Til Death Do Us Part

42

“Woah…. I expected a sad story, but that….. it’s a saga.” Greta eyes me over her cup of warm cocoa, illuminated by the dawn glow as we sit by the windows on the second floor. I don’t know why I held off being honest with her about everything before now, as not once through my storytelling did I feel like she was judging me. She was quiet, attentive, and offered hugs and tissues as needed. I know she wouldn’t use who I am for personal gain, and it somehow feels like a huge weight has been lifted just by her knowing who I am.

We have an unadulterated view of the tiny village and streets from up here and the vast chaotic ocean as it tosses to and fro. Its immense power and size remind me how insignificant and vulnerable humans are yet can also instill a sense of peace inside me. Like the night of the accident, it’s misty in the distance of the dull morning light, and you can’t see the landscape, or the mountains of the surrounding mainland, or the other smaller islands out there. We feel disconnected and alone. Somehow cocooned in our safe bubble.

Curled up with blankets and using the cozy couches placed here for the sea view, we’ve sat all night while I told her everything there was to know about who Sohla Park was and everything that led her to this moment. I held nothing back. Even the parts I’m ashamed of and why I took Jyeon’s car that night. I’m a little apprehensive after sharing every detail of my life; no holds barred, that it changes how she sees me, but her non-reaction is sort of comforting.

“They say you don’t quite grasp how bad your situation is until you see the horror on a person’s face who hears your story for the first time. I always thought we were normal and doing our best, but…. you looked pretty disgusted a few times.” I point out with a self-deprecating chuckle.

“Baby girl, what you were dragged up in, is the saddest elitist bullshit I have ever heard. You were objectified from the age of eleven and treated as a possession to elevate your husband’s family. They didn’t see you as a human, and they didn’t once stop to ask how you felt or what you needed.”

“I know.” I can’t exactly argue now it’s all there in black and white. Telling it without being part of it anymore highlights how much Jyeon and I never controlled our own lives. We were puppets who did as we were told, and any hint of straying came with cruel consequences. Him, as much as me, was controlled to the point of not even being allowed to experience love without it carrying a heavy weight of responsibility. They drove a wedge between us, a mistrust, and competitiveness, even if that was never obvious.

“Do you think he did it?” She prods gently with her question, tensing a little because this topic is what started the spewing out of all my shame and secrets and started my hour-long sobbing fit early in the day. I still cannot get my head around it.

“Everything points to that when we lay it out and keep emotions out of it. Yet…….”

“Your heart says he never would, right?”

I nod, my chest aching once more as I swirl this around in my head and come up with the same hellish confusion as before. I know him. From birth to three weeks ago, I have barely spent time not connected to him in some way. No one knows him better than me.

“I love him. Jyeon isn’t a killer. He’s not manipulative or heartless. His mother maybe, but not him.” I swirl my cocoa in my mug and sigh as I tug the blankets further around my shoulder. We’ve been up all night, watching the sun go down and come back up again, and yet I’m no further forward. I’m cold and exhausted, emotionally drained, but no clearer-headed. No less wounded to know I’m now legally dead. I cannot let that sink in at all. It doesn’t seem real.

“You said when you left, Jyeon and his mother were holed up in her study. Maybe he convinced her that it was over between you, and he’d never go back. Maybe she’s the one who decided you were excess to requirements and sided with him to get rid of you. Seeing that as a controllable outcome. Didn’t you say she threatened you when you told him you would ruin him? That he’s obedient to a fault when it comes to his parent’s wishes and doing what’s best for OLO and his position there.” Greta has a sharp mind and evaluates all of this as an outsider looking in. Taking out the feelings, seeing only the players and the reasons. I know things are never that simple in life, and you have to know all the characters to make an educated guess.

“I don’t know. She raised me since I was fifteen, she’s been my mother all that time, and before that, she was like an aunt.”

“But did she ever treat you like she loved you?”

I’m silenced as I think about it. Jogging back through thousands of memories and days between us. To her presence that was ever looming, even before my mother left me. It’s mixed and confusing because what I saw as love maybe was just her way of bringing me in, controlling me, and grooming me to be what she wanted me to be. I always respected her but also feared her.

When I was pregnant, she showed me another side of her that pushed me to do what I did. She was ruthless and cold and annoyed that we screwed up the plans for OLO’s future by falling. Work had to come first. We had goals she set, still acting VP at the time and slowly receding to let me take over. I was her stand-in, so stopping to have a baby would have ruined all of it. Her retirement, her letting go of OLO. Her helping her son in his new position.

Jyeon had to grieve. When father passed away, she made it clear my physical condition was secondary to her son getting through his darkest days. When I bled, she told me it was nothing. I should wear flat shoes and sit more. Yet she’s the one who booked the flight to sign contracts when the hospital wanted to keep me in for observation. I was so conditioned never to question or argue, thinking she knew best, that I let her push me. I was fit and healthy and didn’t feel like my baby was struggling, so I allowed it. The blood spotting was light, and I had no pain. These are the things I repeated to myself as I boarded that flight, while deep down, I hesitated.

After I lost Tia, I guess the fact that she never once brought it up or treated me poorly in the way Jyeon did was a sign that my baby was of little concern to her. She was never maternal, not even when Yoonah and Jyeon were young, and I guess I never really saw it before then. In her head it was the best option and not once in the last four years has she tried to push me to have another. Always, it was OLO, and our ten year plan, before heirs played a role.

“Your silence sort of answers that question.” Greta’s face turns serious, bringing me back out of my daze, and she takes a sip of her drink. Her brows knitted together bitterly as though visualizing what kind of life I led. It washes me with guilt that I allowed myself to be a puppet, that I was never honest with Jyeon about any of it. He, too, lived the same life, yet we never talked to one another like we should have. Always the invisible barrier created by his rebellion over our marriage. His distance as he internalized everything made him miserable too. He tried to be a good husband for a short time, but it was always clear he wasn’t there with me.

“With me dead…. everything that was mine goes to Jyeon. He’s still my husband. My shares, my inheritance, my property, cars, possessions…. It all goes to him.” It’s a blanket statement, a realization that I became broke and nothing in a world that only cares about power and wealth in the blink of an eye.

“If that’s not motive, then what is, Anna? You can say it a thousand times but look at what’s staring us right in the face. Maybe he’s not a killer, but he does what he’s told when it comes to his family, and he isn’t innocent in anything that you have been through.”

I lean forward, releasing my arms from the blanket, and rub my middle fingers on both my temples simultaneously, trying to combat the headache caused by hours of emotional outpouring. I’m so drained. My mind’s in chaos; my heart has shrivelled and feels like a solid and cold lump of rock in my chest.

She’s right though. He can be strong, commanding, mature, and in control, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his parent’s wishes. It’s his Achilles heel and partly why I was so secure in the fact he would never have an affair. Wasn’t I the same? It’s a form of brainwashing. It’s how we were raised, and not once did either of us ever realize we had even the tiniest say in things.

“I could return. Make it public. I would get everything back and cause mayhem in the process over how they lied and produced a body. That’s a bunch of criminal charges on top of everything else. They falsified my death. That in itself would run Jyeon into ruin.”