The Love Trap by Nicole French

38

It took me months to stop expecting that every knock at the door was the police, there to cart Eric away on murder charges. Or, even worse, some random member of the Janus society, which I found aptly named for a two-faced god.

But after the initial inquiry, which, yes, lasted weeks, John Carson’s death was in fact determined self-defense. No charges were brought, except, of course, those against Jude Letour and on Anton Mikhailov for abduction and aggravated assault. The states attorneys of Connecticut and New Hampshire got in on the game too with several counts of murder.

Considering the laissez-faire handling of Eric’s case by pretty much all parties involved, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were quite a few folks out there happy to be out from under the thumb of that sychophant.

Eric and I, however, weren’t quite as easily healed. Surprise! Turns out you can’t just have your biological father shot in the head all over you and be magically okay. Nor can you do the shooting, apparently, and walk away unscathed.

Nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks, the increased instinct to self-harm. You name it, I had it, all under the nice big umbrella of PTSD. Just in that first week alone, I scrubbed my skin raw, convinced I still bore the stains of John Carson’s blood (and, if we’re being totally honest, other parts) imprinted into my skin.

So, it took months of therapy, both the formal kind in a doctor’s office, as well as the special sorts we administer to each other, to get to a place where neither of us jumped at every strange sound. Where I didn’t need three extra deadbolts on our door. Where Eric didn’t sleep with a loaded gun on his nightstand. We left the apartment on the Upper West Side and actually moved in with Heather for a while, citing safety in numbers. Yu-na, who had safely remained with Skylar during that terrible night, put off her return to Chicago and took Heather’s basement apartment (the one previously used for staff).

Heather seemed… well, she seemed happy to have us all, like a ghost coming back from the dead. Horace, her jubilant elf of a husband, twittered around us like a hummingbird when he was around at all, and I watched as Eric slowly rebuilt his relationship with his mother. And I, yes, rebuilt the one I had with my own.

Spring turned to summer, then summer turned to fall, and eventually, winter was just around the corner. One day, I woke up without sweat on my brow or Eric shaking beside me. That day turned to several. And eventually, almost all of them.

That’s called healing, peanut, Dad would say in the back of my mind whenever I considered what was happening.

Whatever, goofball, I’d think right back before getting out of bed to join Eric and one of our mothers for coffee in the strange new routine.

But routines don’t always fit. Nor are they meant to last forever.

One morning at the beginning of November, I entered the kitchen to find two strange things:

Eric, first of all, drinking tea.

And my mother, speaking to him solemnly, with her hand on top of her suitcase.

They both turned. I didn’t even have to ask what was going on.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “She did say she’d get you to drink green tea before she left.”

My mother looked entirely too pleased with herself. “It’s better for you than coffee,” she said, mostly to him, for what was probably the tenth time.

Eric just took a sip of his tea, looking like he was planning to toss it down the drain the second she turned around.

I ignoring the suitcase-shaped elephant in the room, and poured myself a cup of the coffee that, thankfully, had still been put through Eric’s science-experiment- looking contraption.

“I’ll take a cup of joe, thanks,” I said.

“Jane.”

I turned around. For the first time in months, I realized my mother looked...normal. Gone were the dark circles under her eyes, the slightly shriveled look about her that must have been rooted in fear. Her hair, short, black, and tamed to a perfect bob, was newly dyed. She wore a full face of makeup and her favorite blue tunic sweater over a comfortable pair of matching indigo pants. She was the solid, coordinated mother I knew, and her sharp, dark gaze ran straight through me.

I sighed. “Want to walk in the park, Eomma? Do you have time before your flight?”

She pressed her lips together. She always did hate it when I anticipated her announcements. My mother had as much a flair for drama as I did.

I suppose I came by it honestly, after all.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Let me get my coat.”

* * *

Winter had nearly arrivedin New York, almost a month early. Halloween had felt particularly ghoulish this year when a massive storm swept through the city, knocking every orange- and red-hued leaf from the trees while a wind howled between skyscrapers and brownstones alike.

Much more trick than treat if you asked me.

Today, though still cold, the weather was giving us a bit of reprieve with blue skies and air that was nearly crisp enough to see my breath. New Yorkers were out and about, taking advantage of the sunny skies with the urgency of squirrels getting their last nuts in storage before the heavy snows fell.

My mother and I walked into the park, ambling around the paths. This had become a habit of ours over the last several months, just walking around the park together for a bit of exercise. We didn’t talk—actually, it was one of the only times my mother didn’t have something to say to me about my life or lack of direction. Again and again, she had continued to pressure me to decide. Decide on a job. Decide on a career. Decide on…something. Anything.

Until now, apparently. Now that she was leaving.

“Eomma,” I started as we wandered around the back side of the Central Park Zoo.

“I want you to know,” she interrupted me. “I think your father would approve.”

I blinked. “What?”

She looked at me. She was wearing her favorite puffy coat, the one that made her look like a plum-colored Michelin man. “Of school. The fashion.”

I glanced at her, then pushed up my glasses, unsure of how, exactly, to respond to that. She hadn’t exactly made her disdain for that particular choice a secret over the last couple of months. She thought I should have taken the job Zola offered me. It didn’t matter to her that I—and she, by association—now had more money than I would ever know what to do with. I was supposed to be productive.

So this was certainly a significant about-face.

“Eric showed me some of your drawings,” she said. “They were very good. There were many of them. You work hard.”

I nodded cautiously. Where in the hell was this going?

