This Burns My Heart Page 0,68

know your father’s weakness. Do you think I didn’t know what I was doing when I got my son to marry into your family?” Soo-Ja looked at him, shocked. She had always thought they had been against the marriage, considering the way they treated her. Father-in-law shook his head. “You think Min is smart enough to figure out who to marry on his own? Of course I helped him, of course I steered him in the right direction. I knew your father’s money would come in handy someday. And I knew your father’s affection for you would come in even handier.”

Shaking, Soo-Ja looked at the razor in her hand. It would take a quick second or two to sink it into his right wrist. She couldn’t reach for his throat, but his hands were only inches from her.

“But before you hate me too much, think about this,” said Father-in-law, his words slow and calculated. “Don’t you think I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you’re all provided for, and that we have a roof over our heads? You think it’s easy making a living? Half our country is still in shambles from the war, everywhere you look you see peasants eating grass porridge for dinner and banana peels for dessert. Orphans and paraplegics and sick old people with no homes. You think this house is free? And you think it’s easy, having an eldest son who can’t hold a job anywhere? If a fool’s giving away money, I’m a bigger fool not to take it.”

“That ‘fool’ is my father,” she muttered, in disbelief. She placed the razor on the table, turning away from him, as if he were a hallucination. “From my first day in this house, you have treated me badly. Why is that?”

Father-in-law grunted. “From your first day in this house, you have tried to turn my son against me. Do you think I don’t know that when you go to sleep at night, you whisper lies in his ear?”

Soo-Ja wanted to laugh at his paranoia, but held back. Father-in-law had nothing to worry about. Min loved his parents, almost desperately. But still they were concerned. Soo-Ja thought of their daughter Seon-ae, the missing girl, the sister Min and the others never talked about. She had never met her. All she knew was that she had left home one day and never returned. Did Father-in-law fear, deep down, that his other children would leave, too, one by one?

“We’re not going to talk about this anymore,” said Father-in-law, dropping the bloody towel on the ground on his way out. “Our lives go back to normal. It’s all in the past.”

Soo-Ja, left alone, stared at the tiny pieces of hair floating on the bowl of water.

Soo-Ja sat in the restaurant waiting for Min, occasionally glancing at the steam rising from gigantic pots of bubbling jjigae on the open kitchen. The menu in front of her had been written in chalk on a worn-out blackboard, and below it a tiny radio noisily broadcast a Seoul news station.

Soo-Ja had told Min to meet her there. He’d been back from hiding for a couple of days now, but she’d gone into hiding herself, staying with Hana at her parents’ house. She wasn’t sure what to do. She couldn’t stay there forever, but she also couldn’t imagine going back to life with her in-laws. Too much had happened recently. Her in-laws’ betrayal, and before that, seeing Yul again. Yul had reminded her of her old self—the old Soo-Ja she now longed to reconnect with. And Soo-Ja knew she could never do that as long as she stayed with Min.

If Jae-Hwa can leave her husband, why can’t I leave mine as well?

Min came in and found her quickly, as she was the only person there, sitting at one of four low wooden tables, pots of cactus flowers behind her. He said nothing as he sat down.

“Did you know about your father’s plans?” Soo-Ja asked him.

“I didn’t know until three days ago,” he said ruefully. “And when I heard about the money, I was glad—I thought you had gotten it for us.”

Soo-Ja looked at him, surprised. “No, it was your father.”

“After so long in that awful place, I started to dream of you coming to save me,” said Min. “But in the end it wasn’t you, it was my father.”

“So you’re not mad at my father, you’re mad at me,” said Soo-Ja, tasting the irony. “You don’t think he did anything wrong. In