He didn’t get much of a chance to go after Ban Me Thuot. Pleiku and Kontum fell next, and then the march was on to Hue and Danang.

For the first time in decades Jenny O’Keefe Blackburn and her father-in-law agreed on something: Rebecca had no business even being in Saigon in the first place. She had borrowed money from Sofi’s father for her trip. Sofi had told him her brilliant, non-dope-smoking, impoverished roommate had to have her wisdom teeth out, but her health insurance wouldn’t cover having them done in the hospital. He’d come up with the money. Rebecca had already set up an account to pay him back from money she earned typing papers and doing freelance graphic design, on top of her job and classes.

By the time she reached Jared’s tiny apartment on Tu Do Street, she was run ragged. She had meant to stay two weeks at the most, but she got caught up in the death throes of the country, of being a part of history in the making. She couldn’t just run back to the safety of Boston. She’d felt compelled to help and had plunged in, volunteering to work with orphans and refugees, to do whatever she could.

And she wouldn’t leave Jared or Tam. Absolutely, categorically refused to go home without them.

Rebecca didn’t miss a beat when she discovered a beautiful, pregnant Vietnamese woman camped out in her lover’s apartment. So what? She trusted Jared. She barely remembered Tam from her visit to the Riviera in 1959, but Tam remembered Rebecca. And they shared the loss of a father on the same tragic day in 1963. The tragedy gave them a bond that transcended the years they’d spent apart and the wildly different worlds from which they came.

While they resumed their friendship, the communists continued their “liberation” of their brethren to the south.

When panic struck Danang, Thomas Blackburn did something he hadn’t done since 1963: he called in a favor. An old friend, a die-hard state department type, looked up Rebecca and warned her and Jared to get out-now.

“If Thomas Blackburn’s worried,” he said, “it’s time to worry.”

Rebecca made several calls to her mother to reassure her, promising that as soon as Tam had her baby, they’d all leave.

“Leave now,” her mother had said. “I lost a husband to Vietnam. I won’t lose you, too. You’re not supposed to be there. You don’t belong there.”

Rebecca felt guilty for worrying her mother, but she couldn’t have lived with herself if she abandoned her pregnant Vietnamese friend.

At four o’clock in the morning Jared, Tam and Rebecca were jolted awake by the sounds of mortar, rockets and artillery fire out at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Tam came unsteadily out of the bedroom to join Rebecca and Jared, who’d been dozing on the couch. Jared helped her to a chair, and Rebecca made coffee.

“I’ll go in with the baby,” she said.

Tam smiled weakly and thanked her. “You’ve both been so good to me.”

“You’d do the same for us if our positions were reversed.”

“I’ll repay you. I promise-”

“There’s nothing to repay.”

Tiny Mai was all wrapped up in a cotton receiving blanket and snoozing in the middle of Jared’s bed. Rebecca lay down beside her and just watched her sleep. Tam had told her little about her life before Jared had taken her in late last summer, but Rebecca wouldn’t have been surprised if circumstances had forced her into a “sugar daddy” arrangement with a rich American or European or even limited prostitution. It was like Jared, Rebecca thought, to help out a lonely woman in need-a friend. Whatever he knew about Tam’s situation he’d kept to himself, something Rebecca, despite her curiosity, could respect.

The baby squirmed. Rebecca loosened the blanket and peeked at her tiny red feet. “What a cutie you are,” she murmured, touching the baby’s mass of straight black hair, still matted down from childbirth.

The shelling seemed loud enough to shake the entire building, and Rebecca wondered if the North Vietnamese bombed Tan Son Nhut, what did that do to a fixed-wing evacuation? Airplanes needed runways to get off.

“You’re so tired, aren’t you, sweetie?” Her mouth was dry with fear, and she brushed the back of a knuckle gently across Mai’s smooth cheek. “Getting born’s such hard work, but don’t you worry. We’ll get you out of here.”

Tam was fading fast. She had insisted on walking around the living room and kitchen area, and had collapsed on the couch. She looked drained.

“We’re out of here first thing in the morning,” Jared told her, handing her a cup of coffee.

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes, and he could see she was terrified. The shelling wasn’t doing much for his nerves, either, but it wasn’t his country going down the tubes.

He sat beside her. “Look,” he said. “Quentin’s got a lot of good qualities, and I can see why you feel for him. But Tam-” He sighed. His cousin had abandoned Tam: he’d cut and run. The Quentin Reed style since childhood. “He’s no knight in shining armor. R.J. and I’ll help you get settled in the U.S. It’ll be okay.”

“I loved him so much,” she whispered, crying. “I thought he loved me.”

Jared didn’t know what to say. He neither wanted to defend his cousin nor damn him. When Quentin had come to Saigon in October 1973, he had looked up his childhood playmate from the Riviera, the daughter of another man killed during the ambush that had claimed Benjamin Reed’s life. He and Tam quickly fell in love. Quentin rented her own penthouse apartment and bought her lavish gifts and made her even more lavish promises. Jared stumbled onto his secret when he arrived in town the following June, but by then Quentin was already coping with the consequences of another secret: his involvement with a drug-smuggling network that had used Winston & Reed planes for transporting heroin. He was in over his head. Jared tried to help, but Quentin only wanted to make sure he promised not to tell his mother.

“I can handle it,” he told Jared.

It wasn’t long before Jared discovered his cousin was being blackmailed. The situation deteriorated, and by August, Quentin had returned to Boston. Jared was appalled that Quentin could drop Tam with hardly a word, but when he confronted him, his cousin insisted he loved her and would be back.

Like hell.

Quentin had developed consummate skill at making himself believe what he wanted to believe.

Tam lost her apartment and seemed confused about why Quentin wasn’t in Saigon. When was he coming back? Jared avoided bad-mouthing his cousin and invited Tam to share his apartment until she could get back on her feet. There were no breathtaking views of the river, no elegant French furnishings, no near-priceless Asian curios.

Within weeks, Tam discovered she was pregnant.

Jared volunteered to fly to Boston and kick Quentin Reed all the way back to Saigon for her, but she wouldn’t let him. If she and Quentin were meant to be, he would return. She didn’t want the prospect of being a father to influence his decision. She would wait.

Her pregnancy wasn’t an easy one, and she was often depressed about not hearing from Quentin, waiting for him to come back to her as the months dragged on.

In early April, however, her feet so swollen she could hardly walk, her country on the brink of extinction-Tam’s mood improved.

She was convinced Quentin would get her out of the country and they would live happily ever after together in Boston.

Now, Jared hated to disillusion her. He took her hand, just comforting her in silence as they listened to the shelling.

Footsteps echoed in the hall outside the apartment. It was almost dawn and there was a curfew in effect, and the building was virtually unoccupied. Could it be another R.J.-type scavenger at work?

There was a single knock at the door. A man spoke something in Vietnamese.

Tam’s eyes lit up and she jumped to her feet with a sudden burst of excited energy.