I kept thinking about that ditch in Da Nang. I remembered the smell of the water. It was thick and metallic. I remembered being so young I didn’t even know what I was afraid of yet.

“Why did you come all this way,” I asked him.

He looked at the ring, then back at me. “My grandfather always told me that if you find something that belongs to someone else, you give it back.”

That was it. That was the whole reason. No grand speeches, no searching for meaning. Just a simple duty his grandfather had passed down to him.

I felt a wave of something heavy roll over me. It wasn’t just the ring. It was the fact that someone had cared enough to track me down across an ocean and a lifetime. It made me feel small, but in a way that didn’t hurt.

“He was a good man,” I said. I wasn’t even sure who I was talking about, the boy’s grandfather or mine.

The boy smiled. It was a sad, tired smile. “He died last year. He kept the ring in a wooden box on his dresser. He always said it belonged to a boy who was far from home.”

I looked down at my hands. They were spotted with age and shaking just a little. I had spent fifty-four years thinking I’d left a piece of myself in that dirt. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been carrying that loss around, tucked away in the back of my mind like a forgotten debt.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what,” he asked.

“For everything,” I said.

I don’t think he understood, but he didn’t press it. He just sat there and let me have my moment.

I think he knew that old men have a lot of things they haven’t finished saying yet.

I stood up and went to the cupboard. I pulled out a bottle of bourbon I usually only open on the Fourth of July. I poured two fingers for each of us. My hands were still shaking, so I spilled a little on the counter. I didn’t bother to wipe it up.

“To your grandfather,” I said, holding up my glass.

He touched his glass to mine. The sound was thin and sharp. “To coming home,” he said.

We drank in silence. The house didn’t feel so quiet anymore. It felt like it was finally full of something that had been missing for a long time.

I picked up the ring again. I put it on my pinky finger. It was tight, and my knuckle was swollen, but it slid on just enough. It felt like a piece of armor I didn’t know I needed.

“You’re staying the night,” I told him. It wasn’t a question. “There’s a spare room upstairs. It’s got a clean bed.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but he saw the look on my face. He knew I wasn’t going to let him go to a hotel.