chapters 17-20 Summary

Linh thinks about how his heart has been locked away since Mai died. Helen has brought it back to life. While she is gone Linh thinks about her, plays with an earring. Linh does not show Helen these feelings. Linh believes that it was the touch of Helen that caused the love to return.

"One came to love another through repeated touch, he believed, the way a mother bonded with her newborn, the way his family had slept in the communal room, brushing against one another, a patterning through nerve endings, a laying of pulse against pulse, creating a rhythm of blood, and so now he touched others, strangers, only fleetingly, without hope."

Helen asks to return to the village where she stayed with Darrow. It has been burned. Helen argues that it had been peaceful. They also visit the village...