Shelter(70)

“I wasn’t sure if I should bring this up today, but it’s difficult to talk about Mae’s life without at least referencing the things that happened to her recently.”

All the ambient noise in the room—the coughing, the fanning, the shifting in pews—suddenly stops and the sanctuary is quiet. Kyung sits up straight, wondering if he’ll finally hear something uncomfortable and true.

“I’m sure there are people out there, people who didn’t know Mae like we did, who thought of her as nothing more than a victim. But Mae was just the opposite. She was strong and smart. She survived something terrible, something that would have broken an ordinary soul. And I have to believe that God had his reasons for testing her as he did and then taking her away so soon afterwards. Maybe he had a special place for her.…”

Several people raise their Bibles. A ripple of amens makes its way to the back of the room. Kyung feels like he’s sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool, looking up at a distorted view of a world in which no one understands what really happened. And his father and Gillian, people who should understand, refuse to believe.

Elinor concludes with a passage from John 14. “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.’” She pauses and puts her note cards down again. “Mae is with our Father now, making his home more beautiful for him and for us, which was always her way. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be her friend in this lifetime, and I know we’ll meet again in the next.”

There are other remembrances and readings after Elinor’s, brief ones that are hard to listen to nonetheless. Everyone talks about Mae in generalities, confirming his fear that she never let anyone truly see her, not once in fifty-six years. Kyung tips his head back and stares at the huge stained-glass panels in the ceiling—bright red, blue, and gold crosses surrounded by bursts of color as if he’s viewing them through a kaleidoscope.

“Pay attention,” Gillian whispers.

Kyung looks at her, not certain if she’s speaking to him or to Ethan. Then he feels the sharp point of her elbow in his ribs.

Ethan leans forward in his seat as an elderly woman climbs the steps to the altar. She’s dressed in a traditional Korean gown, floor length and white, with a long-sleeved jacket that ties in the front with a bow.

“Is she a bride?” he asks Gillian, who responds with a gentle “shhh.”

Kyung studies Ethan’s profile, quiet and focused as he tries to make sense of what the woman is wearing. It’s embarrassing to see his four-year-old behaving better than he is, so he defaults to an old trick, counting everything in his line of sight. There are 73 gardenias in the planter in front of him, 214 words in the program, 48 fake bulbs in the candelabra on the altar. As a child, he often counted to pass the time, distracting himself until the beatings ended and the house was quiet again. Whatever comfort he took from this activity—it fails to soothe him anymore.

By the time the service concludes, the heat outside is brutal. Kyung and his family form a receiving line on the front steps of the church. The reverend is noticeably absent. Embarrassed, probably, by his strange showing inside. An hour-long service and he barely managed to utter five complete sentences in a row. As the guests file out of the church, Kyung feels moist, rough hands press against his, one after another. Women he doesn’t know embrace him, pushing their warm breasts against his body. Several have helped themselves to the floral arrangements, toting them out like gift bags, which strikes him as rude.

Before he has a chance to fully form this thought, Lentz appears with his hand outstretched. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Cho.”

Beside him is another man dressed in a cheap brown suit with the disposition of an old marine.

“This is Detective—”

Kyung cuts him off. If this is the detective he never heard from, he doesn’t want to meet him now. “Thank you both for joining us,” he says.

He turns to face the onslaught of mourners coming at him, squeezing through the doors of the church. Lentz and the detective take their cue and move on, replaced by more people, more handshakes, more sweaty hugs and stolen flowers. Kyung hears himself saying what he knows he should—“Hello.” “Thank you.” “I appreciate that you came.”—and the irony of this isn’t lost on him. He told everyone at the Cape that he didn’t want to pretend anymore, and now here he is, just getting through the script, waiting for the line to thin. When it finally does and the last of the elderly stragglers have left the building, he walks to a small patch of shade near the side of the church. His father is still standing by the door, trying to remove the boutonniere from his lapel. Jin frees the gardenia and spins it by the stem, clockwise and counterclockwise, over and over again. He seems hypnotized by it, staring at the pinwheel of white until he’s the last person left on the steps. Suddenly, he rears his arm back and hurls the flower into the bushes, startling a pair of birds that flap and flutter their way to the roof. It happens so quickly, no one notices except for Kyung.

*

The reception is at the parsonage, a detail he didn’t overhear until it was too late. He assumed everyone would come to his house to pay their respects, but the actual location is much worse. He has no desire to enter the reverend’s home, to be anywhere near Molly again. During the two-block walk from the church to the parsonage, Kyung brings up the rear, cycling through every possible reason to leave. Illness, anxiety, fatigue. Nothing seems important enough to excuse himself from his parents’ friends, a fact that Gillian confirms as they near the front door.