Miracle Creek(69)
She said, “Was that why you left the barn that night? Something with the balloons?”
He nodded and bit his lip. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have left you alone like that. But when the police called, they said they were coming over soon to get the balloons to test them for fingerprints, so I could get proof it was the protesters and get a restraining order. And I realized—I never wiped off the balloons, and I didn’t want them finding my prints, so I went to go get them. I thought it’d take just a minute, but I had trouble getting them down, and then I saw the protesters. I got scared about what they might try, and that’s when I called you, to say I couldn’t come back until after the dive was over.”
“Was that why Mary was with you, to help with that? Did she know about all this?”
“No,” he said, and Young felt something heavy lift from her chest. It was one thing to have your husband keep secrets from you, another thing entirely to have him confiding them in your daughter. Pak said, “No, I just said I needed help getting the balloons down. And she did help me, looking in the shed and finding sticks to try to reach them and such. I even tried boosting her up.”
Young looked at their hands, now folded together on the table.
“Yuh-bo,” Pak said, “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you all this earlier. I won’t keep anything from you again.”
She looked into his eyes and nodded. It made sense, everything he said, and finally, there were no lies. Yes, he’d done questionable things—lied about his job in Seoul, hidden the cigarette tin case, lied about the balloons. But those wrongdoings were small—technically wrong, but not really wrong. Like white lies. He really did have four years of HBOT experience in Seoul, regardless of the change in jobs, which was what mattered. And what difference did a hidden case of cigarettes make when all he did was look at them, use them as props for his thoughts? The balloons were the most troubling, because without the power outage, he would have stayed in the barn that night and turned off the oxygen and opened the hatch more quickly. But still, it was Elizabeth who caused the fire, Elizabeth who was responsible for whatever damage resulted from that action.
Young linked her fingers with Pak’s, weaving them together. She told herself she was wrong to have doubted her husband. But even as she re assured him that she believed him, forgave him, trusted him, something nagged at her, something she couldn’t place that told her something was wrong with his story, something tiny that kept crawling in the recesses of her mind like a weevil in a bag of rice.
It wasn’t until later that night, his stories playing like a video in her mind as she lay in bed, that she realized what was wrong.
If Mary and Pak had worked together, both of them next to the utility pole for extended periods of time, why did their neighbor report seeing only one person?
MATT
THE RAIN WAS FUCKING WITH HIS MIND. It wasn’t so bad earlier, when Janine was driving them home and it was storming. The violence of the noise—the rumble of thunder barely audible over the heavy raindrops pelting the car, fast and furious—had calmed him, and Matt had put his hand on the moonroof above his head, imagining the pressure of the water hitting his flesh, maybe jolting the nerves under the thick scars into feeling something. But by the time they got home, the storm had calmed, and now it was drizzling, making faint phwats against his bathroom window—a muffled scratching noise that crawled through the damp air and crept through his veins, making his neck and shoulders itch.
He put his fingers under his shirt and rubbed, which was all he could do now that his fingernails were gone. It was funny, how he’d considered nails useless vestigial leftovers, but here he was, missing them intensely, needing to dig into his flesh and scratch. He rubbed harder, craving relief, but the slick scars on his fingers simply slid around his clammy skin, the itch intensifying all over—wriggling through his arms down to his hands, burrowing below the impenetrable layer of scar tissue. At once, the mosquito bites from the creek last night roused, the welts on his arms turning bright red like poppies in a field.
He stripped and turned on the shower, jet-massage mode. As he stepped in, the concentrated jet of cold water pierced him, obliterating the itch everywhere like a bomb. He turned the water warmer, put his head in the spray, and tried to organize his jumble of thoughts into lists. Janine liked lists, used them during fights (“discussions,” she’d correct) to prove she was being logical and fair. “I’m not accusing you of anything,” she’d say, “just listing facts. Here’s what I know. Fact one: blah blah. Fact two: blah blah.” Numbered facts were big with her, and he needed to tread lightly just now, follow her format. He closed his eyes and breathed, tried to focus on what he knew—no questions or conjecture, just concrete matters he could enumerate:
FACT #1: Before the explosion, Janine somehow found out that Mary, not a hospital intern, was the one sending him notes.
FACT #2: Janine was at Miracle Submarine thirty minutes before the explosion.
FACT #3: At that time, Janine was angry, and she confronted Mary and lied to her (saying he had complained about Mary bothering him).
FACT #4: Janine threw Camel cigarettes, 7-Eleven matches, and a balled-up H-Mart note at Mary. (RELATED FACT #4A: Elizabeth claimed she found Camel cigarettes, 7-Eleven matches, and a balled-up H-Mart note on the same night in the same woods.)