“Why don’t you sit down?” Casey asked her mother, her voice gentle and tentative.
Leah didn’t budge. “I didn’t know where you were.”
Her dark eyes were full of hurt. As far back as Casey could remember, her mother was terrified of travel and entering new spaces.
“How long have you been here?” Leah asked. The apartment didn’t seem like her daughter’s. The space felt sterile, like an office. Coffee was brewing in the kitchen; the machine sputtered loudly. There was some sewing and blue cotton on the wooden table near the window. Who was sewing? she wondered. “Why didn’t you come home?”
“Daddy said to get out.” She was too grown up to say “Daddy,” but it was too late to call him anything else.
“Why didn’t you just say you were sorry? Do you know how hard your father works? Everything he ever did was for you girls.” Leah shook her head briskly, upset by her daughter’s stubbornness.
Casey could almost hear Jay’s steady breathing in the kitchen.
Leah bent over her purse beside her shoes. She pulled out her Bible, zipped open the cover, and withdrew the white envelope. In her rush and shock, she’d forgotten to say her thanksgiving prayer when she’d reached Casey’s apartment. She’d neglected to praise God when it was He who’d led her here. And she felt awful for lying to her husband. Leah wanted to leave then, get back to the store.
“Here.” She handed the envelope to Casey quickly, avoiding any contact between them.
Casey stared at the thick packet. “No. It’s okay. I have a job. I’m fine.”
Leah turned to leave. Casey wanted to hold her back, to touch her. It amazed her how much she wanted her mother to touch her, too, and the more persistent this desire grew, the more Casey pulled back, because this need felt dangerous, as though the touch alone might burn her alive. Her mother had come to give her money （what else came in these envelopes anyway except for tidy stacks of twenty-dollar bills scrounged by immigrants?）—and Tina would need this money for tuition, and there was her father’s retirement to consider.
“Umma will go now . . Ahpa ga—” Leah stopped herself.
Casey nodded. Her father didn’t know about the visit. “Is he okay?”
Leah nodded. Ahpa is just okay. You have broken his heart. He has given up on you, and now it is your turn to fight him for his love. Don’t you know, Leah wondered, that you cannot live well without your father’s blessing? In Genesis, Rebekah had encouraged her younger son, Jacob, to deceive her older son, Esau, and their father, Isaac, so her favored Jacob could receive the blessing. Rebekah was wrong to use trickery, but she had understood something essential about the difficulties of life and the protection of a father’s blessing.
You are my favorite, Leah wanted to say. Instead, she zipped up the Bible with care, making sure to tuck in the frayed ribbon page holder. The day she left Korea, her father had taken a bus from their distant country town to Kimpo airport to bring her this Bible. In the crowded terminal, they’d sat beside each other, knees touching on bucket-shaped seats, and he’d held her hands in his. He’d prayed for her. Once she was seated on the plane—her girls all settled in with their apple slices and sock dolls for the long trip ahead—Leah had loosened the knot of the dark blue fabric-wrapped package. The Bible’s brown leather cover reminded her of her father’s tanned face—wrinkled and thickly mottled, like the bark of a tree. Later that year, he died suddenly, and Leah felt that it violated nature for a child to live so far from her home.
The clatter of a dish came from the kitchen. “Uh-muh,” Leah said in surprise, but Casey wasn’t startled. Seconds later, a young American man stepped out of the kitchen and walked toward her, wearing gray sweatpants, smiling, his wavy hair tousled, his eyes puffy from sleep. He held out his hand to greet her, and Leah didn’t know what to do.
Casey had fully intended to come for him. He just couldn’t wait. Her mother was stunned by his appearance.
Leah turned to Casey, hoping her daughter would calm her somehow—to explain this away. But Casey looked irritated more than shocked. Then Leah figured out that she must’ve been living with this American. Her daughter, who’d gone to college but never had any money, would’ve needed a roommate. The place wasn’t fancy like Ella’s, but the rent would’ve been at least fifteen hundred or something high like that. Her customers were always complaining about rents in the city. The man would think Casey must be some sort of whore. Was there more than one bedroom? Leah clutched her coat lapels and tried to look less disturbed than she felt.