Til Death Do Us Part

58

“You cheated on your wife? And you threw her away….. admirable. So she drove off a cliff?” I raise my brows as though I find it a disgusting point and avoid locking focus on his again, brushing imaginary lint from the table. Hoping my accusations hit a note. My hands start to tremble, so I move them to my lap out of sight and focus on slow even breaths to cloak my emotional response.

“The night you left…….” Jyeon swallows hard so that I hear it, and he blows out air and places hands on the table, flat and downwards, and I see now he’s trembling too. He seems overly anxious about talking. His nerves on show, seemingly a vast amount, and I don’t think this is an act unless he’s mastered Oscar worthy performing in my absence.

“You broke me. Never in a million years did I think that you no longer exiting my life would devastate me so much. I know I was a shitty husband, and I never once made you feel like I cared…. I told myself I loathed everything about you, and I showed you that too, but my world stopped when you left it. You have to believe that. Everything came crashing down on top of me, and it’s why I had to bring you home, why I’m doing this. Why I couldn’t leave you on that island and forget all about you…. because……. everything has been empty and lifeless without Sohla Park.” Jyeon’s words filter off so quiet and low and breathy; I have to strain to hear him, which renders me completely mute. Shocked. My emotions tumbling inwards like a giant hole opened up inside of me, and everything is sucked down to leave me in stunned silence. Staring at the hands on the table and unsure what else to do except breathe. Never in my life did I ever expect him to say anything close to that.

“I hate the fact you don’t remember me, but I’m also glad. Because you don’t remember anything about the past and how much it hurt you… how much I hurt you. But it also means you forgot that you once loved me, and I know you did. As much as I denied it and avoided it, you loved me…. and I miss it, I miss you. Sohla, two years have felt like twenty.” Jyeon’s voice breaks again, and this time it’s obvious upset. He sniffs, and my eyes snap up to see the way he bites on his bottom lip to curb his emotions, and his eyes are damp. His jaw tense, his brows dipped as he fights to remain neutral. I’ve only seen Jyeon cry once, and that was over Tia…. the day we laid that tiny coffin in the ground, and he fell to pieces while I stood like a blank, emotionless zombie and stared straight ahead. Jyeon doesn’t cry. In this family, it was always a no.

“What about your woman? Your affair? Did you miss me so much that she’s no longer someone you’re with? Or is she your enduring love? Does she know that you don’t hate the woman you threw away for her? That you’re practically confessing to her.” I shouldn’t ask because I know it will still wound me, but I can’t stop the need to know. The bitterness is unconcealed, yet he doesn’t seem to pick up on the fact that a memoryless woman shouldn’t feel so strongly.

“That ended the second I knew that you were missing. She was a Band-Aid for problems neither of us ever tried to fix between us. Do you think I would come and bring you home, refuse to allow you to divorce me if there was someone else in the picture? I’m an asshole, but I’m not that kind of low. She was a mistake….. that led to me losing you in ways I never prepared for.”

“What are you saying? You have to remember all this is confusing. I’m hearing a man say he loathed his wife and cheated and did many things to make her sad… to the point I supposedly killed myself, but then you what? Missed her, and now you’re trying to what? What exactly? I don’t get what you want from me. The shares? A divorce? It doesn’t sound like it.” My head’s a mess, his words confusing me and not knowing how to feel or think about what he’s saying. Swirling around one another and colliding in chaos because it doesn’t add up.

“I’m saying we sucked together. Because of me! … It was always me. I took what could have been something real and poisoned it. That I never once stopped and thought about my actual feelings for you or examined them or figured out why I could hate you venomously for things that were not your fault. Until you were gone… I’m saying everything was my fault, all of it.”

My insides clench at the words ‘not your fault’, and for the first time since it happened, it’s like Jyeon slides out the dagger in my heart that he put there six years ago. He never once let me away with the blame for Tia. He often reminded me that I did it, and I was at fault. That his hatred and venom and reasons to despise me day after day was always laid at my feet, and now he’s retracting it all. So that alone makes me want to sob. I clench my body to hold it all in, and my face goes numb with the effort of keeping it blank.

