Epilogue
Iseo roused gradually from her nap and began nuzzling Marina somewhere between the bread and the produce.
Marina stopped.
“Uh-oh.”
He stopped the cart, too, and looked down at the carrier strapped against her chest.
“Oh, yes. Baby Iseo is growing. Let’s find a place to sit and I’ll get you some water.”
“I feel like I can’t do anything anymore. Ten minutes into grocery shopping, baby. It’s always baby this, baby that.”
He kissed the top of her head. Six months ago he'd been Ri Sung-cheol, Second Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was too dangerous to remain so, thus in Belgium he got a new identity: Park Ji-ho, of South Korean extraction, to explain his Korean accent.
Now they were both Mr. and Mrs. Lambert-Park.
“I understand. Have a little patience.”
“I want my life back—” she muttered, and then looked up at him. Guilt washed through her. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I know you’re going through a lot. We’re almost halfway to her one-hundred day celebration.”
Ri took the shopping cart from her and nodded toward the front of the store. “I’ll pay and find you outside.”
There was a bench outside, beneath the awning. Marina sat down and adjusted the carrier, tucking a blanket around the baby as she began to nurse.
Ri emerged a few minutes later carrying two grocery bags. They were brightly colored, reusable shopping bags. He was becoming more Belgian every day.
“You bought all of it?”
“You know I have a weakness for well-stocked grocery stores.”
She chuckled.
He sat beside her and opened a bottle of water then handed it to her.
“You know what the midwife said, drink water and rest.”
She nodded. She was drinking. Their daughter was, too.
“If my mom were here, she’d take care of you.” He gazed out at the horizon.
“I wish she were here,” Marina said.
He turned back to her. They’d paid a Chinese smuggler once to call his mother on a North Korean cell phone to say that someone still liked the month of November, and then the smuggler was to hang up.
He told them that he’d done it. There was no way to determine if the smuggler had, or if Ri’s mother had been able to interpret that someone was Ri, as November was the month that he was born.
He sighed, and put his arm around her.
People passed them on the sidewalk. A woman walked a terrier. Two teenagers rode by on bicycles. A delivery truck stopped across the street and blocked traffic until someone leaned on a horn.
Nobody looked at him.
He watched them anyway.
He still did that sometimes.
Marina rested her head against his shoulder.
“I got that yogurt drink that you like.”
She smiled. “Tell me more.”
“The coffee that I like.”
“Mmm. I like it too.”
“The waffles that I like?”
He was silent.
She lifted her head. “Darling.”
He sighed. “They are not fresh. They’re packaged in plastic. I prefer them fresh.”
“I prefer them to be convenient.”
“They taste better when fresh,” he insisted.
She couldn’t argue with that. “You’ve been Belgian for five minutes.”
“Long enough to develop standards.”
She laughed.
Their daughter looked up at him.
He looked down at Iseo—his expression changed every time he did. He reached over and smoothed her downy hair.
“She’s papa’s little girl.”
“She is,” Marina agreed. She handed him Iseo, and he put her delicately over his shoulder and rubbed her back until she burped.
He grinned at her.
Marina settled back into the bench and looked across the ordinary street in Dinant, where the Belgian government had resettled them in the tiny jewel of a cliffside city, bedecked with a medieval citadel and a Gothic church overlooking the Meuse River.
Six months ago, the man beside her had needed permission to leave Pyongyang.
Now he stood, holding Iseo in one arm, groceries in the other.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He looked at her as if the answer were obvious.
“Home.”