The book goes back to the time where she was visiting Vietnam again. She sees the man in the aviators again, and he even gets very close to her. He comes up to her taxi, puts his fingers up in a V, and walks away. Her friends all joke about it and she says something that states this man is going to have a big role in the book maybe later on.

"Suddenly, I felt something that I had never expected to feel-that Vietnam might not let me off so easily. However illogical, I was sure, suddenly, that I had inherited a debt and this man had come to extract it. As he walked closer, I believed in fate, retribution. That nothing of the past was forgiven. Or forgotten."

It then goes back to life when Danielle was younger. It talks about how her dad was diagnosed with throat cancer. It talks about how it disappeared and returned, he had to go through chemotherapy. He is also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. His report shows he is suffering from the following things:

Being overly alert
Felling emotionally numb
Experiencing feelings of paranoia, excessive sensitivity, or that like has "backed you up against a wall"
Experiencing physical reactions when you are reminded of the traumatic event
Reliving the traumatic even, acting or feeling as if it is happening again
Trying not to think about, talk about, or have feelings about the traumatic event
Having bad dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event
Not being able to remember an important part of the event.

He is told to go to therapy and other counseling. Even with the report on his illness, he still believes he doesn't have a problem. There are times in the book where he will be doing something and he will abruptly stop what hes doing, and start telling a story about the war. Danielle talks about how it physically pains her to see how in denial of things her dad is.