Chapter 19
Back home, Grace escaped to her room to change and wondered if she could just stay in here until Hae forgot she even existed.
That would solve most of her problems and be preferable to having to face him after the rooftop-portal plan had failed.
It felt like strike two. And Grace was worried she would keep failing.
But she told herself it would be better to pay the piper now than to let the anxiety keep her awake all night. So she pulled on a pair of sweats and trudged downstairs reluctantly.
Grace found Hae sitting at the kitchen counter, eating spoonfuls of peanut butter from the jar.
“You shouldn’t—” She stopped herself, giving up immediately. At least he was using a spoon and not his finger. That was an improvement.
Grace paused. She’d had a hard day and deserved some indulgence too. So she got a spoon and sat beside Hae to dig in.
That’s when she noticed that between each spoonful, he was flipping through one of her sketchbooks.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked.
“Found it in the desk in the pool house,” he said through a bite of peanut butter.
Grace didn’t really want him looking through her old drawings. She reached for the sketchbook, but he slid it away, flipping another page.
“I’m not done.”
“But I never gave you permission to look at it.”
“I’ve decided I don’t like it when you’re bossy with me.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it when you’re bossy either. So we’re finally on the same page about something.”
Hae scowled. “You know, as a god, I used to command respect.”
“Respect is earned,” Grace ground out.
She snatched back her sketchbook, and a photograph fell from the pages.
Hae plucked it up, staring at the smiling girl in the faded picture. “Is this you?”
“No, it’s my mom. From when she left Korea to come to the States for college.” Grace took the photo gingerly from him. She’d forgotten she had tucked it into her old sketchbook. She’d wanted to use the hanok behind her mom as a reference point for a scene.
But seeing it now was like looking into a warped mirror. The same eyes, the same mouth and smile. Her mother’s face had been a bit finer, more heart-shaped than oval. Her nose a bit slimmer. Her complexion a bit paler.
“Did she and your dad move here together?”
“No.” She traced her finger over her mother’s features.
“They met at med school. She hated him at first. Thought he was lazy and clumsy. But on a class trip, he hurt himself, and she stayed behind to help him. He said that’s how he wore her down—he was too helpless for her to leave him to his own devices. ”
“She sounds kind,” Hae said.
Grace coughed to push down a lump that was forming in her chest.
“Am I wrong?”
“Yeah. I mean no. You’re not wrong.” She placed the photo back into the sketchbook, folding her hands over it. “She was kind. At least, that’s what my halmeoni told me.”
“Told you?”
“Yeah.” Grace pressed the heel of her palm to her chest to massage away the knot forming.
“I was so young when she died that I don’t have that many memories of her.
Most of them were reinforced by stuff my halmeoni told me.
She’d always talk about stuff my mom did with me when I was a baby.
I can see it in my head sometimes, even though I know I shouldn’t be able to remember stuff from that early. ”
“So, she gave you her memories?”
Grace laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. I think I just wanted memories of her so badly, my brain borrowed my halmeoni’s and made them real for me.”
“Like shared memories.” Hae hummed, pondering the words. “That sounds nice.”
“My halmeoni told me that memories keep people and places with us. Memories are what kept our entire culture alive when others tried to erase it.” She paused before admitting in a quiet voice, “I’m scared of losing my memories of Halmeoni too.”
“And that is why you wrote the webtoon.”
Grace’s eyes whipped to Hae in surprise.
“I saw your halmeoni’s old books. The ones about Korean legends. She’s the one who told you the stories?”
Grace nodded. It seemed that Hae was much more observant than she gave him credit for. He saw parts of her that she thought she’d kept hidden.
“It’s something I shared with her. And writing the webtoon felt almost like an homage to her. I know it probably sounds silly. But it helped me after we lost her.”
“It’s not silly. If it matters to you, then it matters.” Hae said it with none of his usual arrogance or judgment. Grace believed him.
Strange that a god who’d just reappeared on earth would be the one she could talk to about this for the first time. Despite their supernatural connection, they barely knew each other. Yet he seemed to just get it—to get her.
“Thanks.” Grace scooped out more peanut butter and put it into her mouth.
Hae just nodded, scooping up more himself. They ate together in companionable silence.