Chapter 36
Afterward, when we were in the car heading back to East End, I saw that Paul had put everything back into the bag I had removed and carried it and the other box to the car.
As he drove, he said the weather was turning colder and that he was experimenting with yuzu in his baking.
I clasped my hands together in my lap until the prickling ceased.
My reaction to the bag was outsized. It was easily explained as wanting to distance myself from anything having to do with Kent, but there was something else there, as well.
I pushed it out of my mind. After a minute I found myself able to speak again and was urging Paul not to add yuzu to his cinnamon rolls when he received a call from Ames.
“Channing is going to get herself thrown back in jail,” she told him. “You have to get Dahee to talk to her.” He put the phone on speaker so I could hear for myself.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Jack Wire has no experience on cases like this; you need to get someone else. He handles real estate, not serious crime. Just come meet us. I’m with Channing, and she refuses to listen to me,” Ames said.
I gave him Channing’s location from my phone. He took another route so we could intercept them on Middle Street. Channing and Ames were a block from the police station. We pulled up alongside them. They were shouting at each other, and I looked for an opportunity to jump in.
“You’re losing it. You need Kent’s help whether you like it or not,” Ames insisted.
“Are you demented?” Channing shouted. She towered over Ames. Her hands were clenched into fists by her side.
“For whatever reason, he thinks he loves you,” she said. “You can persuade him.”
“No,” Channing screamed at her.
“At least talk to him, see what he wants. Give him something,” Ames said. “You need people on your side, Channing. Everyone is saying you slapped him, stole his watch, and he’s still trying to help you.”
“How does any of this make sense? If he’s so good to me, why is he pressing charges? I’m the one who should be charging him for assault because that’s what he actually did to me,” Channing yelled. “You know I never took anything. And I told you he attacked me.” She turned to me, “Tell her, Dahee!”
“Then you should press charges against him. Why haven’t you? That’s the only way out—that or negotiate with him. East End is too small a town for you to do this on your own,” Ames shouted back.
I got out of the car and joined them on the sidewalk. “Who’s everyone?” I asked Ames.
“Everyone in town. Listen, Wire can’t beat Kent, face that fact,” Ames implored.
She pivoted to me. “Look, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
Isn’t that a saying? The legal system is hard to get out of once you’re in it.
There was a woman I covered last year who really suffered.
It took years for her to get out, and she was innocent. ”
“Could you do that? Press charges against him?” I said to Channing.
“I have no witnesses, and no one will believe me,” she replied.
“It would still be better than this, whatever it is you’re doing, which I see is nothing,” Ames snapped.
“Is there a reason you’re pushing so hard for him?” Channing said. She circled Ames now.
“Did he ask you to help him with Channing?” I joined my cousin in facing Ames.
“I give up,” Ames said, and threw up her hands for emphasis. She began to walk away when Paul asked, “Ames, why are you leaving without answering Dahee’s question?”
Channing called after her, “You’re not my friend, Ames. I remember you in school: the mean anonymous notes you left in my desk, the rumors you spread. You were worse than the girls who used to bully us for being Korean. After my mom was gone, you abandoned me.”
Ames stomped back. “You’re kidding, right?
Here I was trying to do you a favor, and you bring up this shit from when we were kids?
Everyone knew your dad stole that money.
Maybe he lost it, because I know you live in squalor in Boston now, but maybe he just invested all that money in something that failed.
I don’t know, but somehow the money disappeared on the day your mom died.
And no one will talk to me about it. You’re right, my parents said I couldn’t play with you.
Because your dad was a thief. And my grandparents, as nice as they were to your grandfather, never believed that money was stolen by anyone other than your father.
He’s guilty, and that’s why he’s drinking himself to death.
But fine! Don’t listen to me about Kent.
I just know him a helluva lot better than you do.
I’m out of here.” She stalked off again and this time she kept going.
“No one can talk to her when she’s like this,” Paul said as he opened the car door for Channing. “I’ll drive you both back to the house.”
“What does Kent want from me? Isn’t it enough he’s ruined my life, put me in jail, sent Minjae away?” Channing said as she climbed into the back seat of his car.
“We don’t know he did that to Minjae,” Paul said.
“He would have been in touch otherwise,” Channing said. She slammed her door shut, hard. “What’s Kent capable of?”
“Then that’s a reason you should talk to him,” Paul said. He pulled the car onto the street. I had returned to the passenger seat. “I mean if you want to, if you want me to be there or be a witness. Ames isn’t wrong about Kent’s influence here.” Paul turned off the main street.
“Look, if you’re on Ames’s side, stop the car, I can walk,” Channing said.
I was ready to hop out, too.
“I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to understand,” Paul said.
“Understand I didn’t do anything wrong, I can prove it,” Channing said.
“In towns like this, especially these days, you don’t have to be guilty to get thrown in jail,” Paul said.
“But why? I don’t get it. He wanted to date me, he asked Harabeoji to marry me, but now he’s accusing me of stealing from him, so why does he still want me?” she wailed.
We were silent for a while. I noticed that Paul was driving slower than the thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, as if deep in thought.
Suddenly, a maroon car shot through a red light in the intersection while the light was green for us.
