• • •
The house is dark when I get home.
“Dad?”
I walk into the kitchen from the mudroom after hanging up my coat and call out again. “Dad.”
The cold permeates my entire being. It’s got to warm up soon, I think, and flick on the lights in the kitchen before filling the kettle with water for some tea. As I watch the electric coil of the burner slowly begin to glow from black to red, I think about Stephanie and Will. Their eyes wide with worry. I brush away the memory and remind myself, I was just taking a walk, burning off some steam. Except for my trembling hand as I take the kettle off the stove, I am convinced.
Dad’s full cup of coffee sits cold on the counter next to his laptop. Every morning I pour him a cup and every morning he takes two sips before he forgets everything, staring into the screen. I pour the black liquid down the drain and search the counters for the pizza carton. I sigh. It’s soup again. He is probably asleep in the living room.
I walk into the dark room and listen closely for his breathing. At first I hear nothing, but after a moment of concentration, I hear him breathing softly from the couch. And with that sound, all the cold disappears. I stand there, just listening, letting all the sounds of the house and Dad’s breathing calm me.
I reach over and turn on the light. A pair of black-socked feet, crossed at the ankles and propped up on the armrest of the couch, peek out at me. The side lamp casts shadows, half illuminating the wall of photos above the woodstove. I glance up at the frozen memories.
The three of us on the beach in Los Angeles. Mama looking to the side as she lounges back in a chair, her hair windblown and messy. Dad holds me on his lap and cups the roundness of Mama’s shoulder as she leans away from him. That was the last photo we took together before Mama disappeared. . . .
Dad had immediately shifted into military mode, working with the police and a private detective. Not to mention all his army buddies coming and going. The house was transformed into a mission base. I hid, mostly under the kitchen table, playing chess against myself.
Dad and I waited for years in that house by the train tracks. Waited for her to come home or the police to find her. All those Sundays in the car, driving across the city. I knew every single neighborhood in Los Angeles. Until the day he read that article on Huntington’s, which was when he decided to leave and find her a different way. We moved so many times for all his leads on different labs and scientists, I stopped counting.
“Dad,” I say, and walk over to the couch.
The feet uncross and I hear him clear his throat.
“What time is it, Grace?” Dad says, and sits up, his hands running through his hair.
“Late.” I walk over to the woodstove next to the couch and start making a fire. We are low on wood. How can this be spring? “It’s freezing in here.”
“Hmmm,” he says, as though he can’t feel the cold. Or doesn’t care. “The meeting ran that late?”
“Yeah,” I answer faintly, and try to change the subject. I stop loading the stove and ask, “What happened to the pizza, Dad?”
He answers my question with a question. “What did Dr. Mendelson say?”
I scowl at him. “You forgot.”
He nods, but his eyes are fastened on a formal black-and-white photo of my parents in some photographer’s studio back in Korea. “What was the announcement?”
I refuse to answer. We both gaze up at the photo. My mother’s skin is so flawless it looks porcelain. Her hair is swept up into a loose bun, her thick bangs curled just above her eyes. I can feel Dad watching me, his eyes moving from her face to mine.
“You look a lot like her,” he says for the millionth time. Just like all the other times when I come and sit with him as he stares up at her pictures, recalling the memories that forever flood his mind.
“I miss her so much,” my father says.
I study the gentle smile on her face.
“Did I ever tell you about the time—”
“She was the only one who could speak enough English to help you while you tried to save the Marine who got stabbed in the bar where she was working.”
Dad smiles at me. “I guess I told you that one.”
“No, actually, I think Mama did. She said you didn’t look like an army doctor, even though you said you were. She thought you were trying to impress her after you followed her in your car as she was walking into town.”
“I was off duty that day. And I wanted to make sure she stayed safe.”
“Well, Mama said you were the worst-dressed American she had ever seen.”
Dad looks hurt. “I didn’t have a lot clothes in the foster system. In Korea was the first time I had some money to myself. I thought I was looking sharp.”
I smile. “Mama said that was why she fell in love with you. She knew you needed her.”
Dad’s sheepish grin makes him look exactly the way Mama described when they first met. He runs his hand over the top of his head like he is still feeling his buzz cut from his military days. “Your mom could make rags look like high fashion and then turn around and memorize whole chemistry textbooks for her nursing exams. When your mother wanted something, she was unstoppable. She was so strong. At least I had a few homes, but your mother in that orphanage . . . I don’t know how she survived.”
Their love story is one that I know front to back, back to
