“Is there a reason you’re pushing so hard for him?” Channing said. She circled Ames now.
“Did he ask you to help him with Channing?” I joined my cousin in facing Ames.
“I give up,” Ames said, and threw up her hands for emphasis. She began to walk away when Paul asked, “Ames, why are you leaving without answering Dahee’s question?”
Channing called after her, “You’re not my friend, Ames. I remember you in school: the mean anonymous notes you left in my desk, the rumors you spread. You were worse than the girls who used to bully us for being Korean. After my mom was gone, you abandoned me.”
Ames stomped back. “You’re kidding, right? Here I was trying to do you a favor, and you bring up this shit from when we were kids? Everyone knew your dad stole that money. Maybe he lost it, because I know you live in squalor in Boston now, but maybe he just invested all that money in something that failed. I don’t know, but somehow the money disappeared on the day your mom died. And no one will talk to me about it. You’re right, my parents said I couldn’t play with you. Because your dad was a thief. And my grandparents, as nice as they were to your grandfather, never believed that money was stolen by anyone other than your father. He’s guilty, and that’s why he’s drinking himself to death. But fine! Don’t listen to me about Kent. I just know him a helluva lot better than you do. I’m out of here.” She stalked off again and this time she kept going.
“No one can talk to her when she’s like this,” Paul said as he opened the car door for Channing. “I’ll drive you both back to the house.”
“What does Kent want from me? Isn’t it enough he’s ruined my life, put me in jail, sent Minjae away?” Channing said as she climbed into the back seat of his car.
“We don’t know he did that to Minjae,” Paul said.
“He would have been in touch otherwise,” Channing said. She slammed her door shut, hard. “What’s Kent capable of?”
“Then that’s a reason you should talk to him,” Paul said. He pulled the car onto the street. I had returned to the passenger seat. “I mean if youwant to, if you want me to be there or be a witness. Ames isn’t wrong about Kent’s influence here.” Paul turned off the main street.
“Look, if you’re on Ames’s side, stop the car, I can walk,” Channing said.
I was ready to hop out, too.
“I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to understand,” Paul said.
“Understand I didn’t do anything wrong, I can prove it,” Channing said.
“In towns like this, especially these days, you don’t have to be guilty to get thrown in jail,” Paul said.
“But why? I don’t get it. He wanted to date me, he asked Harabeoji to marry me, but now he’s accusing me of stealing from him, so why does he still want me?” she wailed.
We were silent for a while. I noticed that Paul was driving slower than the thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, as if deep in thought. Suddenly, a maroon car shot through a red light in the intersection while the light was green for us. Paul braked hard. We all jerked forward and then back again. If he’d gone faster, that car would have smashed right into me.
When we were calm again and on the other side of that cross street, Paul said, “That big article Ames was working on got shut down. The short version was printed—that’s the article Mrs. Sato-Shaw showed us. The whole paper is going under. My guess is Ames was hoping that Kent would save it somehow, through the town, who knows. He probably asked her to talk to you.”
“Ames shouldn’t agree to things like that. I don’t trust her.” Channing rolled her window down and hung her arm out. “Kent is unstoppable. Really, where’s the logic? Doesn’t anyone see that if I’d done the things he accused me of he wouldn’t want me?”
“People think he’s a saint. They all know what you’ve gone through with the loss of your mother. And with your father being in rehab, they think they’d be grateful if they were in your shoes,” he said.
“Grateful to be with someone who forces himself on you?” she spit.
I agreed that Kent and the people in town made no sense, but I wasthinking about Paul’s words. Why would Ames help Kent? Also, Ames had repeated the Asian market owner’s claim that Channing’s father had stolen money. “How did people send money in 2005? Were there apps like Zelle and Venmo?”
“Nope,” Paul answered. “Wiring was costly, so people mostly used checks and cash.”
“So, the money my uncle is accused of stealing… can’t that be traced through checks? If people thought he’d stolen money, couldn’t it be easily tracked?”
“It was cash, in a bag,” Channing said.
I looked over my shoulder at her. She was staring out at the houses and trees we were driving past. “He told me Korean families gave him cash and he was going to deposit it into the bank for the development project, but someone stole it the day my mother died. From our house. No one believed him, not any of the Koreans in town who we thought were our friends.”
I was afraid to look at Paul. Channing rolled up her window. I felt her eyes on the back of my seat. As usual, she sensed my question and addressed it. “Younever changed, Paul,” she added, patting his headrest.
He reached over his shoulder and held out his hand, which she grasped and then released. “So true. You and Ames pretty much ignored me all through school,” he said, and looked back with a smile. His gesture seemed like something Harabeoji would do.
“You were always the one making everyone laugh,” she said.
“At silly jokes?” he said.
