Shelter (21 page)

“She has an amazing eye for period pieces. Nothing in this room seems out of place.”

Kyung feels like a goldfish in a pot, slowly being boiled to death as the water temperature rises. His palms are sweaty; the collar of his shirt is too tight. Gertie keeps walking past the vague outlines on the walls where things used to hang. She notices only the ornate built-in bookshelves, not the gaps left behind by the books that were destroyed. She admires the high-back sofas upholstered in pale beige silk, but has no idea about the stains and tears on the undersides of their cushions.

“Forced-air heat?” she asks, studying the antlerlike shadow of a chandelier.

He'd forgotten about the list in his pocket that his father wrote out for him. He unfolds the sheet of paper and scans Jin's shaky penmanship. “Yes. Forced air,” he says, and because the information is right there in front of him, he adds: “Three zones. And central air too.”

“My goodness.”

Gertie has wandered into the dining room, where she's opened the built-in china cabinet in the corner. He doesn't know whether her remark was about the heating system, or the number of place settings behind the door—enough to feed twenty-four. Each plate and bowl, saucer and cup is rimmed in gold. Real gold, Kyung recalls Mae once saying. Not the cheap plated kind.

“So if your parents are selling, I assume you're not planning to rent out your house anymore?”

“No, they'll be staying with us for a while until they find something else.”

She looks at him over her shoulder, radiating her best attempt at warmth. “I hope you'll pass on my name if they need a realtor.”

Kyung isn't sure if he's impressed by her frankness, or repulsed by it. “Do you sell a lot of houses in this price range?”

“What was that?” Gertie leans toward him.

It's an odd reaction, he thinks. They're standing less than three feet away from each other. He didn't whisper the question; she could hear him just fine.

“How many houses have you sold in this price range?”

Gertie smiles and shakes her finger, pretending to admonish him. “I haven't even told you how I'd price this house yet,” she says in a grating singsong.

“I know, but—”

“I've been the top seller in the area for the past eight years, and I've already cleared three million in sales since January.”

“Yes, but that's not really what I'm asking.” He doesn't understand why she's avoiding his question, but it's obvious that she is. “If we can agree that this place is worth at least a million—”

Gertie looks down at her hands as if she's counting on them. “Two.”

“Two what? This house is worth two?”

“No, I've sold
two
houses in this price range,” she says briskly. “But you have to understand, property in the upper Heights rarely comes up for sale, especially in this economy. You won't find anyone in the area who sells more than I do.”

Something in her voice crosses the line between eager and desperate, a lapse she seems to regret. She's flustered all of a sudden, fiddling with the settings on the camera hanging from her neck. Until now, Kyung didn't understand what Gertie, with her barrage of colorful billboards and bus ads, probably knew the second she pulled into the driveway—this house is out of her league. She's like the Costco of realtors. She makes her money by selling in volume.

“I'm still not sure my parents are actually going to sell. I feel like this is something they could change their minds about at any time.”

She lowers her camera, drawing her lips into a thin smile. “Of course. It's a very big decision. But we might as well finish looking around since I'm here. Can I see the upstairs now?”

Kyung leads her through the kitchen and up the old servants' staircase, ducking to avoid the low, angled ceiling as they wind their way to the second floor. He opens the doors for Gertie in the order they pass them—study, guest room, guest room, bathroom—unintentionally saving the master bedroom for the end of their tour. Mae cleaned this room herself, rejecting his repeated offers to help. Although he didn't understand her insistence, he was almost grateful for it. He'd never seen where his parents slept before the attack, and he had no desire to see it afterward. He pushes the door open and stands by to let Gertie pass. The bedroom is large and square, sparsely decorated compared to the rest of the house. The air is musty, but light streams in through the lace-covered windows, brightening the pale green walls, which makes the room seem less forbidding than he imagined it. He steps inside, relieved to find everything neat and clean, absent of any reminders of what happened here.

