Amber was on her second bourbon. She knew she shouldn’t drink. She had seen, only too clearly, what alcohol could do to a person. What it had done to her own mother. But she didn’t know what else to do.
She’d found Charlie.
This should have been a time of rejoicing. Of sharing family tales and exchanging photos. Instead, he had haphazardly unearthed dark family secrets which might have better stayed buried.
Was Jinju why Charlie had never written to Constance to let her know what had happened? Was Charlie ashamed of his friend’s bigamy? Ashamed that Shash had abandoned his wife and young child in order to remain with a second wife here?
Amber shook her head, staring into the liquid.
Maybe it would be better if she called the airline and switched to an earlier flight home. Her mother probably needed her, even if Nascha would never say such a thing out loud. Amber could spend her days working at the at-risk shelter. Her evenings would involve blankly staring at the TV alongside her mother. And the days would tick by … tick by …
A voice said at her shoulder, “Amber.”
She blearily looked up.
Bo-Seon stood there. He still wore the black polo top and dark slacks, but his face no longer held the closed, suspicious look of earlier.
Now it held weary confusion.
He pointed at the seat alongside her at the bar. “Do you mind if I sit?”
She shook her head no, a hint of curiosity piquing within her two-drink haze.
He waved to the bartender and in a moment he had a bourbon as well. He touched it to her glass. “To strange conversations.”
She could commiserate with that one. She nodded and drank.
He took down a long swallow and then carefully placed his glass back on its napkin, staring at it for a long moment. Then he said, “I got him to tell me the truth.”
She kept her tone as noncommittal as she could manage. “Oh?”
He gave a dry chuckle, turning the glass in a circle. “Oh, it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I pulled to the side of the road when I was taking him home after dinner. He refused to tell me what your conversation was about. I had to threaten him with getting my parents involved. With maybe convincing them that he’d started to go senile. That maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to live on his own any more. That sort of thing.”
Amber nodded, holding her breath. She knew better than to interrupt a flow of information. The slightest word and he could clam up again, vanishing through that door forever.
He gave a low laugh. “In-Na had a sister. We never knew that. Never had the slightest idea. Grandfather and Grandmother had purged her from our world. No photos. No mention. That photo he showed you? It’d been hidden, taped, to the bottom side of a drawer.”
His eyes drifted north, as if he could see straight through the bar’s walls.
He took another drink.
Amber ventured a comment. “Things were tense between the North and South.”
He barked in amusement. “Tense. That’s a word for it. Conspirators were tortured. Shot. Entire families were brought in for questioning. And even after the cease-fire in ‘53, those tensions never fully went away.”
He looked down the bar to where a middle-aged man sat staring at his phone. “Even now, with all the TVs and Internet and cellphones, there is that DMZ straight through the center of our country. That no-man’s land dividing us in half. In the South, we are free. But in the North …”
He sighed. “We were once one people. One nation. And families were torn apart. Lives were ripped apart.”
Amber murmured, “Like In-Na and Jinju.”
Bo-Seon took another drink.
Amber ventured, “Was Jinju truly kidnapped? Taken North against her will?”
He gave a wry chuckle. “As Grandfather tells the story, In-Na always swore that was the case. That a North Korean colonel had seen Jinju’s beauty from afar and decided he had to have her. The family all lived near the 38th, of course, back in those days. It’s how the women met the two Navajo men.”
His gaze went to his drink. “But Grandfather is not so sure that Jinju was abducted out of the blue. He said that Jinju had been acting oddly that last week, up until the fateful day she disappeared. Nervous, maybe.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Of course, once she was gone, Shash was desperate with worry. If the North Koreans had gotten a hold of his wife …” He shook his head. “That very night, he went out after her. My grandfather offered to go with him, but Shash insisted he go alone.”
His eyes drifted north. “And that was the last anybody has ever heard of either of them.”
Amber shook her head. “But wasn’t there anybody your grandfather could have gone to for help? A diplomat? Maybe someone in his own Marine chain of command?”
Bo-Seon’s gaze shadowed. “It was a time of deep distrust and suspicion. The entire family would have been brought in. Maybe tortured for information. My grandfather’s first priority was to protect everyone who was left.”
He turned his glass. “They waited a week … two … a month … and then the whole family packed up and moved south. They set up an entirely new life where Jinju did not exist. Apparently my grandmother prayed for her soul every night – but her name was never spoken again.”
Tension drew tight around Amber’s chest. “And Charlie couldn’t even … send a letter to Shash’s family back home? To let them know what had happened? To tell them why he, himself was remaining?”
Bo-Seon’s fingers wrapped around his glass. “Mail would not be safe. And the Navajos didn’t have phones at the time. As the months rolled by … then the years … he figured people would have moved on. That there would just be two more soldiers who never returned home.’
Amber’s throat closed up. “My father never moved on. He had lost his mother when he was only a teenager – and his father was a mere ghost.”
Bo-Seon sounded sincere when he said, “I’m very sorry to hear that.”
Amber sighed and nodded. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know about any of this. It’s as much as a shock to you as it is to me.”
“I can at least set your mind at ease on one count,” stated Bo-Seon, his tone gentling. “Although this may also be a shock to you. Shash was not a bigamist. He was never married to Constance, your grandmother.”
Amber blushed and took another drink of her bourbon. “I don’t know that that is much of a relief.” She found it hard to say the words. “So Shash got a Catholic missionary pregnant and then refused to marry her?”
He blinked in surprise. “No, no. Nothing like that.”
Amber turned to look at him full face. “Then what was it?”
He took in a breath, then said, “Constance was raped – and the attacker had never been caught.”