Til Death Do Us Part

44

“It was a genuine accident. A tragic pile-up when a truck Jack knifed on a snowy night. My parents and many others lost their lives on that highway. My father-in-law saw my dad as his brother, and he never recovered at all from his death, so I know it’s not suspicious.”

It’s the one truth I can rely on. I saw It for myself. I felt the genuine love between my dad and Jyeon’s. Both when he was alive and in the aftermath of their accident. The two men who brought our families together and the reason we crumbled. My parents loved Jyeon and Yoonah like they were my real cousins.

“You can’t go back. You know that, right? We have talked it around in circles and knowing everything you lived through, what you’ll face if you do……don’t go back. Please.” She pleads, losing all anger and frostiness, and instead, her eyes mist, and a wobble in her voice tugs at my heart strings.

“Greta, …I ….”

“Please. I know it’s selfish, but I don’t want you to go there. What if we’re right, and it puts you in danger. What if everything goes to s**t, and you end up dead for real. What do I do then? I’m crazy attached to you and would cry like crazy if anything happened to you. I’m scared for you. They never loved or appreciated you. You weren’t happy with them. You weren’t worth anything to them. That’s not true for me…you’re my family. You don’t need to go back anymore.”

Her words hit a sore note in my soul, and I have to bite on my bottom lip to curb the urge to cry. Warmed by her affection that feeds a craving I’ve had for so many years, unfulfilled. To feel seen and have someone care about me. To experience real familial love again. I know Yoonah cares, but it's always been a selfish love, where he wanted me romantically and clung to me while expecting me to solve all his life problems. Yoonha was needy and wanted a mother figure because his real one sucked.

“I’m not innocent. I’ve been an awful person and done so many things. I was hateful. If I do nothing, the money just disappears. With that, I could rebuild the village, buy you ten thousand of these shacks and start a chain. Make your life something completely different so we’d never have to worry about money ever again. Pay my dues for being a cold, heartless b***h for so much of my life.” I point out and watch as her expression crumbles.

“I don’t want it. Money caused this, and money is the reason your life is in ruins. They made you that way. That money did. If we’re broke for the rest of our lives, but you get to stay, and live, and find happiness, maybe even love, then I don’t care about any of that. We don’t need it. We’ll get through without money like I always have.”

It’s weird to hear someone value me the person, coming with nothing at all, over everything that always symbolized my importance. Stripped away all of it, Sohla Park wouldn’t have been wanted by anyone in the world I come from. Here, Greta only sees the dirty, ragged girl she found on the road and has nothing to her name except scars and memories. It overwhelms me that I could hold value this way.

 “The question is…. Can you live without what’s yours?” Greta calms down and asks with her maternal and severe tone, sniffing back her upset.

I sigh heavily and turn back to the ocean view. Watching the lapping of the foamy waves move up onto the sand, stretching out with every stroke as it starts to come in and cover the landscape. Washing it, hiding it away so that when it’s revealed again in a few hours, none of the pebbles and shells will be in the same place, and so much debris and seaweed will be washed into the vast ocean to settle elsewhere. Making everything shiny, new, and fresh. It feels symbolic. Like Greta could be my sea.

“If you asked me that three weeks ago, I would have said no. Maybe deep down, though, something in my gut told me not to reach out and go back to them, and I couldn’t understand why…… Now? If losing all of that means I get to stay healthy and safe, and where I’m wanted ….. a place I might be able to let Jyeon out of my heart, then yes. I can live without it. All of it.”

My father’s legacy, my inheritance, my home, my marriage. It's all tied up together in a big black ball of sodden string that has bound and suffocated me for years. I never stopped to look up at the sky the entire time I was wasting my life for the benefit of others. This village is nothing but sky, sea, and simplicity, which I think I want and need more than anything from here on in.

