Chapter 30: Stay or Go

Mara's POV

I went out for kindling at half past four and found a bag behind the woodpile.

It was black nylon, zipped halfway, and it wasn't mine.

I crouched in the frost with my torch and looked inside.

Two shirts, a passport, a cheap phone, and a toothbrush still in its plastic.

I zipped it shut, set it on the porch rail in plain sight, and went in to make coffee.

I made enough noise to wake the dead.

Chan came out of the bedroom in his sweatpants with his hair flat on one side.

He saw the bag through the window and stopped.

"Sit down," I said.

"Mara."

"Sit."

He sat at my table with his hands between his knees, exactly where Hyunjin had sat on the first night.

Hyunjin came down the ladder behind him, listening.

"Who gets the first word?" I asked. "You or me?"

"Min made me an offer," Chan said. "Yesterday, on the slip."

"I assumed. Go on."

He told me.

He told it flat and fast, looking at the tabletop.

Six guards for Hyunjin, the case dropped, a five-year renewal, a statement that said nobody's name.

Then the second part, the eleven thousand photographs of me, and the Korean press and my brother.

Hyunjin made a hard, short noise in his throat.

"I would never have let you keep that to yourself," he said.

"I know. That's why I didn't tell you."

"Chan-hyung."

"If I go on the charter, the files don't get published."

"You believe that?" I said.

"I believe he'd rather have me than a scandal."

"He'd rather have you and the scandal, if he can get both."

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