"Don't be nervous. They'll be shocked at first, but I didn't want to tell them beforehand and get mom worked up on the flight home. It's better for her to be calm at all times." Jyeon is pacing the Livingroom of the house that used to be my home as I sit on the long beige couch. The entire place seems to have been redone and updated in the last two years and looks even more like a cold, uninviting show home. It's familiar, yet not, and surreal to be sitting here again.
I'm silently pensive and watch him trying to stay chill, even though he's very uptight. He's more wound up about this than I am, which I'm not sure about why. In contrast, I'm emotionally blank from being back here and trying to take in all manner of feelings about it in a detached kind of way. Greta is home sulking because I told her I wanted to do this alone.
"After today, after them finding out… we can release a statement to the press about your return. I have the legal and PR departments working on it. So be prepared for a media circus for a few days. You going missing was big news, so this will be the same. We have your hospital examination booked for your CT scan and assessment for this weekend. So be ready for that too." He's being more verbal than the Jyeon I remember these past days, and I'm not sure if it's because he hasn't lied to me, that this is the old Jyeon coming back because he genuinely has feelings for me, or he's over trying, so I trust him.
Organising everything, taking control of the details of my life the way I used to do for him. This whole thing feels like a reversal of the old us, and I don't understand how we got here.
I think I'm still numb and in the sense of limbo. The past few days have been a whirlwind of conflicting facts and thoughts. So much so that Greta and I don't know what to believe anymore. About Jyeon and my accident, about any of this. I'm more confused than I was two years ago, and after our interaction yesterday, seeing Claire, I still don't know what to think. I still cannot shake this feeling that Jyeon is pulling the wool over my eyes and bare face manipulating me. It's too coincidental that my dying made him realise I was his everything when he had already thrown me away for another woman. He had a lifetime with me to figure those feelings out and never did.
I've kept my distance and my cool around him, trying to gauge whether or not this is all some elaborate scheme that makes no sense to me. My heart can't take another beating, and I won't let him close. I won't let Jyeon Park be the reason my life crumbles a second time. There are still so many unanswered questions too.
The fact he doesn't live here anymore, and my mind keeps going back to that night when he said he was going to stay with her, which has me wondering if he ever did. Does he live with her now? Does he have his own place? Why? After I was gone, why did he leave this house and the people who needed his support? He endured years living here with me, and sleeping in the study, to up and go when I was dead. It makes no sense.
"You said she's been sick. Your mother. What exactly is wrong with her?" I pick at the tassel of the cushion on my lap, anxious at how uptight he seems. I am anxious about being in this house again, worried at my train of thoughts, and looking for distracting topics.
I haven't had a tour yet as he wanted me to greet Mother and Yoonah, who are due soon. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared of seeing them, of experiencing the same guilt and upset of the last two years in more intensity.
"After you died….. went missing, she had an emotional breakdown. She didn't cope with your loss at all. She loves you like her own daughter, and she had, I guess, major reflection on aspects of how she raised you. Guilt, regret. That led to her complete emotional collapse after we told her we found a body."
Loved me like her own daughter? Of course, she did. Loved me so much she slapped me across the face and made me feel worthless about his affair. I doubt that woman ever saw more than an object in me. The reflection was probably the realisation her minion was no longer here to be controlled.
"So, what kind of treatment has she been having?" I shake my thoughts aside. Pushing my attention to his words and not my inner mind.
"Therapy, relaxation vacations, and spa treatments to help her focus on mental wellbeing. Anything she wants, to make it easier for her to come back to being her old self. She's not like she used to be. She can't go anywhere alone anymore."
"So, your brother babysits her?" I baulk at that, unable to imagine baby Yoonie having the ability to care and protect someone else. So self-involved. He was always so hopeless.
"It's more like a joint need to get better. Yoonha turned to booze and went through a dark phase after you were gone. It was like he mentally went off the charts and became self-destructive. He wouldn't talk to anyone, let alone me. They helped each other, and he went to rehab for her. He's doing better than she is, but he likes to accompany her when she needs it."
Guilt rips up inside of me, knowing I left Yoonah to suffer to that extent and not predicting the downward spiral, although now I see it should have been obvious. Alcohol was always his crutch. Like his father. What did I think would happen to him? I could have undone all of that by returning, but what's done is done. I can't rewind my decision now.
I exhale heavily and grip the cushion, moving it off my lap and pushing my elbows to my knees instead to support my chin. Deflated and tetchy.
"Don't tell them I don't remember them. I'll manage to act through it… just say I got my memories back, and that's why I came home. It sounds like they've suffered enough." I add in a hasty response. I don't want to add another layer of pain to their hearts that I don't know them anymore. I've done enough damage. This is the least I can do, even if he doesn't understand it. Even if I'm still unsure whether or not mother was a part of getting rid of me.
Jyeon regards me for a minute, seemingly thinking about it, and then nods. He doesn't question my request at all. Moving from pacing a hole in the floor, to coming to sit on the armchair to my right that sits at an angle to where I am.
"I want you to move back here. Before the statement is released. It's a better place to be protected and shielded from the chaos that will come, and there's going to be questions about your return. It'll look better if you've returned to your family home." Jyeon slides both hands through his hair, eyes on the floor between his knees as he scratches his head, and I can sense his apprehension.
