Miracle Creek(31)

Young slumped into the chair next to Pak. How many times had she wished she could go back and redo that moment? “That’s my fault, not yours, and I can’t live with you taking the blame to protect me. I feel like a criminal, lying to everyone. I can’t do this anymore.”

Pak put his hand on top of hers. Green veins meandered through the back of his hand and seemed to continue on hers. “We’re not the guilty ones here. We didn’t set the fire. It doesn’t matter where we were—we couldn’t have done anything to stop the explosion. Henry and Kitt would’ve died even if we were both there.”

“But if I’d turned off the oxygen in time—”

Pak shook his head. “I keep telling you, there’s residual oxygen in the tubes.”

“But the flames wouldn’t have been as intense, so if you’d opened the door right away, maybe we could have saved them.”

“You don’t know that,” Pak said, his voice gentle and calm. He reached under her chin and raised her face to meet his gaze. “The fact is, if I’d been there, I wouldn’t have turned off the oxygen at 8:20, either. You have to remember—TJ took off his helmet. Whenever he did that, I added extra time, to make up for the lost oxygen—”

“But—”

“—which means,” Pak continued, “that the oxygen would have been on, and the fire and explosion exactly the same, if I’d been there.”

Young closed her eyes and sighed. How many times had they gone around this same issue? How many hypotheticals and justifications could they throw at each other? “If we did nothing wrong, why not tell the truth?”

Pak clutched her hand, hard. It hurt. “We need to stick to our story. I left the barn. You’re not licensed. The policy is clear—breaking regulations like that is automatically considered negligence. And negligence means no payout.”

“Insurance!” Young said, forgetting to keep her voice down. “Who cares about that?”

“We need that money. Without it, we have nothing. Everything we’ve sacrificed, Mary’s future—all gone.”

“Listen.” Young knelt in front of him. Perhaps the act of looking down would help him take in her words. “They think you lied to cover up murder. That lawyer’s trying to send you to prison in Elizabeth’s place. Don’t you see how much worse this is? You could be executed!”

Mary gasped. Young had thought Mary was off in her own world, as she often was, but she was facing them. Pak glared at Young. “You’ve got to stop being melodramatic. Now you’ve got her scared for no reason.”

Young reached to squeeze her arms around Mary. She waited for Mary to shake her off, but Mary stayed still. “We’re worried about you,” Young said to Pak. “I’m being realistic, and you’re not taking this seriously enough.”

“I’m taking it seriously. I’m just being calm. You getting hysterical, gasping in the courtroom—did you see how everyone turned to look? That’s the kind of thing that makes me look guilty. Changing our story now is the worst thing we could do.”

The door opened. Pak glanced at Abe and continued in Korean, saying, “No one say anything. I’ll do the talking,” but in a relaxed tone, like he was talking about the weather.

Abe looked feverish. His face, normally the color of oiled mahogany, was a blotched russet, and a film of half-dried sweat matted his skin. When his eyes met Young’s, instead of his usual toothy smile, he looked away quickly as if in embarrassment. “Young and Mary, I need to talk to Pak alone. You can wait down the hall. There’s lunch there.”

“I want to stay. With my husband,” Young said, and put her hand on Pak’s shoulder, expecting a hint of gratitude for her support—a smile or nod, or maybe his hand on hers, like the night before. Instead, Pak frowned and said in Korean, “Just do what you’re told.” His words were quiet, almost whispers, but they had the sound of a command.

Young dropped her hand. She’d been foolish to think that just because of one moment of tenderness last night, Pak was no longer what he’d always been: a traditional Korean man who expected nothing but meek obedience from his wife in public. She left with Mary.

They were halfway down the hall when the door shut behind them. Mary stopped, looked around, and tiptoed back to the conference room.

“What are you doing?” Young said in a whispered yell.

Mary put her finger to her lips in a silent shhhhh and put her ear to the door.

Young looked down the hallway. No one else was around. She ran on tiptoes to join Mary and listen in.

There was no sound, which surprised Young. Abe was one of those people who didn’t like silence. She couldn’t remember a meeting that didn’t overflow with Abe’s words strung into one continuous sound with no pauses. So what did this mean, this silence? Was Abe being guarded and slow, carefully considering every word, because Pak was now a murder suspect?

Abe finally said, “Many things came out today. Troubling things.” His words had the heft and forced evenness of a requiem.

Pak spoke immediately, as if he’d been waiting to speak. “I am suspect now?”

Young expected Abe to protest, No! Of course not! But there was noth ing. Just the soft crunch-crunch of Mary gnawing on a thick strand of her hair, a bad habit that started their first year in America.