he said.

“Wasn’t enough to go tits up in Vietnam.

Now we’ll give it a go in Phnom Penh and Vientiane. ”

Vientiane was quieter than Saigon. The boulevards were lined with plane trees that hadn’t been cut down for fuel.

Yet. There was electricity, at least most mornings, then ink-dark nights with no power.

She loitered in hotel bars—the sort favored by internationals—where she allowed a narrow selection of traveling businessmen and the occasional Pathet Lao higher-up to buy her drinks.

She paid the bartender to keep the gin minimal in hers and heavy in theirs.

She made encouraging sounds and memorized details about shipments and contracts and meetings and contacts.

“Oh, not at all,” she assured the few who worried (correctly) that they bored her.

“I mean, they wouldn’t send just anybody all this way for such important work, would they? ”

She rested her chin on her fist, gazed up at them, wide eyed and rapt. And they talked on—telling her about deals past and future, connections fortuitously missed or barely made, fortunes won and lost in a matter of hours.

For the first several months, she kept an oblique reference to a story ready. But this was unnecessary; none of them ever asked about her work.

A year of this, and then one afternoon, Sam Benson appeared at the bar. “Not looking good in Cambodia,” he said. Which wasn’t exactly news to Ivy. He bent close, mouth brushing her ear as he whispered, “Time to come home, Shaw.”

“No,” she pleaded.

“Not right away. Back to Saigon first. A few loose ends to tie up.” She flinched, remembering her sources and recruits back in Vietnam—the nationals who had begged her for papers before she left, any sort of paper, anything that might get them out.

She’d done what she could. It hadn’t been nearly enough.

“There’ll be something else after this,” he said. “We’re not cutting you loose. But everyone goes home eventually.”

How to explain that she already was home?

She could distinguish the sound of an M16 from an AK, of outgoing from incoming.

She loved the sweet aroma of opium smoke that drifted from her neighbor’s apartment, the melted gold hue of the rice fields at harvesttime.

She could name the makes and models of the jets and copters that buzzed overhead, and knew who they belonged to.

All of this was part of her, and, here, it was even useful.

What could she possibly do with this sort of knowledge stateside?

“Maybe a diplomatic posting,” said Sam. When she grimaced, he added, “You’d like it more than you expect.”

“I never like things more than I expect.”

“You could try Hong Kong. Veddy British, but plenty of opportunity for a woman who wants to work—in and out of the field.”

“Sure. As someone’s secretary.”

“There are secretaries and secretaries, as you well know. And there are other options in Southeast Asia if HK’s not your cuppa.

Malaysia. People tend to like Malaysia. Easy to get you in as an aid worker, what with all the refugees.

Ah, you like that idea. And you’re well suited.

But home first, Shaw. That’s the way it plays. ”

“Okay, but I want something.”

The grooves in his forehead deepened. “This isn’t a trade.”

“It shouldn’t be difficult. Not for you. I want you to find out whether Vivian Shaw is my mother.”

“Shaw.” His eyes had the same wary cast that Ruth’s used to get when Ivy pressed their parents for answers.

She signaled the bartender for another round and then leaned toward Sam, allowing her bare shoulder to rest against his.

He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t move closer either.

He smelled of cinnamon and aftershave and caution.

“Don’t,” she said as she straightened back up.

“Don’t tell me not to ask questions I might not want to know the answers to. Just find out. Please.”

Once she had the proof, she would write home.

Tell them what she knew. Demand that they acknowledge the truth.

She’d received a flurry of letters from each of them after they learned she was in Vietnam.

She kept them wrapped in a silk scarf the USAID worker had given her.

Letters they must have sent out of obligation, because she hadn’t received any more since Ruth left Cu Chi.

Another release of her, now that they had Ruth, their real daughter, home.

The relief they must feel being free of her.

Well, she would be relieved—once Sam came through—to be free of them too.

A week later, back in Saigon, she was being measured for a phantom dress by the tailor off Tu Do Street.

Mr. Anh waited until his assistant left the room, then tucked a slip of paper into her pocket and whispered in Viet, “Can you get me papers? If you get me out, I will make you a real dress. A beautiful dress.”

Her throat tightened as she recalled an earlier slip of paper he’d given her—the one telling her Ruth was coming.

A different Ruth, it turned out, than the one she’d left behind in Enid.

A Ruth she’d wanted more of—so much more that she’d forced herself to keep her distance from her sister.

She’d stepped away from their last hug, on the day Ruth left Vietnam, maintaining that distance to the end. She’d had to in order not to cry.

A tear burned a track down her cheek now. Mr. Anh sighed. “Never mind. There are others I can ask.” The assistant returned and Ivy, hating the note of empty promise in her voice, said, “If I hear of any incoming cloth shipments, I’ll let you know.”

Later, back at her flat, she decoded the message:

V.C.S. dismissed from AAFFTD service October 17, 1944.

Basis: Pregnancy and unpermitted use of military aircraft.

G.E.R. dismissed from AAFFTD service November 5, 1944.

Basis: Pregnancy. No record of live birth for V.C.S.

