Shelter(6)

“No … we’re not really that close.”

The woman lifts and lowers her eyebrows. “Okay, then. The police are waiting to talk to you. I think they’re around the corner.”

“They’re here already?”

“The paramedics called ahead.”

Of the three men standing beside the soda machine, Kyung recognizes two of them: Connie, Gillian’s father. And Tim, her brother. Both appear to be off duty, dressed in T-shirts and jeans as if they were interrupted mid-barbecue. Their faces are angled toward a small television set hanging from the ceiling that’s tuned to a Red Sox game. Kyung approaches slowly, then slower still until he comes to a stop and takes a deep breath. He didn’t ask Gillian to call her family. He wishes she hadn’t.

“Connie,” he finally says.

His father-in-law turns around. “What’s going on? Is she all right?”

Kyung nods, but he’s not convinced.

“This is Officer Lentz. He’s here to take your statement.”

He looks at the third man’s face, alarmed by the roundness of it, the absence of stubble or wear. “How old are you?” he asks. He blurts out the question before he realizes what an insult it levies.

“Twenty-nine.”

Lentz emphasizes the word “nine,” which Kyung assumes people mistake for “five.”

“Matt’s a good guy. He knows what he’s doing.” Tim rests a protective hand on Lentz’s shoulder.

“So what happened?” Connie asks. “Gilly called in a fit about your mom getting beaten up.”

Kyung nods again, staring at the checkered tile floor. This is too much to say in front of his in-laws, too much history that he’s guarded from people like them.

Connie seems to sense this because he steps toward him, lowering his head to look Kyung in the eye. “She said you mentioned something about your father before the ambulance arrived? He’s done this kind of thing before?”

Connie’s eyes are blue, blue like Gillian’s. For the first time, Kyung sees something resembling kindness in them. Not suspicion, like the day she brought him home to meet the family. Or apathy, like every other Christmas and Thanksgiving since. Being married to his daughter wasn’t enough to earn this man’s affection, but being a victim somehow is.

“It used to be pretty regular. A long time ago.” Kyung pauses. “My mother told me he did this to her—when she came to the house today, she said so.”

Lentz is taking notes with a small blue pencil, the stubby kind used by golfers. Kyung watches the lead leave a neat trail across the page. Every letter is perfectly slanted and looped; it looks like a woman’s handwriting, or a young girl’s. He wonders if Lentz has ever been assigned to anything more serious than a bike theft.

“That seems like enough to go talk to him, don’t you think?” Connie asks. “Mind if we come along?”

Although he phrased it in the form of a question, it’s obvious that Connie expects the younger man to defer to him, which he does.

“I want to go too.”

The three men look at Kyung, then at each other.

“That’s probably not such a good idea,” Tim says. “Maybe you should wait—”

Connie swings his arm in front of Tim’s chest like a barricade. “It’s okay if he wants to come. Someone does this to a guy’s mother, he has the right.” He doesn’t bother to consult Lentz about this. He simply starts walking toward the exit. “Just promise me you’ll stay out of the way.”

What he promises to do and what he thinks he’ll do are two different things. Kyung is convinced that when he sees Jin, he’ll go straight for the old man’s throat, pressing his thumbs into the hollow until someone pries him off. Connie and Tim might respect him more for the effort, although the McFaddens are the kind of men who always seem ready to fight, which ensures that they never have to. Kyung doesn’t feel comfortable around them, making their presence today even odder. He reminds himself that Gillian couldn’t have known any of this was going to happen when she called. It’s not her fault that he’s sitting in the back of Connie’s Suburban, following Lentz’s squad car up the hill toward Marlboro Heights.

“I keep forgetting,” Tim says. “What’s your dad teach again?”

“Engineering. Mechanical engineering.”

“College professor ought to know better than to hit a woman, don’t you think?”

Tim turns around in the passenger seat, his expression a cross between menacing and sly. He’s a hulk of a man, even taller and thicker than Connie. The question was probably his dumb idea of a trick. Kyung is a college professor too. Tim wants to hear him say the right thing.

“Everyone,” he answers.

“Everyone what?”

“I think everyone should know better.”

The main road into Marlboro Heights is a wide, neatly landscaped street. The houses along this stretch are the cheapest in the neighborhood because of their proximity to traffic. Still, Tim whistles at the sprawling Victorians with their chemical-green lawns and tall, leafy shade trees. It occurs to Kyung that his in-laws have never visited his parents’ house before. They were invited once, shortly after he and Gillian eloped, but they declined the invitation, which was never extended again. Under different circumstances, he would have been proud to bring them here. Mae and Jin live near the top of the hill in a stunning Queen Anne, built in the 1860s and restored to ornate, expensive perfection.