Shelter(66)

“Not far. But why would they be in this part of town?” Jin asks.

Kyung assumes that Mae got lost and flustered. He taught her to drive in circles, not to find her way home. “She was a fast learner,” he says, if only to reassure himself.

They follow the highway for a few miles until traffic begins to slow, then crawl, then simply stop. The car in front of them is a pickup truck with a noisy exhaust and too many bumper stickers. The driver is hanging his sunburned arm out the window, drumming his fingers impatiently on the door. In front of him are at least two dozen cars, and possibly dozens more after the wooded curve they can’t see around. They sit in traffic for several minutes, not moving an inch until Connie suddenly cranks his wheel and pulls over onto someone’s yellow scrap of lawn.

“We should get out and walk,” he says. “We’re not going to get any closer driving.”

Everyone they pass seems angry and annoyed, which worries Kyung. When Connie said there was an accident, he assumed it was a fender bender, something inconvenient but insignificant. He imagined cuts and stitches, a cast or concussion at worst. But the farther they walk, the clearer it is that the accident was something more. A woman in the passenger seat of a vintage Beetle is smoking a skinny brown cigarette. The ground beneath her open window is littered with butts. Most of the drivers have their engines turned off to conserve gas, as if they lost hope of moving a long time ago. When they round the curve, Kyung sees the flashing red, white, and blue of emergency vehicles in the distance—too many for just a minor accident. It looks like the Fourth of July. He breaks into a sprint, kicking up a cloud of dust while the others trail behind him.

There’s a crowd gathered in front of a faded gray house, packed tightly with neighbors and kids, all standing on tiptoes to catch a glimpse. Kyung is so winded by the time he reaches them, he has to rest his hands on his knees until Connie and Jin catch up. He hears someone breathing heavily alongside him, and then feels a tap on his shoulder as Connie begins to trudge through the crowd, waving his badge at people too distracted to care. The flash of silver and gold is enough to clear a path for them toward an area cordoned off by hazard cones and tape. Kyung’s stomach sinks when he sees his car being towed away from a huge tree, the entire front end crushed like an accordion. Both air bags have deflated. Jagged outlines of glass are all that remain of the windshield and windows. There’s no sign of his mother or Marina. No ambulances on the scene. Only a swarm of police cars and the tow truck driver. Connie tells him to stay put and climbs over the tape, lifting his badge to approach two officers standing near the tree.

“You did this,” Jin repeats.

And because he believes this too, Kyung can’t summon a response. All he can do is stare at Connie, studying his reactions from a distance—nodding, nodding, nodding, and then a surge of air that expands his chest, followed by a slow shake of his head. One of the officers leans over and whispers in his ear. Not a sentence or two, but something that takes much longer. When he finishes, Connie nods again and starts walking back, keeping his eyes on the road. By the time he returns, his lips pursed and skin ashen, Kyung already knows what’s coming. His mother and Marina are gone. As he hears the words out loud, he pushes Connie away, harder and harder until Connie has no choice but to wrap him in his arms and hold him still. Kyung’s legs go out from underneath him and he falls on the hot asphalt, screaming as the crowd of strangers looks on. Women begin to corral their kids, leading them away from the spectacle, while the men turn their heads, unable to watch.

The things he said at dinner were meant to hurt Mae, to hurt both of his parents as much as they’d hurt him. But not once did he imagine that something like this would happen. All he wanted was for them to know. He was tired of pretending. Why did saying so make her react when so many things never did? It makes no sense to him—the fact that she wouldn’t leave a man who beat her, but this was the moment she chose to flee, that he was the person she finally chose to flee from. Kyung can’t stop crying. He’s desperate to tell Mae he’s sorry, to hear the same words from her. However much he denied it, he always hoped they’d be kinder to each other one day, like people who were grateful to survive something instead of people still fighting to survive. Wherever that small seed of hope resided, it no longer exists, and what they were to each other is what they’ll always be. Tethered, somehow. Drawn together by a force that should have kept them close but repelled them instead.

“Worthless,” Jin shouts.

Kyung feels a hard slap to the head.

“You worthless, no-good waste of life.”

He lifts his arms to shield himself, but the blows keep coming at him from above.

“You did this, you selfish, no-good son of a bitch. You were never any goddamn good. Never—do you hear me?”

Kyung rolls over onto his side, bringing his knees to his chest to make himself small. The blows are coming faster now, the open hands turning into hard, tight fists.

“Easy,” Connie says. “Easy.”

He remains on his side, waiting for his father to continue. When he doesn’t, Kyung looks up and sees Jin standing over him with his arms pinned back by Connie. His glasses are bent and crooked. What little hair he has left is wild. Even now, with a bigger, stronger man holding him back, he’s still as frightening as ever.

“Jesus,” Connie says, staring at Kyung’s pants.