Tubby dreamed that she was back in the Banqiao house.

Her husband Shanhong was there too, as vital as he was in all the good memories, and his presence on the slipcovered couch restored a calm gravity to the room that Tubby had never noticed while he lived. He looked up from his newspaper (she could not quite read the headlines) and smiled. "I need something," he said, "but I've forgotten the word."

When she remembered that long-unsung litany in the morning, her eyes would fill with tears and old terrors—but in the moment, with him healthy and unafraid in front of her, it was as though she had never before heard that awful request. "Can you describe it for me?" she said in the same patient voice she had used in their waking life, the one that never soothed him.

"It's the paper one, the one you're named after," he said. "I know the English for it." And he said a word. And she smiled, full of the love and the light of him, and went to fetch a book from the shelf. There were plenty of books on it, as there always were, but she knew the one he meant: The thick one bound in brown leather, embossed in gold Roman letters forming a word she could not sound out. She brought it to him.

"Of course," he said, "the book. Do you remember the English word?"

"Book," Tubby said in English.

"Good. Sit with me," he said. "We're going to read."

She was with him all night. When she awoke, of course, she was crying like a child.