"No." I don't hesitate. Blunt and cold. No matter what the public has to say about it, I don't care.
"Sohla, it's not like I still stay here to make this weird. I won't try to share a room with you or anything like that. I don't live here…. things between mom and me are not good." Jyeon flicks a glance my way and meets my severe deathly expression, and my eyes are locked on his. I will not back down on this. I don't even flinch at him saying he has problems with his mother. I don't care why.
"No."
"It's safer here. I can do more for you if you're home." Jyeon's stubborn tone moves in under that husky voice that used to melt me to my core. He's always had a pleasant voice, but I'm not a fan right now.
"You just want to put me somewhere you can control and keep tabs on me with extra helpers. Did you forget that someone in this house tampered with your car? That I don't remember these people or this place…. that I don't feel comfortable here. That I don't want to live here."
He sighs heavily and turns his head my way.
"I'm looking into it. I honestly don't believe anyone here would do anything like that. It makes no sense, unless they wanted to hurt me….and then, who? Does that make sense to you? It might have been a fault. A complete fluke. The car had some sort of shut down, or something failing could have caused locked steering and no brakes. You are safer here than in the apartment. No one is trying to hurt you. Trust me on that."
Jyeon doesn't want to admit to or believe my accident was intentional. It raises red flags for me that he seems to keep trying to find excuses since telling him. It's like gaslighting me into thinking I truly did drive it off myself.
I flop back against the couch cushions with an exaggerated sigh at his relentlessness and stare at the ceiling. Head still throbbing from what feels like a constant stress headache lately.
"Greta won't move in here anyway, so it's a moot point. I don't come without her or anywhere without her. Stop asking me. It's a no, no, no. She thinks your entire family should be avoided at all costs, and I'm inclined to agree." I wave away the idea as if it's stupid. The thought of living here again turns my blood to ice and makes me feel sick to my stomach. I am trapped in this airless space with many memories I do not want to relive.
"It's your family too. One day you'll remember that fact and realise no one is against you." His tone turns serious, and it silences me because it's true. Even if it stirs up so many conflicting emotions. These people were my everything at one point. My entire reason for breathing, but I want to forget that fact.
"I just want to satisfy your criteria for allowing the divorce and be on my merry way back to my home, my island, and my peaceful life. I don't want or need any of this, and I'm only here because you forced me." I grind it out through clenched teeth, remaining in my position, so I don't have to look at him.
"I was perfectly fine where I was and didn't have to jump through hoops to hold onto the life I created for myself. All of this is only for my freedom."
I'm amused that in all the years we were married, this past week, he's spent more time in my company and paying attention to me than he ever did back then. It's ironic. I feel like I can't shake him loose at all since he brought me here. Jyeon of the past was forever walking away, shutting me out and looking for ways to avoid me. Maybe it's partly why I feel so up and down emotionally and can't sleep at night. Jyeon, of now, is like my shadow and trying everything to keep me by his side.
"What if I never agree? What if even after your memories come back, I won't let you go? Refuse to sign the divorce papers."
I flick up and stare at him, anger simmering inside and catching the way he's focused on me. Tilting his head, his hands clasped together, and his arms are resting on his thighs. Stiff and straight and completely serious in what he's stating. Imposing with his posture. I know he means every word, and it rattles the inner volcano that he has this kind of audacity.
"What was it about her that made you cheat on me?" I throw back the only weapon I have in my arsenal to combat how he's being. Cold and vicious, with a heart that still carries that wound on the worst level. In my arrogant, icy tone and daggered glare, a glimmer of Sohla Park who used to grace this house. He wants to talk about staying married, then let's talk about that.
It works, much to my inner satisfaction. He looks away, brows knitting and jawline clenching as though I just stabbed him in the heart with something serrated.
"Sohla… Don't." It's a pleading and soft request.
"I have a right to know. I'm sure I'll remember one day how you ripped out your wife's heart and tossed it aside. What was it about her that made you go to her? Was it because she was my complete opposite? Because she was pretty? Warm? Was anyone but me? Or was it purely to hurt me?" It aches my throat to force these words out, and my voice waivers, hurting myself in the process. Hating that even after two years, it still feels like that morning, seeing them together in that apartment.
Jyeon stands up and turns away from me as though he isn't going to sit here and do this, but he doesn't take a step further. Standing tall and stiff, he seems to take a few calming breaths to steady himself.
"It was because she was like you…. You from before. The girl I knew. The things about you that I missed and never really took note of when we were young."
It's so quiet I almost miss it. Shocked by words that don't make sense to me. Unprepared for that as a reason and I narrow my eyes at him.
Claire and I are nothing alike.
"That sounds like a rehearsed excuse to flatter me into forgiving you." I sneer at his back and get up to walk to the bookcase nearby for space. It's filled with pictures of all of us from different periods of our life. From very young to before I went missing. I mentally slap myself for choosing to wander over here and being faced with a timeline of our life.
"I thought I wanted an out. A new start, with someone I could fall for. I thought I was choosing someone who was everything you weren't… only I realised in hindsight, it was because she was everything you were. I was in denial right to the end about my feelings for you." Jyeon's voice moves closer, and I can sense him turning and stepping near me as I pretend to browse the many familiar pictures that always sat here. They have new frames new positions, but Mother never switched them out. So many memories in these frozen images of the past that hurt my heart and make my lip wobble, so I have to bite it.