“You said we had a kid…who died. Was that what you mean by not my fault? Was that part of why I died?” My words shake, and I can’t conceal the apparent distress caused by what he said, but I hope he takes it as my reaction to the death of my child. Bringing that subject up as though I mulled it over since the last time. Any human would be upset even if they don’t remember.

Jyeon watches me, his face unreadable, and he nods slowly. Killing me all over again and making me realise how much I yearned for this from him for so long. It’s so stupid given everything, but it’s like lifting a weight from my body having him acknowledge what Greta drummed into my head over and over. That Tia left, but it was not all on me.

“You were trying to protect me. My father died, you were shouldering the weight of OLO, and you couldn’t take it easy. My mother pushed you to do more, and I failed to protect my wife while heavily pregnant. I was so absorbed in my own grief and emotionally immature because we were still kids. You gave birth prematurely, in a place that was traumatic and far from home and then our daughter died in ICU only days later. I saw you as something cold and hateful for letting her go without once looking at her, so I blamed you over and over and never let you close again. Later…. I realised it was because you couldn’t watch her die. You were in pain too. That the Sohla I knew hid from heartbreak, brushed it aside and tried to run from it so she wouldn’t break, and I had forgotten it… I blamed you for years over something that did as much damage to you, maybe more, than it did to me because I ignored everything I knew about you as a person and saw only what I wanted to see. Even though it happened because I didn’t take care of you. I blamed you and pushed you away when I was the one who failed us.”

The air becomes heavy between us, and tears roll down my face. Sniffing loudly and finding it hard to swallow or breathe as the sobs start to wrack me, and I can’t stop. It comes from somewhere deep. Like a door being opened to a dark place full of pain and it’s somehow let out to be free. I cover my face and crumble into snotty hysterical crying, and I know it’s probably an extreme reaction, but I can’t stop it. He’s pushed the nerve button and released my damn. Found the one tender spot that Greta could never help shift and did it in a few minutes of talking.

Warm arms slide around my shoulders, and I’m tugged against Jyeon’s chest as he cuddles me close and smooths my hair down my back, soothing me by rocking me side to side. Familiar and safe, and I hate that he can still do this. His scent, his aftershave, his touch, and I’m transported back to a time when I longed for this every day.

“Tee…..ahhhh……I’m sorry.” I sob it out, losing control and my senses, words falling out of their own accord, and I feel him stiffen. His body tightens around me, and he seems surprised to hear me.

“Tia? You said that once before, two years ago……you remember Tia? Was that what you called her? Is that what you thought I was punishing you for when I ……. I’m sorry, Sohla. I’m really sorry. I never knew you named her.” Jyeon crushes me in; his voice is soft and tinged with his tears.

I curse my stupidity at letting it slip, but I realise it’s maybe a blessing. I can act like this whole thing has rekindled something, cry it out because I cannot willingly stop it, and this won’t be a weird overdramatic response. I cry over Tia a lot, for random reasons and stupid things when I least expect it, and every year I put flowers out and light candles for my baby girl. I can stop denying her existence even when he’s around.

“I remember Tia… I remember my baby. I remember holding her just one time. I remember what it felt like to know she died…….”

Jyeon slides his fingers into my hair and pulls my face to his neck, resting my temple in his throat and leaning his chin on top of my head. I’m pulled down a little as he’s kneeling beside my chair, and I submit to his full-body hug as he tries to console me. His chest moving rapidly, in time to shallow breaths and stifled cries, and I realise this is the first time we ever cried together over her loss. The first time we hugged since then, and the first time we brought her up without him directing his hatred my way.

“Cry it out. It’s okay…. Let it out, Sohla. It’s okay for us to cry over this.”

This is probably the first sincere moment we have had since I was eleven years old.