In the bathroom, Kyung examines himself in the mirror. His eyes are bloodshot, and a pebbly pink rash is spreading across his unshaven skin. He doesn’t have any clean clothes to change into, not that it really matters. He’s leaving the Cape today; he’s sure of it. As soon as his parents see him, one or both of them will tell him to get out, but the likelihood of this doesn’t concern him. The worst that can happen is another argument, which they’ll want to avoid more than he does.
Kyung washes his face in the sink, feeling the pinch and pull of muscles stretched unnaturally in his sleep. Everything aches, but despite the condition of his body, his mind has never felt more liberated. All the weight he’s been carrying around for years—it’s as if he threw it into the bay last night, and now here he is, blinking at his newer, lighter self in the mirror. He peels the wet bandage from his cheek, revealing three long burrows of red. It’s obvious they weren’t caused by books falling off a shelf. He reaches for the medicine cabinet, tempted to open the door and search for another bandage, but he steels himself with a reminder: No falling back into old habits. No more avoiding what simply is. Kyung hears people coming downstairs, and his natural inclination is to creep away, to delay the confrontation that he knows is coming. Instead, he takes a deep breath and follows the voices into the living room. Connie is there, talking on his cell phone while Gillian looks on.
“I’m calling about a missing person,” Connie says. “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet, but there’s a missing vehicle too.”
“I slept in the study,” Kyung says. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
Gillian jerks her head at him. She has bags under her eyes, and her skin looks gray and bloodless, even in the light. “We’re not looking for you,” she says. The sharp spike of her voice tacks on the words “you idiot,” even though she didn’t say them out loud.
Connie moves toward the window, plugging his ear as he continues his conversation in the corner.
“What’s going on?” Kyung asks.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
He thought he did, but the more Gillian narrows her eyes at him, the more confused he feels. Dinner is the dividing line of his memory. Everything before and during, he remembers clearly, proudly even. Everything afterward is a blank.
“When?”
Her expression is unlike anything he’s ever seen before. She’s more than just annoyed. She’s searching, as if she asked a question and the answer is imprinted somewhere under his skin. Five years they’ve been together, and she’s staring at him like a stranger, like someone she doesn’t know or wishes she’d never met.
“Excuse me. Could I get by, please?” Vivi brushes past, carrying a large silver tray. She sets it on the end table and pours three cups of coffee, careful to avoid any eye contact with Kyung. Like Gillian, she has no makeup on, and she’s still wearing pajamas. Her hair, which was so perfectly coiffed last night, has deflated like a balloon. Everyone looks ugly this morning.
“Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”
Gillian and Vivi both turn to Connie, who now has his back to them. He keeps saying, “I see, I see,” and then occasionally, “I understand.”
“Who’s he talking to? Where’s everyone else?”
As soon as Kyung mentions the others, he realizes who’s present and who’s not. And despite the lightness of his mood only minutes earlier, something wraps him tight in its grip, stopping the blood to his heart.
“Where’s Ethan? What happened to Ethan?”
“Lower your voice,” Gillian hisses. “He’s right outside.”
Kyung runs to the window, searching for proof that Ethan is where she says. He spots him near the steps to the beach, crouched on all fours while examining something in the sand. Kyung has no regrets about last night except for one. He wishes he hadn’t snapped at Ethan about the lobster; he wishes he’d had the sense to send him to his room. He’s relieved to see him no worse for the wear, dressed in swim trunks and chatting happily about the animal or insect he’s just discovered. Jin is standing beside him, his attention clearly divided between his grandson and the house, which he keeps looking up at. When he notices Kyung in the window, the distance between them fails to soften the expression on Jin’s face. It’s the same look that Gillian gave him, the one that says everything is different now, that there’s no going back to what was before.
Connie motions for a pen, which Vivi springs from her seat to give him. He writes something on his hand and thanks the person on the other end.
“Come on,” he says to Kyung. “We have to go.”
Gillian and Vivi crowd around him for an explanation, but Connie waves them away. “Later,” he says, grabbing his keys and heading toward the door. “I’ll know more later.”
Kyung follows him outside, not certain where they’re about to go, or why Connie is calling Jin over. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Mae and Marina were in an accident.”
“When? Where?”
“This morning. Not far from here, I think.”
Jin sends Ethan into the house and joins them in the driveway.
“The police found them,” Connie says. “They were in an accident off Route 28. You know where that is?”
Jin is sweaty from standing in the sun for too long. When he nods, his glasses almost fall off his nose. “Are they hurt?”