Paul braked hard. We all jerked forward and then back again.
If he’d gone faster, that car would have smashed right into me.
When we were calm again and on the other side of that cross street, Paul said, “That big article Ames was working on got shut down. The short version was printed—that’s the article Mrs. Sato-Shaw showed us.
The whole paper is going under. My guess is Ames was hoping that Kent would save it somehow, through the town, who knows. He probably asked her to talk to you.”
“Ames shouldn’t agree to things like that. I don’t trust her.” Channing rolled her window down and hung her arm out. “Kent is unstoppable. Really, where’s the logic? Doesn’t anyone see that if I’d done the things he accused me of he wouldn’t want me?”
“People think he’s a saint. They all know what you’ve gone through with the loss of your mother. And with your father being in rehab, they think they’d be grateful if they were in your shoes,” he said.
“Grateful to be with someone who forces himself on you?” she spit.
I agreed that Kent and the people in town made no sense, but I was thinking about Paul’s words. Why would Ames help Kent? Also, Ames had repeated the Asian market owner’s claim that Channing’s father had stolen money. “How did people send money in 2005? Were there apps like Zelle and Venmo?”
“Nope,” Paul answered. “Wiring was costly, so people mostly used checks and cash.”
“So, the money my uncle is accused of stealing… can’t that be traced through checks? If people thought he’d stolen money, couldn’t it be easily tracked?”
“It was cash, in a bag,” Channing said.
I looked over my shoulder at her. She was staring out at the houses and trees we were driving past. “He told me Korean families gave him cash and he was going to deposit it into the bank for the development project, but someone stole it the day my mother died. From our house. No one believed him, not any of the Koreans in town who we thought were our friends.”
I was afraid to look at Paul. Channing rolled up her window. I felt her eyes on the back of my seat. As usual, she sensed my question and addressed it. “You never changed, Paul,” she added, patting his headrest.
He reached over his shoulder and held out his hand, which she grasped and then released. “So true. You and Ames pretty much ignored me all through school,” he said, and looked back with a smile. His gesture seemed like something Harabeoji would do.
“You were always the one making everyone laugh,” she said.
“At silly jokes?” he said.
“We were kids, all the jokes were silly,” she replied.
I let out a sigh slowly so Channing and Paul wouldn’t notice. It was a relief to hear that Paul hadn’t turned on Channing the way Ames had. Still, Ames’s parents’ betrayal felt insidious.
“Anything from Minjae, on Signal or anywhere?” Channing asked Paul.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’m sorry. I’ve been asking friends of his in Korea and here.”
Her eyes closed, and her chest rose and fell as if she was trying to calm herself.
“Has he forgotten us?” I said to Paul.
“Not like him to do that. I’m sure he’s working on a way to get back here. He wouldn’t give up,” Paul said.
Channing was fighting back tears and wouldn’t meet my eyes. She stared out the window. I had to think of another way.
“So, Channing,” I said. “Ames told me the other day that she was on deadline to write about the new development, but to give context to this new one, she was researching the old, failed project the year your mom died. It sounds like it was the same deal that your dad was accused of stealing money from. That money is the reason the development didn’t go through.
So why can’t Ames find anyone to talk with her now?
It sounds like her parents believed your dad was guilty.
Did he go on trial? What happened to him? ” I asked.
She didn’t respond. Paul said, “Korean families missing five hundred thousand dollars with no proof they’d given it to Albert Shin? The police had no leads. No one cared.”
“So it was just dropped?” I asked.
Channing lowered the car window again and stuck her arm out, and then pulled it back in and closed the window. She said to me, “You’re right. It’s strange. I remember police at the house, but no, my dad was never charged.” She went on to describe her father’s actions that day her mother died.
“Makes no sense,” Paul agreed.
As we sat with this information, my view of East End was changing. Why had I ever wanted to live here where someone like Kent could destroy Channing’s life, where my uncle had been falsely accused for years? I focused on this last question because I felt helpless about Channing’s situation.
My parents had said that Channing’s father was clever with investments.
If he had stolen the money, what did he do with it?
Why weren’t he and Channing living in luxury?
That amount of money even conservatively invested would have yielded a hefty profit.
The money must have been stolen just like he claimed.
If he was as conniving as the people in East End believed, sure, he might have made a mistake and his investment in some clandestine way failed, but he’d never struck me as a gambler.
He’d been consistent since the day his wife died.
He’d been a grieving, angry man. And now I knew why he was in such despair.
“If Ames could find out what really happened back in 2005, then at least your dad’s name would be cleared,” I said.
“Dahee, that’s in the past. I have to think about what to do right now,” Channing said. I knew she was trying not to cry by how she blinked rapidly and turned again toward the window.
“I think Ames could help us,” I said.
“How many times do I have to say I don’t trust her?” Channing said.
“Ames didn’t show it today, but in her own way she was trying to help. I know she felt bad about what happened when you were kids. I remember she argued with her mom. You could be friends again,” Paul said.
“That’s only in K-dramas and movies,” Channing said.
I was surprised by her words. It was as if she didn’t believe in stories like the “Tale of Chunhyang” anymore.