The more I thought about the position Channing had put the boys in at the camp, the angrier I became. She must have known there was a chance I wouldn’t be allowed to pick up the children. Why had she gone with Minjae to begin with? Cars got flat tires, but she had a job to do.
On the way to Sandpiper Lane, Austin chattered about a boy at camp who had traded his banana for a yogurt with him and the girl who had beat him in a race. I was consumed by scenarios of what could have happened if Kent hadn’t been able to help. We’d still be at the camp: me in the parking lot and the boys sitting there after all their friends had gone home. Was being here in East End helping anyone, or was I making it easier for Channing to run off with Minjae and abdicate her responsibility for the children, making it worse for them?
A few minutes after we returned to the house, Minjae’s little red sports car careened into the driveway. Just in time to call the boys’ parents. Channing thanked me profusely for taking care of the children. Minjae apologized too. “It’s my fault, I took out the spare to move some stuff and forgot to put it back,” he said. I didn’t care. I listened and thought,You’re just as careless as Channing.
It was hard to stay furious at her. It was my fault for extending our stay. Harabeoji and I had to leave, the sooner the better, I decided. Channing handed me jelly beans, the kind she knew I loved. Then she gave the boysgummy bears that they chewed as they talked to their parents. I hovered nearby, wondering if they’d mention the problem at camp, but they didn’t. They gave detailed reports of their visit to the beach club and the swimming pool the day before, the French fries at dinner, and asked if they could go back soon.
There wasn’t a chance to speak to Channing alone because Minjae hung around. I went up to my room and emailed my principal to give an update, called Harabeoji and told him I had to get back to the city for my job. He asked if anything happened, and I said it was work-related. No need to worry him. The house was clean, there was food in the fridge, Channing could manage with Minjae’s help until the boys’ parents returned in two weeks. We’d planned for only a weekend, I reminded him. I needed to return to my life. He asked if I’d told Channing about Minjae’s fiancée in Korea, and I said no but I was sure he would tell her, they were inseparable at the moment.
Then he surprised me by telling me he wanted to stay a few extra days and take the bus back to Boston.
My stomach dropped. “No way I’m letting you take the bus,” I said. It was a long walk from the station to his house, but not enough to necessitate an Uber. He was frugal; he’d try to walk.
“Uh ho, the bus is good. You have your teaching job, Dahee. Go ahead back to New York. Everything is going to be fine here,” he said.
“Not up for discussion, I’m driving you. But I’m telling you now, this isherjob. It feels wrong for me to be here.”
“Tell her that,” he said.
Minjae and Channing made mac and cheese and Korean cucumbers for dinner, which the children loved. They made a portion of the cucumbers that was extra spicy for me. It felt like a peace offering. After doing the dishes, Minjae left. It was earlier than I expected.
Channing set up her laptop in the kitchen for us to watch the next episode of the Chunhyang K-drama. The lovers spent nights together in secret before he snuck back into his house and reported to his father how his studies were progressing. Mongryong expertly avoided his father’s interrogation. We sat at the table.
I asked her to pause the show so we could talk. “You have a right to be mad. I’m so sorry,” she said. “We tried to get back, I swear. I’d never seen traffic like that, and then the flat tire. A nightmare.”
She said she hadn’t known they’d give me such a hassle. “I just drive them and pick them up, that’s it,” she said. “They never ever asked me for ID like they asked you.” She got up and filled the teakettle with water.
“It looked pretty routine. They had your name,” I said.
“Dahee, I’m really sorry.” Channing came back to the table and sat down. “I don’t want you to go. Not because of your help with the kids, but because I love having you here. Are you still heading out tomorrow?” she asked.
I told her Harabeoji wanted to stay longer and how I wanted to drive him back rather than have him take the train or bus. She agreed she didn’t think he should travel alone either. “You could come back another weekend to drive him, I mean if he was going to stay until next weekend, you know,” she suggested. I hadn’t thought of that possibility.
Leaving him here made me uneasy. “I’ll stay and drive him, it’s better than driving back and forth, but you have to promise you’ll do all the things now that the parents want. No more camp problems.”
“It all worked out, thanks to you,” she said.
“That’s not the real reason I’m upset.” I told her how Kent helped without my asking him.
Channing covered her head with her hands. “I didn’t know,” she muttered.
“I didn’t want to tell you.”
She walked to the counter, emptied packets of ginseng tea, droppedthem into two mugs, and then returned to the table. “No more problems, I promise, yaksok—” She held out her pinkie, and I hooked mine around it.
“Good, because that’s the only way I’m staying,” I said.
She threw me an exuberant smile. “It’s all going to be fine now.” She leaned in. “Today was a dream.”
I couldn’t handle how happy she sounded. To be as obsessed with Minjae as she clearly was opened her up to being hurt, didn’t it? I stood up and closed the curtains above the kitchen sink. I knew it was my chance right then and there to ask her about his fiancée, but she continued talking about her afternoon: How the clouds were piled high like skyscrapers, immovable, solid. Ethereal white towers in a bright blue jaybird sky she said they could fly to.
She said Minjae was concerned about her health. On the drive to Little Brookton, he kept asking if the temperature in the car was okay and if she wanted his jacket. She felt cocooned in the car, safe, and exhilarated at the same time. Nothing could harm them; nothing was real except the two of them hurtling through space. She wanted them to go on and on, never to return. Everything was going to be all right. That knowledge rushed over her. Nothing could harm her. It didn’t matter where they went, she wanted it to never end. She said he played music—the same kind she loved, this Korean girl group that no one else she knew listened to—and she leaned her head back, the car taking them away. He murmured to her about his dreams. What he hoped for. He talked and talked, and she talked and talked. She could tell him anything. He was open and encouraging, vulnerable. When she told him about the day her mother died, he listened. He said how terrible the loss. There were no words for that kind of loss. He said how lonely she must have been all these years. He said he felt loneliness, too. Since his father died, he felt adrift, and nothing could change that. He said there were times when he felt invisible, helpless. He said he had never been able to talk to anyone about it until now. Until her.
After they shopped at the Asian market and found an area that jutted out all the way to land’s end, they got out of the car and walked along the coastline. That’s when she got the call from the counselors about the swimsuits. She knew she had to go back, but she wished she could stay out there at that edge.
This was followed immediately by the car lurching to the side and Minjae forced to pulled over and they got out to find the flat front tire. The spare was missing from the trunk, and Minjae apologized. Of course that’s the moment her phone died. She said she felt terrible about leaving me and the kids in that situation. She and Minjae were too far out of town to walk. She considered it though, running to the town park.
And in the midst of being utterly powerless to do anything but wait, when they were standing by the car on the side of the road, they bumped into each other and kissed.
