This is the problem with being in the dark. All he does is guess. Kyung keeps seeing the Perrys hitting his mother, violating her over and over again like a film reel set to loop. The truth might be worse than his imagination, but knowing what happened has to be better than this.
“I’d appreciate it…,” he says. “I’d appreciate it if you could just tell me what you heard, from my parents or Lentz or whoever. And don’t leave out any details for my sake. Tell me like you’d tell someone you work with.”
“It’s on the news. Have you noticed?”
“We just drove by the house. Reporters everywhere.”
“Any of them try calling you yet?”
Kyung shakes his head. “We’re unlisted.”
“It’s a big deal, a home invasion in this area. Thirty-three years I’ve been on the force, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“But what happened, exactly?” Gillian asks. “How did those men even get in the house?”
Tim streaks past the living room window with Ethan on his shoulders. They’re both carrying oversized wands that release giant bubbles into the air. Kyung jumps out of his seat and stands in front of the window, wondering if Tim notices the tree branches, how their sharp tips hang just inches above Ethan’s face. Ethan, however, doesn’t seem to mind. His head is tipped back, and he’s laughing at the crowd of neighborhood kids now gathered on the lawn. They’re all jumping up and down, begging for a turn on Tim’s shoulders, which makes Ethan laugh even harder. You can’t catch us, he shouts. You can’t catch us. Watching them, Kyung gets the sense that this scene has played out dozens, maybe even hundreds of times in the past. Connie carrying Tim as a boy, and now Tim carrying Ethan. It disturbs him, the fact that he has no memory of being the father or the son in such a happy moment.
“He’s just having fun,” Gillian says. “Why don’t you come back and listen now?”
Kyung returns to his seat, grateful to reach out and feel her fingers lace with his.
“Thursday,” Connie sighs. “It started on Thursday night. Your mom went for a walk a little after eight.”
“But she never goes out after dark.”
Connie shrugs. “Civil dusk.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know, civil dusk. Right before the sun sets and there’s still a little light out … Listen, are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Please,” Kyung says. He hasn’t said this word to his father-in-law in years, not since he asked for Gillian’s hand in marriage and was refused. “Please,” he repeats.
Connie takes a knuckle to each eye and rubs them in slow circles. “This is a bad idea,” he says. “I don’t know much, but I know that, at least.”
*
Mae went out for a walk at eight. The doctor told her to, for her blood pressure. It was hot that day, so she waited until the sun had almost set. Then she walked down Crescent Hill, looped around the main road, and took Starling back to the house—a thirty-, thirty-five-minute trip at most. The men must have been following her—for how long, she didn’t know—but as she unlocked the front door, one of the men put a gun in her back and shoved her inside. Her purse was on the table in the entryway, so she tried to give them the cash from her wallet, about fifty or sixty dollars. The younger one, Dell, took the money, but he laughed when he put it in his pocket, as if it was hardly enough. That was how they referred to each other from the start—Nat and Dell—which frightened her. They didn’t seem to care that she’d seen their faces or knew their names.