I don’t want to know if Jyeon tried to kill me, not really, because my heart can’t take that kind of a blow at all. It’s cowardly to run away from it, and I know Yoonie would never have been a part of it. It’s idiotic to suspect all of them without proof, but Greta is right. I need to face the reality that going back could be my end. Either physically or mentally, because I was barely holding on as it was before all of this. I was tumbling towards a breaking point, and that accident might have saved me.

“If you do this, you can never go back. You’ll never be her again. You’ll let the name, Sohla Park… Kim, die for real. That night, that accident, she left this world. It’s a line in the sand that you can’t cross back from. We’ll need to develop a story and some papers for you, so if anyone comes looking, only Anna will be found. Anna Tarry.”

I stare at the waves and feel around under my shirt by my collar for the chain Greta gave me at the hospital. I search out the metal ring I’ve kept hidden under my clothes with the inability to throw it away as a connection to the me I was hiding from. I slide my hand fully around my platinum wedding band, the tiny diamonds dotted within in an inner ring, poking at my palm and squeezing it tight. My only link to the girl I was and a sentimental item that I know I shouldn’t keep close to my heart anymore. My connection to Jyeon.

“My only regret about letting Sohla go…..is that I’ll never be able to tell my parents or Tia that I’m sorry for abandoning them. That Yoonah never deserved this either, and I’m leaving him to suffer.” It chokes me to say it, say her name out loud, and I have a pang of regret knowing I won’t ever be able to venture near their graves or that city for a long, long while. I can’t show my face. If I died, I can’t be a ghost who wanders near their lives.

“Yoonah is a Park. You were forced to take care of him, forced to be his sister, and burdened by his love for you so that he never let go to find a life or a wife of his own. It may hurt for now, but you’re freeing him too. He can bury you in his heart and finally move on to find love. It’s better for him to be able to let you go. You said it yourself that he was obsessively reliant on you and never dated anyone while he looked to you for hope.”

I know she’s trying to comfort me and reinforce that my decision is correct, but it doesn’t move the heavy stick wedged in my soul. I'm confused with what’s true and what’s not and broken-hearted for what I know I’m choosing to let go of once and for all. It’s more than family and bonds. It’s an entire existence, a way of living, my own identity. My wealth has always been there. I’ve never known how to survive without it or learn to live as normal humans do.

 I know that maybe I made this decision when I chose not to tell them I was alive three weeks ago. That possibly I just didn’t dare to admit it out loud. To examine the real reasons I couldn’t reach out to them. It’s a messy, tangled web of a million reasons and none stand out proud from the others. However, it all points to one answer. Stay.

My life strangled me and hurt me. It was a high-pressure pot waiting to pop, and it finally did. When that happens, it’s so impossible to fit the contents back inside and be able to put the lid back on the way it was before. Jyeon’s affair was the increase of heat that blew my cap off. My contents are shattered, and expanded bits of chaos, and my pot got dented and can’t be used in the same way.

My life will never return to what it was, even if I go back. I can’t undo the hurt. I can’t fix the unfixable, and I already lost Jyeon, my entire reason for existing in that world. I don’t know if he tried to kill me or if all of this is a freak act of fate in a bid to make me start over and find my wings, but I know one thing for sure. Sohla Park died that night. Everything about me that I accepted as my fate was ripped away.

“I’ll take one day at a time. Maybe I’ll change my mind. If I don’t make a solid decision, then maybe I’ll be clearer about it and rationally look at all of this from an objective viewpoint. I just need breathing space to let it sink in. I need some normality for just a little while. Is that okay? That I don’t decide right now? That I take time to let it all sink in?”

There’s a long pause while Greta regards me with a thoughtful frown. Pensively inhaling deeply, and then she finally nods, slow and exaggerated.

“Okay….. One day at a time. No pressure. We make no plans and see how we go. I’ll back you no matter what, you know that, right? You’re my sister now, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Whether you stay or whether you go back, I’ll be there every step of the way to hold your hand and protect you. Whatever decision you make, this is your home, and I’ll be right here.”