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“Ew gross!” I grumble, but really I feel all kinds of warmth. I love my parents love each other. Love their easy relationship. I’d been concerned before the Quarantine. My mom had been working more and more—she’s a physical therapist who works in the Athletics department at Palm de Rosa University—and I’d felt her pulling away. If I could feel it, you better believe that my dad could, too.
But now… Now things are so much better.
The door to the community hallway opens, slowly, like my dad hadn’t latched it when he’d come in, likely because he’d been carrying at least five bags of groceries at once. I start in that direction, but my dad’s sharp voice stops me. “Sabine, don’t! Get back!” I frown over my shoulder at him, to see he’s pale, shaking, terrified.
“I won’t get sick from closing-” I cut off as he lunges forward, putting himself between me and the door, hands raised like he’s going to fight something off.
No. Fuck. No. Please. Not him. Not my dad. Please.
“Hyun-Seok,” my mom whispers. She hasn’t moved from where he left her. We’re both just… frozen. My dad though, he looks over his shoulder at her.
“Take Sabine and run.” She doesn’t move. I don’t move. He looks at me, eyes pleading. “Gongjunim, run! Now!”
My heart is in my throat, thundering too hard and making it impossible for me to swallow, to breathe, to speak. I watch as my dad, my rock for my entire life, lifts his hands and starts clawing at his own throat, digging his fingers in, making blood spill down his skin.
“No!” I scream, starting toward him, needing to help. But in the next instant, my mom barrels into me, lifting me off my feet and carrying me down the hall to the bathroom attached to their room. I fight her, batter at her, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow. “Let me help him. Please. Let me-”
She drops me on my feet and cups my cheeks, making me focus on her. “Sab, honey. We can’t help him. Not now. We can’t.” She’s crying, tears running down her cheeks. I’m crying too. And keening, a mournful noise is screaming from my chest. “Tell me you understand.”
I swallow and nod. She holds my cheeks for a moment and then turns to lock the bathroom door. We know it won’t help. But I understand her urge.
That done, she turns back to me, ushers me to the farthest point of the bathroom and we sink down to the floor, huddled against the bathtub. She wraps her arms around me and holds me close while we try to ignore the sounds coming from the living room. The cries of agony, the sounds of things breaking.
My mom laces her fingers into my hair and pulls until I’m looking at her. “Sab, listen to me. Okay. Listen to what I’m going to tell you. It’s important.”
I nod, even though I want to tell her not to say goodbye. I can’t take it, but it feels like that’s what she’s going to do. She takes a deep breath and cups my face again. “I cheated on your father.”
What little air I’d had in my lungs disappears. I choke on nothing. “Listen, Sab. We were together for months. Almost a year.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I wheeze. The anger radiating out of me must catch her off guard, because her face crumples. Her head falls, but she keeps fucking talking.
“He asked me to marry him,” she sobs into my shoulder. “He asked me to marry him and I said yes and I was going to leave your father before all of this happened.” I stare blindly at the bathroom door. My vision is blurry with tears and I’m momentarily overcome with hatred for my mother. All-consuming hatred.
How dare she do this to me? How dare she unload all of her bullshit, her guilt on me just moments after I watched my father tear out his own throat? How dare she tell me this moments before we’re about to fucking die? We are about to die. The sickness takes out whole families. It leaves no survivors, and it’s only a matter of time before my mom and I are scratching at our own throats.
“Sabine, listen to me.” I look away from the door back to her. She’s watching me with a fierceness that I can’t quite fathom. “Listen. If something happens to me, if I… if I don’t make it out of this, you have to go to him. You have to go to him and he’ll take care of you. He told me he would, he promised.”
And this it suddenly hits me. She didn’t tell me this to absolve her guilt. No, she’s telling me this so that I have somewhere to go if I live and she doesn’t. She’s trying to make sure I’m going to be okay.
“He’s in my phone. You know my code. He’s in my phone as Coach Lachlan.” I blink. Coach Lachlan? As if the Coach of the Palm de Rosa Wildcat football team? As in herboss? “Call him, Sabby. Promise me you will.”
I nod. “I promise, mom.”
She gives me a tremulous smile and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Good girl.” Her arms wind around me, tugging me into her body, rocking gently back and forth. I relax into her. I don’t want to be mad at her, not at what could be our last moments together.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she murmurs against my head. “You’re gonna be okay, Sabby. I promise. I won’t let it get you.”
It’s not long before the noises in the livingroom stop. An eerie silence.
My mom pulls back and cups my face. “Stay here, honey. I’ll check it out.”
I shake my head, clutching at her. “No, don’t leave me.” She takes my wrists in a gentle grip and carefully extracts herself from me. “Mom, please.”
She gives me a tremulous smile and stands. “You’ll be okay, Sabine.” She slips to the door and places her hand on the doorknob. “I promise.”
“You okay, Sabby?” My mom’s voice cuts through my memories as I stare out the car window, taking in the houses that we pass by. It’s startling the difference between our neighborhood, the one we’re leaving behind and this, only twenty minutes across town.
Enormous houses behind locked gates. Fancy cars that cost more than my parents made in a year combined. Perfectly clean and manicured lawns and roads. I haven’t seen a piece of trash on the sidewalk or in the gutter for the last five minutes.
