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For a moment she looks disoriented. Then she smiles back, a big grin. “Thank you! Come back again.”
Mom and Barron get up and start toward the door, leaving me there staring after Jin-Sook, trying to figure out how to tell her that her memories just got rearranged.
“What’s done is done,” Mom says from the front of the restaurant. The look she gives me is a warning.
Family looks after family.
The girl’s memories are gone. I could get Barron in trouble, but I can’t undo what’s already done.
I push back my chair and follow my mother and brother out. Once we’re on the street, though, I shove Barron’s shoulder. “Are you crazy?”
“Come on!” he says, grinning like it’s all a great joke. “Paying is for suckers.”
“I get that you don’t care about other people. But you’re messing up your own head,” I say. “You’ll use up all your memories. There won’t be anything of you left.”
“Don’t worry,” Barron says. “If I forget anything important, you can just remind me.”
Mom looks over at me, eyes glittering.
Yeah. Right. What’s done is done.
* * *
They drop me off back at Wallingford, in front of my own car. I start to get out.
“Wait,” Mom says and takes out a pen from her handbag. “I got a cute little phone! I want to give you the number.”
Barron rolls his eyes.
“You hate cell phones,” I say.
She ignores me as she scribbles. “Here, baby,” she says. “You call me whenever. I’ll call you back from the nearest pay phone or landline.”
I take the slip of paper with a smile. After her three years in jail, I don’t think she realizes just how rare pay phones are these days. “Thanks, Mom.”
She leans in and kisses my cheek. I can smell her perfume, sweet and heavy, long after they pull away.
My car makes a horrible noise when I try to start it up. For a moment I think I am going to have to chase down Mom and Barron for a ride. Finally I put it in second gear and get it rolling. Somehow the engine turns over and the motor roars to life. I have no idea how long my car is going to stay running or whether I’m going to be able to get it started again when I want to return to Wallingford.
* * *
I drive to the big old house I grew up in. From the outside the unpainted shingles and off-kilter shutters give it the look of a building long abandoned. Grandad and I cleaned out most of the garbage, but inside I can smell the faint odor of mold under the Lysol. The place still looks tidy, but I can tell Mom’s been here. There are a couple of shopping bags on the dining room table and there’s a mug of tea rotting in the kitchen sink.
Good thing Grandad’s down in Carney; he’d be annoyed.
I walk straight to the chair. It’s covered in a kind of a mustardy cloth and is perfectly normal-looking for a club chair, except for the feet, which, now that I really look at them, are awful. I thought they were claw feet holding on to painted balls, and at a glance that’s what they look like. But now that I am inspecting the chair closely, those claws are actually human hands, the knuckles bent under.
A shudder runs through me.
I sit down on the floor beside it, despite wanting nothing more than to get as far away from it as I can. I reach out a hand and concentrate. The power still feels strange, and my whole body is braced for what comes after, for the pain and helplessness of the blowback.
As my palm comes down on the chair, everything goes fluid. I can feel the curse here, feel the threads of it, and even feel the man underneath. I rip the magic with a push that’s almost physical.
After a moment I open my eyes, not even realizing I had closed them.
A man stands before me, his skin pink with life, his eyes open. He’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt and underwear. I feel a wild hope.
“Henry Janssen,” I say, my voice trembling. He looks just like the picture paper-clipped to his file.
