Miracle Creek(22)

But here they were again. Her mother, combing her fingers through Mary’s hair, and Mary, pretending to be asleep. Lying here in the haze of half sleep, Mary felt transported back to Baltimore and wondered if her mother knew she’d been awake all those nights, how she’d waited for Um-ma’s return.

“Yuh-bo, dinner’s getting cold,” Mary’s father’s voice sounded, breaking the moment. Her mother said, “Okay, coming,” shook her gently, and said, “Mary, dinner’s ready. Come out soon, okay?”

Mary blinked and mumbled, as if just starting to rouse. She waited for her mother to leave and close the curtain before slowly sitting up, reorienting herself, forcing her mind to take in her surroundings. Miracle Creek, not Baltimore, not Seoul. Matt. The fire. The trial. Henry and Kitt, dead.

At once, images of Henry’s charred head and Kitt’s chest on fire rushed back to her thoughts, and hot tears stung her eyes again. All year, Mary had tried hard not to think about them, about that night, but today, hearing about their last moments, imagining their pain—it was as if the images were needles surgically implanted throughout her brain, and every time she moved the tiniest bit, they poked her, sending white-hot flashes bursting behind her eyeballs and making her want to relieve the pressure, just open her mouth and scream.

Next to her mat, she saw a newspaper she’d picked up in the courthouse. This morning’s, with the headline “Mommy Dearest” Murder Trial Begins Today. A picture showed Elizabeth gazing at Henry with a dazed smile, her head tilted, as if she couldn’t believe how much she adored her son, the same way she’d looked at HBOT: always pulling Henry close, smoothing his hair, reading with him. It had reminded Mary of Um-ma in Korea, and she’d felt a pang, seeing this mother’s singular devotion to her child.

It had all been a ruse, of course. It had to be. The way Elizabeth had sat through Matt’s testimony about Henry being burned alive—without flinching, without crying, without screaming and running out. No mother with an ounce of love for her child could’ve done that.

Mary looked at the picture again, this woman who’d spent last summer pretending to love her child while secretly planning his murder, this sociopath who’d placed a cigarette inches from an oxygen tube, knowing that the oxygen was on and her son inside. Her poor son, Henry, this beautiful boy, his wispy hair, baby teeth, all engulfed in …

No. She shut her eyes tight and shook her head, side to side—hard, harder—until her neck hurt and the room spun and the world zigzagged sideways and upside down. When nothing remained in her head and she could no longer sit, she fell on the mat and buried her face in her pillow. She let the cotton soak up all her tears.





ELIZABETH WARD





THE FIRST TIME SHE HURT HER SON on purpose was six years ago, when Henry was three. They’d just moved into their new house outside D.C. A cookie-cutter McMansion—nice enough in isolation, but downright silly when clumped, as it was, with identical McMansions built too close on tiny lots separated by strips of grass. Elizabeth was not a fan of suburbia, but her then-husband, Victor, vetoed urban (“Too noisy!”) and rural (“Too far!”) choices and declared this house (close to two airports and three “feeder” preschools) a no-brainer.

Their first week, their neighbor Sheryl threw a cul-de-sac party. When Elizabeth walked in with Henry, the kids—pretend-riding horse brooms, Thomas trains, and Cars cars—were ricocheting around the cavernous basement and squealing (in joy, fear, or pain, she couldn’t tell). The parents were cramped into a corner bar separated from the kids by childproof gates, looking like caged animals in a zoo exhibit, all gripping wineglasses and leaning in to talk over the racket.

A few steps in, Henry held his palms to his ears and screamed, a high-pitched yell that sliced through the pandemonium. All eyes turned, converging at first on Henry, then rushing to her, the mom.

Elizabeth turned to hug him tight, burying his face in her chest and muffling his scream. “Shhhh,” she said, over and over, patting his hair, until he stopped. She turned to the others. “I’m sorry. He’s very sensitive to noise. And moving and unpacking—he’s really overwhelmed.”

The adults smiled and muttered platitudes: “Of course” and “No worries” and “We’ve all been there.” One man said to Henry, “I’ve been wanting to scream like that for an hour, so thanks for doing it for me, bud,” and chuckled so good-naturedly, so cheerfully, that Elizabeth wanted to hug him for defusing the tension. Sheryl opened the childproof gate to let the adults out and said in singsong, “Hey, kids, we have a new friend. Let’s all introduce ourselves.”

One by one, the kids—all toddlers and preschoolers—answered Sheryl’s prompts for their names and ages, even the youngest, Beth, who pronounced her name as “Best” and held up her tiny index finger for her age. Sheryl turned to Henry. “And you, handsome knight,” she said, making the kids giggle, “what’s your name?”

Elizabeth willed Henry to say, “Henry. I’m three,” or at least hide his face in her skirt so she could credibly say, “Henry’s shy around strangers,” which would prompt choruses of “Oh, how sweet!” from the moms. But that didn’t happen. Henry’s face remained blank. He stared off into space, eyes rolled up and mouth ajar, looking like a shell of a boy—no personality, no intelligence, no emotion.