Min-jun Park stayed on the top step with one polished shoe lifted above the marble, as if the siren outside had pinned him there.
My phone was still recording.
Isabella sat behind me on the bed, wrapped in the gray blanket that smelled of medicine and old detergent.
Her fingers clung to my sleeve with almost no strength, but she would not let go.
The white door stood open now.
The deadbolt faced the hallway.
The scratches around the handle were clear in the cold afternoon light.
Min-jun looked first at the phone.
Then at Isabella. Then at me.
“Mrs. Carter,” he said softly, “you should not be in my house.”
His voice had not changed since the courthouse twelve years earlier.
Smooth. Careful. Built to sound reasonable in front of strangers.
I stepped sideways until my body blocked the doorway.
“This house is not the problem,” I said.
Downstairs, tires hissed against wet pavement.
A car door opened. Then another.
Heavy steps crossed the front walk.
Min-jun’s jaw tightened. The cufflink on his left wrist flashed when his hand moved toward his pocket.
“Do not touch your phone,” I said.
He smiled at that. Not a wide smile.
Just the corner of his mouth lifting, the way people smile when they think age has made you harmless.
“You do not understand what she has been through,” he said.
“Isabella has been unwell for years.
She becomes confused. She forgets things.
