Prenup of a Third Son novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Stone Walls

The line clicked off.

Madam Heo looked at the dark phone in Do-hyun's hand for a long moment.

Then she took her hand off the gate, one finger at a time.

"Well," she said. "She always was a stubborn little thing."

She turned and walked to her car. The secretary hurried after her with the umbrella.

Tae-joon stood in the lane a moment longer.

He looked at Yu-na through the bars.

"Yu-na," he said.

She was already walking back to the house with the key in her hand. She didn't turn around.

He got into the second car. It followed the first one down between the stone walls until the sound was gone.

The housekeeper dropped her shoulders.

"I'll make dinner," she said. "There's mackerel."

There was mackerel, grilled with salt, and rice, and the mandarin kimchi she had made from the first fruit of the year.

Yu-na ate two bowls of rice without looking up and then went pink.

"I haven't been hungry since July," she said.

"Eat the fish," the housekeeper told her. "The baby wants fish."

After dinner Yu-na said she would sleep in the back room.

"Somebody should be happy in it," she said, and shut the door.

The housekeeper made up a bed for Seo-yeon and Do-hyun in the big room at the front of the house, where Do-hyun's father had slept.

It was a plain room.

A wardrobe of dark wood, a low desk under the window, a framed photograph on the wall gone pale with sun.

A man of about forty, laughing, holding a little boy up on his shoulders in front of the stone wall.

Do-hyun stood looking at it with his hands in his pockets.

"He used to bring me here every summer," he said. "Just us. My mother didn't come. The other one. She hated the wind."

"And the Teacher?"

"She came once. When I was ten." He touched the frame, straightening it a fraction. "I didn't know why she was crying on the beach."

"I gave her my ice cream."

Seo-yeon sat down on the edge of the bedding.

"Tell me about the Saturdays," she said. "Not the sad parts."

He turned around, surprised.

Then he sat down on the floor with his back against his father's wardrobe, his long legs out in front of him.

"The first thing she taught me was the character for one," he said. "One line. I was five. It took three months."

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