As they walked to the house and climbed the dozen front steps, she told him some of her family’s history so that he would have something to think about while he was panicking.
“My mother, Adele, was five when my family was driven out of the country at the end of the French War and they returned to France. She grew up there with her father who could not remain in the North Vietnam of 1960, as he was pure French blood and they were killing all of the French at that time. He did return at the height of the American War. My mother was eighteen and gone to college. He spent five more years with my grandmother, but did not survive the purges that came after the war. So I never met him.”
She stopped two steps from the top to give him a moment and kept telling her story. He could kiss her for he