To my mother’s vocal chagrin, I had decided over the summer to apply for the MFA program at New York’s Fashion Institute. Cora had practically insisted on it once I got up the nerve to show her my sketches and some of the clothes I’d made. I still had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it felt like a step in the right direction. Eric was completely occupied with his company these days, even telling Skylar a few weeks ago that he was ready to sell his stake in their small firm. He had sold the apartment in the North End a month before that. We would still always visit Boston, but New York was officially home. It was time for us to grow our roots here.

“Um, thank you?”

“He also took me back to the museum. The one with the exhibit you helped with.” She glanced at me. “Will you help again?”

I swallowed. “I…well, I have been. But Nina wanted to help with next year’s gala since it’s more up her alley. French 18th eighteenth-century styles aren’t really my thing.” I made a face. Yeah, I wasn’t super into helping with that one. “Plus, I’m not really into the whole party- planning thing. I really just wanted to be there for the fashion.”

“You like to make the clothes.”

I nodded. “I do. I love it, actually. But you always knew that, Eomma.”

She was quiet for a minute. “My mother liked to make clothes. Like you.”

I blinked. This was something I did not know. My grandmother wasn’t someone my mother spoke much about. Her history as a poor farmer’s daughter in Hwaseong was known to me only alongside her unfortunate history with World War II. Beyond that...not much.

But my mother didn’t say any more than that as we continued to walk.

“I never understood why Americans give thanks in November,” she remarked finally as we passed a sign advertising some kind of Thanksgiving event at the ice- skating rink. “In Korea, we do it in September. When we actually have the real harvest.”

“Maybe they just wanted to wait until all the food was in,” I joked. “If the farmers in Illinois were forced to take three days off in the middle of their harvest, they’d probably picket the governor.”

Yu-na didn’t reply as we walked through the park. Most of the leaves had fallen and melted into the streets with fall’s first hard rain the night before. Today the sky was blue again, but it would probably be the last for a while.

“In Korea, everyone goes home for Chuseok. Not just one day, but three. They leave their cities and go to where their family lives. Make a table for their ancestors. Give thanks as a family.”

I didn’t reply, though I listened curiously. My mother spoke so infrequently about Korea when I was growing up. And while my only visit to the place was stained with the year’s traumas, I was still curious about her life there. How she had become the way she was.

“When I was a girl,” my mother continued, “it was our home they would come to, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Ji-yeon too. We would spend a day making the table, all the food, to honor our ancestors. It was not much. We were only farmers. But they were good days.”

The wind picked up, whistling around our ears like a ghost calling from days past. Both of us pulled our collars up.

“But then my father died,” Yu-na said. “His heart was no good. My mother, she had to sell the farm, and then she died too. I was sixteen. I worked in another house for some time before my friend started working with the airline. She was poor, like me. The job paid very well. I would always take the jobs in September, during Chuseok. I had nowhere to go.”

I remained silent. I had never heard this story before. All of the family reminiscing from Yu-na and Ji-yeon were either about games they played as children, or things that happened after they came to Chicago. Korea had always been a bit of a mystery.

My mother stopped as we reached the edge of The Pond. It was a familiar view over the large boulder, the top of the Plaza Hotel peeking through the trees. I had seen it in countless movies, postcards, photographs. And yet, I didn’t marvel at it the way I used to. I had been in New York long enough that iconic places like this were becoming, well, commonplace.

“When I think of my home,” my mother said, almost like she was reading my mind, “I think of those times. The gathering of family. I didn’t have it again until I met your father—your real father, Carol. He brought me to his family, welcomed mine too. We made a family together, with you. We were happy. He gave me a home again.”

That, I understood. After all, how many times had I considered our Thanksgivings so fondly? The eccentric mix of food and friends.

She turned to face me. “You have home here in New York. With your husband.”

Over the last several months, Eric and my mother had circled each other warily. After all, she had been against the marriage from the start. But even Yu-na, as stubborn as she was, couldn’t deny everything he had done for us. His willingness to do whatever it took to protect his own. So while it was odd that she hadn’t said his name, it was even odder that I didn’t feel the need to argue with her.

“Jane,” she said. “I want to go home. I want to go to my home. You understand?”

“But—” I interrupted myself. I wanted to argue that she didn’t have one anymore. That Dad was gone, and even though she had her house back it wouldn’t be the same. That I was her daughter, her only real family. Why couldn’t she make her home here with me?

But…did she even want to?

Some families are meant to live with each other all the time. Skylar’s was a good example. Her grandmother and her father practically lived with her and Brandon. Her siblings, Brandon’s parents. Hell, even me, Eric, Zola. They collected friends and family members like…

“Magpies,” I murmured to myself.

My mother looked up sharply. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” I replied. “Just thinking about how some people are like that. They collect family members like magpies.” I shrugged. “I guess you and Dad were sort of like that.”

She peered at me for a moment more, then smiled. Well, as much as my mother ever smiled.

“You know,” she said, “that is the national bird of Korea. Magpie.”

I smiled that time. “Really?”

Her eyes, so dark, glinted in the late morning sun. And for a moment, I saw something there I had never seen before. Something I only knew because I was finally reaching some measure of it myself.

Peace. She had stayed here for me. Done what she could because she loved me. And now she was leaving. She needed me to love her too.

There you go, Jane Brain. Dad’s voice was warm. Kind. Proud.

Instead of fighting her like I once would have, not necessarily because I truly believed we needed to live together, but more to be right, I hugged her. I wrapped my arms around her small, compact body. She was still for a moment. And then she hugged me back.

When I released her, both of our eyes were shining. But neither of us wanted to argue. Not anymore.

“We’ll come for Thanksgiving,” I said. “Maybe you can show me how to make a table for the ancestors. Dad too.”

She swiped under her eye, the sole evidence of the fact that she really did miss my father terribly. “Yes. He would have liked that.”