Record of twins born to G.E.R. on January 23, 1945, Bellevue Hospital, New York City.

She crumpled the paper into a ball and hurled it across her flat. “Useless,” she fumed as she retrieved it. She read it once more, then, following protocol, set a match to it.

The party at the American villa was one of those last-gasp affairs.

The liquor uncut. The guest list paltry—hardly anyone was left in Saigon, but those who remained soldiered on.

They filed their reports and sipped their citron pressé and showed up when invited, even as they shipped their valuables stateside and wrote discreet letters home, sussing out job listings and apartments for rent.

The parties had a fatalistic air about them now—no one was in the mood for gaiety. Not that Ned Pennywell ever had been.

“You’re back,” he said—not with any enthusiasm—as Ivy slipped into the room in her red party dress.

“For now. Got any assignments for me?”

Ned shrugged as if to ask, Would it matter if he did? What good would her little assignments do anyone now?

“Nothing?” asked Ivy. “I can write for you—something real.”

Ned wrinkled his nose at the notion of her writing anything real.

He put a hand to his breast pocket, sighed, and proceeded to pat down each of his pockets, one by one.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. Oh God, he wasn’t chatting her up, was he?

He wasn’t thinking she might end up in his bed?

She retreated a step. He continued massaging his various pockets.

She balanced an unlit cigarette loosely between her fingers, her go-to party prop; she could always turn away from one person to ask another for a light.

Maybe he was looking for a lighter. The pickings were sparse, and, she supposed, about to get sparser, but she wasn’t down to the Ned Pennywell dregs yet.

She’d assumed Sam would rush her out of Saigon as soon as he could, but she hadn’t heard from him in weeks.

She’d taken care of the “loose ends.” Then she’d spent her days attempting to track down her contacts.

Most of whom she couldn’t find. Maybe they’d gotten out.

She hoped so. She didn’t have much to offer the ones she did find.

Cigarettes. However many dollars she had in her pockets.

A gold bracelet that her parents had given her years ago and that, despite everything, she’d worn all these years.

She’d given the bracelet to the cigarette boy outside the Caravelle Hotel.

He’d always had perfect recall of who had come and gone that day (or any day before), and at what times, and often, even which direction they arrived from or departed to.

Would it be enough to buy his way onto a transport?

Doubtful. But she’d done what she could.

That ought to be the tagline for this entire enterprise, she thought, still waiting for Ned to fish out his lighter. We did what we could. Sorry it wasn’t enough. Did good intentions count? Again, she doubted it.

“Ah, here we go.” Ned produced a creased and smudged postcard that read Greetings from Oklahoma! on its front. “Came months ago. I nearly threw it away, but everyone comes back through eventually.”

The return address was in Enid. Adele Avenue.

A throb in her chest, a sudden longing for her grandmother.

The street name evidence that George and Frank continued expanding the bounds of their small city.

She thanked Ned, whose attention had already drifted.

Who clearly had as little interest in her body as he did in her writing.

She drained her first drink and took the second and the postcard down to the foyer where she could read without interruption.

The message was brief, its tone impatient, implying that Ivy had ignored a slew of correspondence.

Ruth, comfortably stateside, had apparently forgotten how certain things, such as timely mail delivery—the postmark said 1972, for God’s sake—tended to lapse in a war zone.

Mom is done with her treatments. Thank God, because I’m not sure she could take much more.

The doctors seem pleased. But sometimes I see a look on her face, and it takes me back to triage.

How sometimes you could tell, before you even examined a soldier, before you even tallied the damage.

Just by the look on their faces, you could tell that one wasn’t going to make it.

So I’m begging you, Ivy. Again. Write her a goddamn letter.

Two martinis—large gins really, as there was no longer much vermouth to be had—and she was stone sober, sitting in the foyer of the American villa in her red evening gown, fighting tears, fighting a surge of longing for George.

For her mother. As if a drilling rig had at last hit oil, sending it spouting up out of barren-looking ground.

Back at her apartment, she tossed the red dress out the window.

Some prostitute would love it. Some mother with hungry children could trade it for food.

That at this point these two women were likely to be the same person was a thought she tried hard not to think.

She pared her belongings—never much to begin with—down further.

Only the essentials. Only a single easy-to-carry satchel.

In the morning, she headed to Tu Do Street.

She needed to get word to Sam Benson, to tell him to bring her home.

Who knew how much time her mother had left?

But the tailor’s shop was shuttered and dark.

She drew a metal nail file from her pocket.

The lock yielded so easily that the file may as well have been a key.

Inside, the sewing machines and bolts of fabric were gone.

Two empty wooden spools lay in a far corner.

She told herself he had sold everything (but to whom?), used the money to buy his way out. She hoped it was true.

At the press office, Ned Pennywell did not look pleased to see her. “Ned, I need to get out. I need to go home.”

“Get in line, Shaw. Get in line.”

“Isn’t there anyone you can call?”

“I call the same people you call. If they’re not answering you, they won’t do otherwise for me. Keep a steady head, Shaw. I very much doubt they’ll leave us behind.”