“This is a big master bedroom,” Gertie says. “It's not common for a house this age.”

“I think it used to be two rooms once.”

“But your parents sleep in twin beds. If they do decide to sell, you might want to consider moving these out and getting a cheap king-size one instead.”

“Why?”

“It's just a generational thing. Younger buyers have to imagine themselves actually living here. They're not going to be able to with these.”

The matching twin beds are made of dark black wood, each with a four-poster frame. Gertie runs her hand down the length of a post, leading Kyung's eyes to a cluster of scratches near the mattress before she moves on to the adjoining bathroom.

“Any idea when the plumbing was last updated?” Her voice echoes off the cavernous tile walls.

The information is right there on his sheet of paper, but Kyung can't read it out loud. He's petrified, shaking as if the temperature has just plummeted. He sees the room as it was that day, with Marina tied to one bed and Mae on the other. He sees their hands gripping the posts, their fingernails turning white and digging into the wood, clawing at it like animals when Nat Perry climbs on top of them. He flinches at the thought of each slap and punch, at the look on Mae's face as Perry presses his thumbs into her throat. His piece of paper drops to the floor, but he leaves his empty hand extended.

“Plumbing updates?” Gertie asks, popping her head out the bathroom door.

Kyung sits down on the rug and covers his eyes.

“What's wrong? Did you hurt yourself?”

He shakes his head.

“Are you sick?” She kneels down beside him. “Do you need a doctor?”

When he doesn't respond, Gertie opens her purse and rummages through the compartments. “I'm calling 911.”

“No, don't.”

“Then tell me what's going on.”

He needs to pull himself together. He has to. But when his eyes are open, blurry with tears, he sees the room. And when his eyes are closed, he sees what happened here. All he wants to do is cut them out.

“Please say something. Tell me what's happening.”

“Jesus,” he shouts. “Don't you ever read the papers?”

“What?”

“My parents were attacked here. My mother was—raped here.”

Gertie blinks as she looks around the room. Then she folds her arms over her chest as if she feels the same sudden cold that he does. “Didn't someone die in this house?”

He nods.

“I heard about a home invasion in this area. I had no idea—”

“It was here.” He punches the bed frame. “Right here.”

He punches it again, harder this time, hearing the strong, sturdy sound of bone against wood. The pain travels up his arm, spreading deep into his shoulder, and he welcomes it, the complete inability to feel anything else. Gertie tries to pull him back, but not before he lands three more blows that crack the thick black veneer.

“Let's go,” Gertie pleads. “Let's go now.”

She helps him up and leads him to the kitchen, where he collapses in a chair, too stunned to speak or move. Kyung has never hit anything before—not an object, not a person—and he's horrified for acting this way, for giving in to the impulse and liking the result. He wishes that Gertie would leave now, but it's obvious she doesn't intend to just yet. Although his back is to her, he can tell what she's doing. Running the faucet, opening the cabinets, cracking ice from a tray into the sink.

She returns with a plastic bag wrapped in a towel. “Here. This might help.”

Two of Kyung's knuckles are dark red. The one in the middle has already started to swell, rising high above the skin like a knot in a tree. The ice pack stings when she lays it over his hand, but he leaves it there, the pulsing blood fighting the numbing cold.

“Thank you,” he says hoarsely.

He looks up at her, and she does her best to smile, but her face is the color of chalk.

“I'm so sorry,” he says, and suddenly he's crying again.

“Why? What do you have to be sorry about?”

“For scaring you.”

He's never cared much for Gertie, but he realizes he should be grateful for her presence now. If not for her, he'd still be sitting on the floor, punching the bed frame until his bones turned to dust.

“Oh, you can't scare me,” she says unconvincingly. “I was just worried. Now, why don't we have some tea? That always helps me relax.”

Gertie puts a kettle of water on the stove. She comes back with two cups and saucers and a sampler basket still wrapped in cellophane and Christmas-colored ribbon. She slices through the packaging with her nails and rifles through the contents.

