She wasn’t keen on the idea and arranged a three-way video chat on my phone — which was necessary, since Huang-fu had been born deaf.
Using both verbal communication and sign language she tried to convince her brothers that she was going to be okay, and that since they were both coming to her wedding next month, they didn’t need to come now. “Really, I’m going to be alright,” she signed. “There’s no need for you to fly in.”
Huang-fu’s wife had recently left him, and he had sole custody of their young daughter. He was easier to convince than Nianzu, who definitely had the money to make two separate trips to the States, but at last Lien-hua was able to fend off his rebuttals and persuade him that she would be okay.
My parents, who lived in Denver, also offered to come to DC if there was anything we needed. I told them honestly that I would let them know if anything specific came up, but that for the time being we were fine.
Then it was time to contact Sean and Amber.
My brother, Sean, is an avid outdoorsman, doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s in the woods — or really, anytime — and doesn’t own a cell phone, so I dialed his wife, Amber, to tell her what was going on and waited somewhat anxiously for her to pick up.
My conversations with her were always a little bit stilted and awkward. Back when she and Sean were engaged — before I’d ever met Christie or Lien-hua — Amber and I had gotten a little too close. Nothing physical, but sometimes emotional affairs are harder to break off than physical ones.
Even after her marriage to Sean, our feelings for each other hadn’t evaporated immediately, and I’d had to categorically break things off with her for everyone’s sake.
At the time Sean never knew about it, and it seemed like telling him would’ve only hurt him, so neither Amber nor I had ever brought it up.
However, everything came out in the open last winter. At first it looked like the truth might rip their marriage apart, but in the end Sean accepted Amber’s apology and mine — after landing a fist that I deserved against my jaw — and providentially he and I were closer now than we’d been in years.
There wasn’t anything between Amber and me anymore, but still, we were both careful to keep a little distance between us so that no one got the wrong impression.
She picked up, I told her what was going on, and after she’d spoken with Lien-hua, I asked if Sean was there.
“He just got back from the shooting range. He’s out in the garage cleaning his gun. Do you want me to fill him in?”
“No, I’ll talk to him. If you can get him that’d be great.”
A couple moments later Sean was on the line, and after I’d summarized Lien-hua’s condition, he told me how relieved he was that she was recovering, then said softly, “I found him, Pat.”
“You found him?”
“Derek Everson.”
When he told me the name, I felt a chill.
Back when we were teenagers, Sean, who’s two years older than I am, was driving me home after a New Year’s Eve party when he swerved, hit a patch of ice, and struck another vehicle. The driver of the other car was killed. Her name was Nancy Everson and she had a twenty-two-year-old son named Derek.
Sean had some drinks at the party — that much I’d known — but exactly how much, I didn’t.
He told the responding officers that he’d swerved to miss a deer. It seemed almost certain that the officers would have given him a sobriety test of some sort, but I couldn’t remember them doing so. If they did, it didn’t lead them to disbelieve his story.
Only last winter did I learn that there was no deer, that for two decades Sean had been living with the guilt of losing control of the car while he was intoxicated and striking Nancy Everson’s car and fatally wounding her.
In Wisconsin there’s no statute of limitations on first-degree reckless vehicular homicide. However, in January, after Sean told me the truth about the accident, he also told me he’d decided to tell the woman’s son, Derek, the truth as well.
The man could have pressed charges, and based on Sean’s confession, my brother might realistically have gone to prison for up to twenty years.
At the time, Sean had thought Derek lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, but it turned out he’d moved.
Sean had been looking for him ever since.
And now, apparently, he’d found him.
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
My anxiety level was rising quickly. “And?”
“When I told him, he just sat for a long time without saying anything. Then he looked at me and I honestly didn’t know what he was going to say, didn’t know if I might be facing prison time or not. I thought he might hit me, threaten me, whatever, but he didn’t do any of those things. He just stared at me and asked me point-blank why I’d waited so long before telling him.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I was afraid. Simple as that. I just told him straight out that I was scared. And he asked me if I wanted to hear him say that he forgave me. I didn’t know which direction he was going with that — if that’s what he was planning to say or not. I just told him, ‘Only if you do.’”
Sean paused, I waited, and finally he said, “He told me his mother was a good woman, that she died long before she should have. And then he told me he could see by looking in my eyes that I’d already served enough time for what had happened. It was his way of saying he forgave me.”
“That took a lot of courage,” I said, “for both of you.”
“Well, I know it did for him. I’m just glad it’s finally in the past. I’m not sure if it belongs there, but I’m glad that’s where it is.”
Christie used to say that forgiveness is the first step toward peace, and now, hearing what Sean said, I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.
We closed up the conversation and I promised to keep him informed about Lien-hua’s progress.
After my fiancée and I had processed what Sean had said, she mentioned that she was finally hungry, and I used the room’s phone to request lunch for her.
A few minutes after the food arrived, so did Ralph and Tessa.
21
My daughter carried a vase of elaborately arranged flowers. “These are from Brineesha and me.” Tessa knew about Lien-hua’s penchant for flower arranging and sounded a little worried that she wouldn’t be satisfied with the arrangement. “I hope you like ’em.”
There were lotuses and chrysanthemums in the vase, and I knew it was no accident. Lien-hua’s name meant “lotus,” and her twin sister Chu-hua’s name meant “chrysanthemum.” Chu-hua had been murdered when she and Lien-hua were twenty-three, and Tessa knew how much chrysanthemums meant to my fiancée.
“They’re exquisite.” Lien-hua accepted the flowers from Tessa. “Really. They’re beautiful.”
Ralph laid my laptop down and flopped a set of clean clothes onto the chair. “I had to get these for you. Tessa refused to go in your room. Said she was scared of what might crawl out from under the bed.”
“It’s not that bad in there.”
Ralph scoffed. “Depends on your definition of ‘bad.’”
“I thought you were supposed to be so brave? I thought you ate the smell of fear for breakfast?”
“It’s lunchtime.”
Tessa snickered, and I noticed Lien-hua look away from me and smile.
I cleared my throat slightly. “Just give me a sec to change.”
Using Lien-hua’s bathroom, I cleaned up, put on the dry clothes, and when I returned to the room I saw that the television was on. A commercial for this afternoon’s opening-day matchup between the Nationals and the Cubs promised to be “an epic opening to an exciting season.”