Miracle Creek(113)
“Yuh-bo, please.” Pak wheeled to her and grabbed both her hands. “This is our daughter. Her life is just beginning. We can’t let her go to prison and ruin her life. If being silent tortures us, then we should be tortured. That’s our duty as parents, the duty we assumed when we brought a life into this world, to protect our child, to sacrifice whatever we need to. We can’t turn our own child in. I’d rather say that I did everything. I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”
“Don’t you think I’d give my life a hundred times over to save hers?” Young said. “Don’t you think I know how painful it’ll be to see her in prison, how much I’d rather suffer myself? But we have to do the hard thing. We have to teach her how to do the hard thing.”
“This isn’t one of your philosophy debates!” Pak slammed his hand on the table, his words spitting out in frustration. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathed in deeply, and said slowly, with forced calmness, “This is our child. We can’t send her to jail. I’m the head of this family, and I’m responsible for us. It’s my decision, and I say we say nothing.”
“No,” Young said. She turned to Mary and gripped her hands. “You’re an adult now. Not because you had a birthday and you’re eighteen, but because of what you’ve gone through. This is your decision, not mine, not your father’s. I won’t make it easy for you; I won’t threaten to go to Abe if you don’t. You need to make the hard choice. Go to Abe or not, it’s up to you. Your responsibility, your truth to tell.”
“So if she says nothing, you’ll do nothing? You’ll let Abe close the case?”
“Yes,” Young said. “But if you say nothing, I won’t stay. I want nothing to do with the money. And I won’t lie. If Abe asks, I won’t say what you did, but I will say that I know with absolute certainty that Elizabeth didn’t set the fire and clear her name. She deserves that much.”
“But he’ll ask who did. He’ll ask how you know that,” Pak said.
“I’ll say I can’t say. I’ll refuse to answer.”
“He’ll force you. He’ll throw you in jail.”
“Then I’ll go to jail.”
Pak sighed, a heavy breath of exasperation. “There’s no need for that. If you’d—”
“Stop,” Young said. “I’m done playing tug-of-war.” She turned to Mary. “Meh-hee-yah, this isn’t your father versus me. You’re not choosing sides. This is your own battle, and you need to think for yourself what is right and make your own choice. You taught me that. You remember? In Korea, you were twelve, just a child, and you said you knew I didn’t want to move to America and you asked how I could blindly follow someone else’s decision about my life. I scolded you and told you to just obey your father, but I was ashamed. And so proud of you. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. If only I’d spoken up back then…” Young looked down and shook her head.
She raked Mary’s hair with her fingers, letting it drape across her face. “I have faith in you. You know what it’s like to live in silence. You know the relief you felt when you finally told us the truth. A few days ago, when I was talking about insurance money and moving away for college, you asked me how I could think about that when Henry and Kitt were dead. Think about that. Think about Elizabeth. Draw strength from that.”
Pak said, “Nothing we do can bring them back. You’re asking Mary to destroy her life for nothing.”
“Not nothing. Doing the right thing is not nothing.” Young stood up and turned away from them, her husband and daughter, and she stepped toward the door. One foot, then the other, waiting for Mary to stop her, for her to yell out, Wait, I’m coming with you. But no one said anything, did anything.
It was bright outside, the sun hitting her eyes so fiercely she had to squint. The air was dense and humid, the way it always got in late afternoons in August. The sky was clear, with no sign yet of the thunderstorm that would hit in a few hours. The pressure and heat from the full sun, building and building until the sky cracked into a ten-minute storm, enough to relieve the pressure and start the night’s cooldown. Then tomorrow, the cycle would begin again.
Inside, she could hear muffled voices. She walked away, not wanting to hear what Pak must be saying, his ordering Mary to be patient and wait for Young to come to her senses. She walked to a nearby tree, a giant oak with gnarled knots all over its trunk, like scar tissue covering old wounds.
Behind her, the door creaked open and footsteps approached, but she kept facing the tree, afraid of what she’d see on her daughter’s face. The footsteps stopped. A hand pressed on her shoulder, a gentle pressure. “I’m scared,” Mary said.
Tears stung Young’s eyes, and she turned. “I am, too.”
Mary nodded and bit her lip. “Ap-bah said if I confess, he’ll say he did everything on purpose, for the money, and my story’s a lie I made up to make it seem more like an accident. He said if he tells Abe that, he’ll probably end up getting the death penalty.”
Young closed her eyes. Pak was clever. Threatening their daughter with yet another death, his own. She opened her eyes and grabbed Mary’s hands. “We won’t let that happen. We’ll tell Abe everything, including your father’s threat. He’ll believe you. He’ll have to.”