“Calming Chamomile,” she reads aloud. “Revitalizing Ginger…” She lists off the names on every envelope, as if she doesn't know what else to say. “Maybe we need something stronger. How about Earl Grey?”

He doesn't like tea, but he nods anyway, wiping his face on his sleeve.

“So that day when I met you and Gillian at your house, when your mother was walking around without any clothes on—that was the day, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” She scratches at a small chip on the edge of her saucer. “I was so booked up with appointments that week. I heard about what happened on the radio, but I didn't really pay attention, I guess.”

“Why would you? Who wants to think about something like that?”

“I know, but a woman walking around naked in broad daylight … I should have made the connection.”

“It's better you didn't.”

The teakettle sings its alarm, and Gertie gets up to retrieve it. When she returns to the table, she opens two envelopes and dunks the bags with her fingertips until the water turns almost black. As he reaches for his cup, she waves him off.

“Not yet.” She digs through her purse and removes a silver flask, shaking it gently to confirm that there's something left inside.

Gertie didn't strike him as the type of person who carried alcohol in her bag, but upon closer inspection, it starts to make sense. No one who looks so pulled together ever really is. She empties the flask into their tea, turning it upside down to shake out the last few drops.

“Times like these…,” she says, then looks away, embarrassed. “I actually don't know what I was going to say there.”

The bourbon and Earl Grey don't mix well together, but he drinks the acrid concoction anyway. Gertie adds two sugar cubes to her cup, dissolving them slowly with her spoon.

“So … how are they now?” she asks. “Your parents?”

Something about his expression must answer the question for him because she doesn't bother to wait for a response.

“It was good that your mother came to you that day. That must give you some relief, at least.”

“Why would it?”

“Well, she trusts you. She came to you for help.”

He doubts that Mae trusts anyone. Not him, not his father, not even the people from her church. It was proximity that led her stumbling into his backyard that day, nothing more.

“I'll give you the listing,” he says. “How soon can you get it on the market?”

Gertie hesitates. “I don't think I can sell this house, Kyung. I'm sorry.… I really wish I could, but no one's going to be able to sell it, not for a while.”

“Because of what happened here?”

She nods. “Maybe if you waited a year. People might start to forget, and the market could be in recovery by then,” she adds optimistically. “For now, though, there's no way. Someone just died here. Your mother was … assaulted here. Even if you slashed the price, I can't see buyers getting past that kind of history. Not yet, at least. It'd be easier to get rid of this place by burning it down.”

Kyung would like nothing more than to take a match to the drapes and watch the flames engulf them, erecting violent walls of amber where real ones once stood. Everything in the house is so old; every piece of its ancient frame is wood. It wouldn't take long for a fire to reduce it all to an expensive pile of ashes.

“So my father and I are the same, I guess.”

“I don't follow.”

“We both own houses that you can't sell.”

At first, Gertie appears hurt by his comment, ready to object. But she takes a long sip of tea instead.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to criticize. I understand that my family's situation is—complicated.”

“Well, at least you have each other, right? You're all in this together.”

“Yes,” he says, having resolved not to cry in front of Gertie again. “We all have each other.”

 

SIX

Kyung unlocks the door to his office and turns on the lights, bracing himself for the noise and flicker of the fluorescent tubes hanging overhead. One by one, they buzz to life, rendering the walls an unpleasant, tobacco-stained shade of yellow. He assumed things would look different when he returned to work, but his books and papers are exactly where he left them, scattered in their usual disarray across the length of his desk. The only thing that's changed in his absence is the smell—a musty shut-in odor that reminds him of a warm attic. Kyung opens his window, which overlooks a tree-lined quad of office buildings. The campus below is barely awake. A handful of maintenance men and early-bird secretaries travel the sidewalks, their pace leisurely, not yet hurried by the start of the day.