Her voice isn’t as sharp as it was at the funeral. It’s quiet and tired, the same way she used to sound when Ethan was a baby. The lack of volume surprises him. He sees it as an opening.
“I’m asking you to just listen now, to really listen, okay?” He waits for her to turn around, but she keeps her back to him. “I’m sorry for what I did at the Cape. I had no business yelling in front of everyone like that. There were other ways I could have handled myself, but I was drunk and stupid—not that I’m using that as an excuse. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’d kept too many things bottled up inside and they came out badly, but it’s not like I don’t know that. I’ll be thinking about what I said and how I said it for the rest—”
He’s not even finished when he hears the metallic sound of the zipper making its way around the edge of the suitcase. When it’s closed, Gillian drags it off the bed and pulls the handle out.
“Were you not listening to any of that?”
“You have a strange way of making peace with people.”
He reminds himself not to shout, which won’t get him anywhere. Shouting is how she thinks all of this began. “Please, I’m asking you to believe me. What my mother did … I feel bad enough without—”
“That’s not what this is about.”
His mother, his father, Marina—that’s all they’ve been about for weeks. He doesn’t know what else there is to them anymore.
“I don’t understand what’s happening, then.”
She flips the suitcase around, turning the handle toward him as if she expects him to take it. When he doesn’t, she walks to her dresser and opens the top drawer, rummaging through layers of nightgowns and T-shirts.
“Who do these belong to?” she asks.
She throws something at him. A handkerchief? Another sock? It hits him in the chest and falls on the floor next to his feet. When he looks down, he sees a pair of underwear. Pale beige satin with white ribbon trim.
“Who do they belong to?”
He didn’t notice that Molly’s underwear was beige that day in the kitchen. He also didn’t notice that she left them on the floor when she ran out. Kyung remains seated, staring at the shiny fabric, a small island of color against the blue carpet.
“Who was it?”
He doesn’t know if it’s wise or even safe to say what he really thinks. The “who” isn’t the point. It’s the “what” she won’t forgive. His relationship with Gillian was never based on a romantic or even demonstrative form of love. Neither of them was built for that kind of outpouring. At its best, their marriage was practical and utilitarian—the sort of thing that people of a certain age entered into with a vague notion of improving their lives. Although Gillian asked very little of him from the start, fidelity was a basic assumption. Fidelity, security, honesty, decency—all the things he’s proved himself incapable of over time.
Kyung knows why he did it, why he married her despite believing that he probably shouldn’t marry anyone. On some level, he was grateful that a woman like Gillian would choose to be with him. Her goodness was redeeming; it made him want to be worthy of her. But whatever impulse he has to fight for them is checked by the knowledge that this person he loves—and he does love her, more than he ever imagined possible—would be better off without him, a thought he’s had so many times before. Kyung looks up at Gillian, at the way she’s standing with her arms crossed loosely over her chest. She seems resigned, as resigned as he is to let this be how it ends.
“I can’t keep asking you the same question, Kyung. Who was it?”
“You don’t know her,” he says. “She was just some girl.”
Gillian nods slowly, struggling to take it all in. “You can’t get out of your own way,” she says. “Do you even understand that about yourself? No one’s holding you back. No one’s trying to make you unhappy—not me or Ethan or even your parents. You can blame us as much as you want, but at a certain point, maybe you just have to accept the fact that it’s you. It’s all the things you can’t let go of.”
“But how can I—?”
“No, Kyung. Just stop. I know you had a hard life before we met. I understand that now, I really do. But your parents were responsible for that. Not me or Ethan. All we did was love you, so you owed it to us to be a better man. I can’t just stand here and watch you disappoint us anymore.”
She hasn’t raised her voice at him, not once, which is actually worse than being yelled at. It’s taken him five years to realize that Gillian only shouts when she’s invested in what happens afterwards. What happens to him from this point on, she clearly doesn’t care.
“Use your credit card,” she says. “For the hotel, or wherever you decide to go.”
“Which credit card?”
“It doesn’t matter. Your father paid them all off.”
He pauses. He knows he didn’t mishear her, but he still doesn’t understand. “What do you mean, ‘paid them all off’? How could he do that?”
“I asked him to. Begged him, actually.”