Jung Yun - Shelter

What he promises to do and what he thinks he’ll do are two different things. Kyung is convinced that when he sees Jin, he’ll go straight for the old man’s throat, pressing his thumbs into the hollow until someone pries him off. Connie and Tim might respect him more for the effort, although the McFaddens are the kind of men who always seem ready to fight, which ensures that they never have to. Kyung doesn’t feel comfortable around them, making their presence today even odder. He reminds himself that Gillian couldn’t have known any of this was going to happen when she called. It’s not her fault that he’s sitting in the back of Connie’s Suburban, following Lentz’s squad car up the hill toward Marlboro Heights.

“I keep forgetting,” Tim says. “What’s your dad teach again?”

“Engineering. Mechanical engineering.”

“College professor ought to know better than to hit a woman, don’t you think?”

Tim turns around in the passenger seat, his expression a cross between menacing and sly. He’s a hulk of a man, even taller and thicker than Connie. The question was probably his dumb idea of a trick. Kyung is a college professor too. Tim wants to hear him say the right thing.

“Everyone,” he answers.

“Everyone what?”

“I think everyone should know better.”

The main road into Marlboro Heights is a wide, neatly landscaped street. The houses along this stretch are the cheapest in the neighborhood because of their proximity to traffic. Still, Tim whistles at the sprawling Victorians with their chemical-green lawns and tall, leafy shade trees. It occurs to Kyung that his in-laws have never visited his parents’ house before. They were invited once, shortly after he and Gillian eloped, but they declined the invitation, which was never extended again. Under different circumstances, he would have been proud to bring them here. Mae and Jin live near the top of the hill in a stunning Queen Anne, built in the 1860s and restored to ornate, expensive perfection.

When they pull into the horseshoe driveway, Tim leans out his open window, taking it all in. “This doesn’t look like a college professor’s house.”

“My father still earns money from his patents.”

“His what?”

“He invents things.”

“Never mind all that.” Connie turns around in his seat. “Remember what you promised. You’re going to keep your head in there, right?”

Kyung feels like a bullet sitting in a chamber. Compressed and powerful, ready to inflict damage. Sending his father to jail isn’t the same thing as killing him, but it’s close. Close enough.

“I’ll be fine.”

Lentz is waiting for them on the doorstep. As they walk up the flagstone path, Kyung notices that all the drapes have been pulled shut. Lentz picks up the brass knocker and raps the handle against the door. When no one answers, Connie pounds on it with his fist.

“I guess he took off,” Lentz says. “No cars in the driveway.”

Kyung lifts a flowerpot filled with marigolds and removes a spare key from the draining dish. His father is smart, smart enough to park the Lincoln a few blocks away to give the appearance that no one is home. That would explain the drapes. He tries to offer the key to Lentz, who steps away as if it’s a grenade.

“We can’t use that. We’ll have to come back later.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Connie says. “You ever let yourself in with that key before?”

“A couple of times. Why?”

“And your parents didn’t mind, did they? Didn’t complain?”

“No. They told me where to find it.”

Connie turns to Lentz. “It’s not illegal entry if he had prior consent. I say we go in.”

“Come on, Connie. That’s a stretch. You know how much trouble we’d get into — how much trouble I’d get into if I had to explain this to someone?”

Their conversation is beginning to frustrate him. Kyung doesn’t care about illegal entry or prior consent. All he knows is that his father is hiding somewhere inside, and he wants to see Jin’s face when he realizes the police have come for him, that his own son brought them here for him. This is reason enough to go in. He turns the knob clockwise, surprised to find no resistance. Before Lentz can tell him not to, he pushes the door open, and the conversation behind him stops midsentence. In the entryway, the antique console that usually holds flowers and mail has been tipped over onto its side. One of its legs is broken, lying a few feet away like a junky dowel. There’s paper everywhere, loose sheets that look like bills, and pages from books that have been torn out of their bindings.

“Je-sus,” Tim says under his breath.

“Mr. Cho?” Connie shouts. “Police.”

The three of them push past Kyung, their need for a reason to enter apparently satisfied by the damage now in plain sight. He follows them in, careful to walk around the broken houseplants and figurines in the entryway, if only to examine how methodically his father destroyed all of the things his mother loved. Above the staircase is a long stretch of wall where the family photographs used to hang. Most of the frames have been thrown to the floor and stepped on. There’s glass everywhere; the photos have been torn into pieces like old receipts. Kyung stares at the ruined faces, the fragments of eyes and ears and lips pursed tight. The photos were originals, the only evidence left to document his childhood or birth. Gillian occasionally nagged him to get reprints, but he always assumed they’d be his to inherit one day. He can’t imagine a more intentional insult from his father than the black-and-white scraps scattered across the stairs, tossed like makeshift confetti.

When he joins the others in the living room, the air smells thick with stale smoke. Connie is standing next to the bookcases, studying the damage as if searching for clues about the kind of family his daughter married into. A half-dozen empty liquor bottles are strewn around the room, and the paintings above the fireplace — paintings that Jin took such pride in collecting — are lying in the corner. The canvases have been kicked in, their peaceful seascapes damaged beyond repair.

“Classy,” Tim says, picking up a crystal decanter filled with tobacco-colored liquid and floating stubs of cigars. “Your dad likes to drink, I’m guessing.”

“No, not anymore. Not like he used to. The bar is just for guests.”

“Looks to me like he went on a bender.” He puts the decanter down and motions toward an empty bottle of cognac on the end table.

Tim’s explanation should make sense, but it doesn’t. Nothing in this room makes sense. The volume of chaos is too much for one person, especially a man pushing sixty.

“Does it always get this crazy?” Lentz asks.

“Never,” Kyung says, and this is the part that’s beginning to worry him. He knows his father is capable of hitting a woman. And taking a bat or a broom to his mother’s antiques, he can imagine this too. But what bothers Kyung is that his father isn’t the type of person to destroy his own things. The painting of Nauset Beach on Cape Cod — the one torn out of its frame and lying on the floor — it was one of Jin’s most prized possessions. He shakes his head, unable to sort through the mismatch between what he knows and what he sees.

“I don’t think my father could have done all this,” he says quietly. “I think, maybe — they were robbed.”

Connie is the first to pick up on the panic in Kyung’s voice, the first to understand they might not be alone. He lifts the back of his shirt and removes a gun from his waistband while Tim quickly does the same. For a moment, Lentz seems as startled as Kyung is to realize they’ve been wearing holsters under their clothes, but he follows their lead and draws his weapon. Connie puts a finger to his mouth and points three times — at the staircase, the hallway, and the front door. Suddenly, Kyung feels someone grabbing his shirt and pushing him toward the entryway against his will. With one quick shove, he lands against the porch rail, flung out into the daylight like a drunk at a bar. He turns to see Tim running up the stairs as the front door clicks shut.