“You showed me another life was possible.”
Her voice became quiet.
“So I was convenient.”
“No.”
“At the beginning?”
Joon hesitated.
“At the beginning, what your life represented was part of what attracted me. You made me realize I could choose something different.”
“And then?”
“Then I fell in love with you. I never married you because you were American. But being with you made leaving the life my father designed seem possible.”
Emily stared at him.
“And now you’re doing exactly the same thing to me.”
Joon said nothing.
“You’re planning the escape first and assuming I’ll come afterward.”
Still nothing.
That should have been the moment I kept quiet.
Instead, I made my own mistake.
“Well, moving back to America wouldn’t exactly be terrible.”
Emily turned toward me.
“Back?”
I immediately knew I had said the wrong thing.
“I meant you would have opportunities there too.”
She shook her head.
“Both of you are doing the same thing.”
“What?”
“You keep turning my life into somewhere you want me to go.”
She put on her shoes and grabbed her coat.
“I need a few hours where nobody is planning my future for me.”
Then she left.
Young-ho returned shortly afterward carrying a bakery box.
“Emily likes this one.”
He looked around.
“Where is she?”
“Out.”
He found me straightening napkins that didn’t need straightening.
I stopped.
“Did you really plan Joon’s entire life?”
Young-ho sat across from me.
“I thought I was giving my son security.”
“He calls it control.”
Young-ho nodded slowly.
“Sometimes those two things look very similar.”
Then he asked me something I wasn’t prepared for.
“Did Emily ever promise you she would move back to America?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because the truth was no.
She never had.
She had said she missed me.
She had occasionally said “maybe someday.”
She complained about missing certain foods.
She said she wished flights were shorter.
And I had quietly collected those sentences and turned them into a promise she had never made.
Joon had once looked at Emily and seen the possibility of a different future.
I had looked at her and assumed that someday she would choose mine.
Our reasons were different.
But Emily was still the person standing in the middle while everyone else pulled.
The following night, I joined Emily and several coworkers who were celebrating her promotion.
I watched her laugh with people whose names and histories I barely knew.
One woman told me,
“We honestly would’ve fallen apart without Emily last year.”
Someone asked whether I was proud.
“Very.”
And this time I meant it without qualification.
Another coworker asked how long I was visiting.
“Not long enough.”
Emily glanced toward me.
Usually, I would have followed that with a joke about kidnapping her and bringing her home.
This time, I didn’t.
The next morning, Joon waited for me in the kitchen.
“I received an offer.”
