Prenup of a Third Son novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The End of the Table

Seo-yeon slid out from under his arm and took the phone down to the kitchen.

She called Yu-na standing at his sink in his shirt.

Yu-na answered on the fifth ring. Her voice was thick with sleep.

"He sent it to you," she said. "I told him not to."

"Is it true?"

"It's true that she said it." Seo-yeon heard her sit up. "The flight's already booked, Seo-yeon. The twenty-sixth, eight in the morning."

"She booked it in July."

"So it doesn't matter if I come."

"It matters to her. She wants you to stay home and think it's your fault." A pause. "Come."

"Yu-na."

"Come and sit at that table," Yu-na said. "I want one person there who isn't afraid of her. Just once, before I go."

On Chuseok morning Seo-yeon's mother pressed a stack of wrapped containers into her arms at the shop door.

Pan-fried fish, zucchini, beef and green onion skewers. She had been up since four.

"You don't go to a family's house empty-handed," she said. "Even that family."

"Mom. They'll have a cook."

"Then they'll have a cook and my jeon." She straightened Seo-yeon's collar. "Sit up straight. Eat everything. Don't let her see you hungry."

Do-hyun picked Seo-yeon up in the old grey Volvo.

He was wearing a dark navy hanbok coat over a white jeogori, very plain.

He looked severe and handsome.

"You look," Seo-yeon said.

"I know." He took the containers from her and put them on the back seat as if they were porcelain. "So do you."

She was in black. A long black dress with a high neck. Her mother had said she was going to bury them.

The house in Seongbuk-dong was behind a long stone wall with a tiled roof along the top.

Inside the gate was a courtyard of grey stone, swept spotless, with a single old pine in the middle.

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