Shelter(46)

“Your father wants to sell the house,” she says.

He turns down the acid twang of a Jimi Hendrix song, not certain if he heard her correctly. “Sell your house?”

“He told me yesterday.”

She hardly seems bothered by this, but Kyung is quick to feel the outrage she doesn’t. “You can’t just let him decide things like that. You love that house; you’ve spent years—”

“I don’t care what he does with it.”

“But all the work you’ve done—”

“I can’t live in that place again.”

It never occurred to Kyung that his parents wouldn’t eventually return to their home, and he still hasn’t forgotten the proposition that Gertie mentioned not long ago, when his greatest fear was renting out his house and moving into theirs. What are they supposed to do now? Where will they all go?

“You might regret it, though—later, I mean.”

“No, I won’t.”

“But the market—it’s not a good time to sell right now.” He hears himself saying these words out loud, which hardly matter. Mae doesn’t want to live in the place where she was attacked. It makes perfect sense, but he’s not prepared for the ways in which it throws his own life out of balance.

“Well, I guess you can put it up for sale and see what happens.” He inhales slowly, bracing himself for what he has to offer next. “You and Dad are obviously welcome to stay with us as long as you need to.”

Mae doesn’t acknowledge his invitation. The importance of it seems to sail right over her head. “He wants you to call a realtor for him. Get the house listed as soon as you can. He said he doesn’t care how much he loses.”

It’s a terrible idea—the kind so reckless, it can only be the product of someone who knows how to spend other people’s money, but has never earned her own. “Dad didn’t really agree to this, did he?”

“Ask him if you don’t believe me. Also, we want to move to the beach house for the rest of the summer.”

“The two of you—together?”

“No. All of us. There’s more space there. And he said to invite your father-in-law this weekend, to thank him for being so helpful lately.”

The ground beneath him feels like quicksand, sinking each time Mae opens her mouth. There are too many things he doesn’t understand, too many scenarios he can’t begin to imagine. When did the word “we” suddenly reenter her vocabulary? And when did his parents even have this conversation? It would take weeks, maybe even months for him and Gillian to make these kinds of decisions.

“I don’t know,” he says, referring to nothing in particular and everything at once.

“It’d be good for us.”

“But I thought you didn’t like the Cape.”

“I like it enough.”

This is news to Kyung. His father bought the house in Orleans years ago. He seemed to enjoy telling people that he owned a second home, but after Mae finished updating every square inch with her decorator, she quickly lost interest. It was too far away, she said. Too isolated from everything. At best, she and Jin spent only a few days a year there, sometimes skipping years altogether.

“The Cape is hours from here.” He struggles to think of another reason not to go. “And my work—I have to go back soon. Maybe Dad does too.”

“It’s summer. You don’t have to be on campus every day. You can drive back once or twice a week if you need to. We have six bedrooms at the beach house. Everyone can have their own.”

Kyung mentally assigns the rooms. One for him and Gillian. Another for Mae, Jin, Ethan, and Connie. There’s still space for one more. “What about Marina?”

“What about her?”

“Would she come with us?”

“No, of course not,” she snaps. “She’ll just stay at your house while we’re gone. Then she can sit around all day and no one has to see her do it.”

“But how’s she supposed to eat? Or get to her doctor’s appointments?”

“Let her figure it out. Maybe she’ll finally realize she’s not welcome and just leave.”

The hostility in Mae’s voice is impossible to miss, but Kyung doesn’t understand its source. What was Mae doing during her first few days back from the hospital, if not staring at the walls? Where’s her sense of empathy for this girl who suffered as much as she did? Although he’d never dare say this out loud, he thinks his parents are partly to blame for what happened to Marina. None of this would have happened to her if she didn’t clean their house.

“Listen, I don’t like having her around any more than you do, but what you’re suggesting—it’s not right. Marina needs some time to get over this, so if that means we let her sit around for a while and—”

“No!” Mae stabs her finger at the steering wheel, thrusting it with such force that she accidentally honks the horn. “You have to get up. You have to keep going. If you just think about it and think about it, it won’t ever go away. You have to have a plan.”

The “it” she’s referring to requires no explanation. It’s the thing they haven’t been able to talk about, the absence and the everything all at once. For the first time, Kyung sees how much pain she’s holding on to, the way it affects everything she’s doing, whether he understands it or not. He reaches out and gently lowers her finger, pressing it against the steering wheel until she grips it safely again.