Miracle Creek(80)

Young looked at them. The man in the wheelchair, who had committed a monstrous act he’d hidden for a year and had entrusted their daughter, not her, with his secrets. And next to him, the girl with the scar, who’d already forgiven her father for the crime that gave her that scar. The girl who always chose her father, who was still siding with him now, mere minutes after this crushing revelation that should have brought her back to Young. Her husband and daughter. Her sun and moon, her bone and marrow, those without whom her life wouldn’t exist, yet always out of reach and unknowable. She felt a deep pang in her chest, as if every cell in her heart were suffocating and slowly dying.

Pak looked at her. She expected penitence, for his head to droop like a dying sunflower, for him to be unable to look her in the eye, as he confessed his crime and begged forgiveness. Instead, he said, “Yuh-bo, I didn’t realize you were there. What were you doing?”—not in an accusatory or nervous way, but with a tone of feigned casualness, as if testing her out, to see if he could get away with continuing to lie to her. Looking at him, at his fake smile that looked eerily genuine, she stumbled back, and suddenly, it was as if the floor had vanished and she were falling through a vacuum. She needed to get out of this space, this ruined site of death and lies. She staggered, the scorched flooring beneath her feet uneven, needing to hold out her arms for balance, like walking down a plane aisle during turbulence. She walked past Pak and Mary to the stump of a long-dead tree and wiped her tears.

“I see—you heard,” Pak said. “Yuh-bo, you have to understand. I didn’t want to burden you, and I thought there was a better chance of things working out in the end if—”

“Working out?” She turned and stared at him. “How could this possibly work out? A boy is dead. Five children have no mother. An innocent woman is on trial for murder. You are in a wheelchair. And Mary has to live the rest of her life knowing that her father is a murderer. There is no way anything can ever be all right.” She didn’t realize she was shouting until she stopped and heard her words echoing in the silence. Her throat felt raw, grated.

“Yuh-bo,” Pak said. “Come inside. Let’s talk about this. You’ll see—everything will work out. We just have to keep going and not say anything, for now.”

Young stepped back, onto a branch, the uneven footing making her wobbly, ready to fall. Mary and Pak both leaned forward and held out their hands. Young looked at the hands of her daughter and her husband, side by side, offering to steady her, support her. She looked at their faces, these beautiful people she loved, standing at the foot of the trail running along the creek, the tall trees behind them forming a canopy over their heads, sparkling strings of sunlight poking through the leaves. How beautiful it was this morning, when her life was collapsing, as if God were mocking her and confirming her irrelevance.

Mary looked at her and said, “Um-ma, please,” the tender way she said “Mom” in Korean making Young want to take her daughter in her arms and wipe her tears with her thumb, the way she used to. She thought how easy it’d be to say yes, to join hands and forge this union that would forever be held tight by their secret. Then she looked up, at the blackened submarine peeking through, charred by the flames that had engulfed an eight-year-old boy and the woman trying to save him.

She shook her head no. She took a backward step, then another, and another, until she was out of their reach. “You have no right to ask me anything,” she said. Then she turned from them, her husband and daughter, and walked away.





MATT





HE LOOKED FOR MARY IN COURT. He wanted to see her. Well, not wanted, exactly. More like needed. The way you don’t exactly want a root canal, but you need to get the rot out, stop the pain. The courtroom was fuller than usual—probably the by-product of the latest news (“‘Mommy Murderer’ Trial: Defendant Fed Son Bleach”)—but the Yoos were absent, which was strange.

Janine was already there. “I did the voice sample. They’re playing it for the guy today,” she whispered, and anxiety churned in his stomach, thinking about Mary’s access to his car, the phone inside.

Abe turned. “Have you seen the Yoos?”

He shook his head. Janine said, “I think it’s Mary’s birthday. Maybe they’re celebrating?”

Mary’s birthday. Something felt wrong, ominous, the coming together of these unnerving things—the car-key realization, the dream, and now her birthday. Her eighteenth, legally becoming an adult. As in, able to be fully prosecuted. Shit.

Detective Heights walked up for her cross-examination. Shannon didn’t waste any time with good-mornings or how-are-yous, didn’t stand or wait for the whispers to die down. She just said, from her seat, “You consider Elizabeth Ward to be a child abuser, right?”

People looked around, as if to figure out where the question came from. Heights appeared taken aback, like a boxer who expects a minute of circling the ring and, instead, gets punched in the face immediately after the bell. She said, “I, um … I suppose that’s right. Yes.”

Still sitting, Shannon said, “And you told your colleagues that was critical to this case, that without the abuse claims, you had nothing on motive, correct?”

Heights frowned. “I don’t recall that.”

“No? You don’t remember writing ‘No abuse equals no motive’ on the whiteboard at a meeting on this case on August 30, 2008?”