The Time Keepers

Chapter 70

CHAPTER 70

L OVE , THIS THING THAT A MERICANS SO ENJOYED REFERRING to, was an abstract concept to Anh. So much value was put into that word—so many expectations that she wondered how it ever managed to keep afloat.

Anh had always believed love was tied up with duty. A sense of respect and obligation to uphold those who had sworn to take care of each other. But she had learned one thing since her husband’s death and that boat taking the lives of B?o’s parents. And it echoed what Jack’s nurse had told him. One needed to find a way to keep love in one’s life at any cost. Had she not had B?o, Anh wondered if she would have abandoned all hope. He had given her a sense of commitment in her new life. When she imagined herself working, it was because she wanted to provide him with the best possible life. She studied her English books long into the night, after many of the others at the motherhouse had gone to sleep, saying the words quietly aloud, as though they were words in a prayer.

Dinh had been responsible for opening up her heart in other ways too. He made her laugh, made her feel like she would succeed, even though she felt herself floundering about on so many things. Love was something that inspired a sense of purpose in her, a sense of hope. She could understand how Jack could survive just on a kernel of this by working in such close proximity to Becky.

“But why you give up this job at the school?” She queried him. “Why now work in watch store?”

“I lost the janitor job five years ago,” he answered. “That’s around the time I met Tom.… He and Grace saved me in another way.” He looked down and smoothed the material of his pants. “I guess I still have love in my life … just another kind. And when I miss Becky, sometimes I drive the twenty minutes it takes to get to Foxton and I park my car in the same spot, just as she’s walking toward the entrance. And when the sunshine hits her from behind, when I see her talking with someone or laughing, it’s enough.…” He bit his lip and straightened his shoulders. “Really, Anh, it’s enough. I tell myself over and over again that it’s all I need now.”