Miracle Creek(109)
“Meh-hee-yah. Meh-hee-yah!” Her mother’s yell came from inside the house, obviously annoyed she couldn’t find her. It felt like rocks hitting her in her chest, those caustic six syllables wrapped tight around a core of her mother’s disapproval, and just like that, Mary was furious again, the calm that came from lighting the fire and walking away gone. She turned and ran.
She was almost to the shed—she desperately needed a smoke, right now—when she saw her father outside, dialing his phone. He looked up and said, “Oh, good, I was about to call you. I need your help.” He put the phone to his ear and motioned for her to come. After a few seconds, he said into the phone, “You always think the worst of her, but she’s here, helping me. And the batteries are under the house kitchen sink, but don’t leave the patients. I’ll send Mary to grab them.” He turned and said to her, “Mary, go, right now. Take four D batteries to the barn,” then said back into the phone, “I’ll come in one minute and let the patients out. Remember not to say … Yuh-bo? Hello? Are you there? Yuh-bo!”
Patients. Let them out. Barn.
Those words whirled around her head like a cyclone, sending her spinning. She turned. Ran, as fast as her legs would move. Please, God, please let the fire have gone out. Let it have been a dream, a nightmare. Let her have misunderstood her father’s words. How could there be patients in the barn? The last dive was over long ago, Janine confirmed it. The AC was off. The lights were off. The cars were gone. What was happening?
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t run anymore, the rice alcohol was creeping up and burning her throat and the ground was moving up and down like waves and she was going to fall and somewhere in the distance her mother was calling out her name, but she kept running. Approaching the barn, she saw: the lights were out. Parking lot, empty. AC, off. It was quiet, so quiet, she couldn’t hear anything, except … oh God, there was noise coming from inside the barn, a faint sound like someone hammering, and from behind the barn, the crackle of flames, eating away at the wood. Smoke was rising from behind the barn, and when she turned the corner to face the back wall, she felt the fire, hot on her face, so hot she couldn’t get closer even though her brain was screaming at her to get right up next to it, to throw herself on the wall and use her body to put out the fire.
She heard her mother’s voice, calling her, saying “Meh-hee-yah.” Quietly. Gently. She turned and saw her mother gaze at her, her unblinking eyes drinking her in as if she hadn’t seen her in years. Just before the boom, before she felt herself lift up in the air, she saw her mother walking to her, her arms wide open. She wanted to run to her. To hug her and ask her to hold her tight and make everything okay again. The way she used to when she was a little girl, when her mother was her Um-ma.
YOUNG
AS SOON AS YOUNG SAID THE WORDS accusing her daughter of murder, Mary looked up and met her eyes, the scrunched wrinkles on her face relaxing into the smoothness of relief. Finally, the truth.
Pak broke the silence. “That’s crazy.”
Young didn’t look at him, couldn’t stop looking into her daughter’s eyes and drinking in what she saw there: a need for her, a longing to connect, to confide. How long had it been since they’d had real intimacy, contact beyond the fleeting glances they exchanged while discussing the logistics of everyday life? It was strange, almost magical, how this connection changed everything. Even the difference in their language—Young and Pak speaking in Korean, with Mary responding in English, as always—which had felt awkward in the past, now added to their intimacy, as if they’d created their own private language.
Pak said, “What exactly are you saying? You think we conspired? I set everything up and asked Mary to do the most dangerous part?”
“No,” Young said. “I considered that, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized—you’d never start a fire with people inside. I know you. You could never be that callous with people’s lives.”
“But Mary could?”
“No. I know she’d never risk people’s lives.” She stroked Mary’s face, just the gentlest touch to let her know she understood. “But if she thought the barn was empty, if she thought the dives were done and no one was inside…”
The creases remaining on Mary’s face vanished altogether, and tears pooled in her eyes. Gratefulness that her mother knew and, more than that, understood. Forgave.
Young reached to wipe away Mary’s tears. “That’s why you kept saying how quiet it was. You kept repeating it after you woke up, and the doctors thought you were reliving the explosion, but that wasn’t it at all. You were wondering how people could’ve been inside and the oxygen on when everything was off. You didn’t know about the power outage.”
“I’d been away all day,” Mary said, her voice sounding crusty as if she hadn’t spoken in days. “By the time I got back, the parking lot was empty. I was sure the dives were over. I thought the oxygen was off and the building was empty.”
“Of course you did,” Young said. “The earlier dive was delayed, so the lot was full and the last group had to park down the road. When the earlier patients left, the lot became empty. How could you have known?”
“I should’ve checked the other lot. I knew they parked there that morning, but…” Mary shook her head. “None of that matters. I set the fire. It wasn’t an accident. I did it. I meant to do it. It’s all my fault.”