Page 5 of The Secret Of Us

“But you meant it,” he says. “You’ve always been intentional with your words. Your mother is the same. It’s one of your best traits.”

“I just…”

I just want you to be honest with me.

I just want to know if what I did really was the tipping point.

I just want us all to be normal again.

My hands clench into fists as I struggle to figure out what to say. When I tilt my head to look at him again, he’s staring at me.

“I know,” he says as if he can read my mind by looking at me. “And I’m sorry for how it’s been. Give us some time. We never wanted you or Mina to deal with this along with everything else, and I’m sorry for that, too.”

My fingers uncurl as I press my palms flat against my thighs. I feel the roughness of my jeans as I drag my hands up and down, wiping my hands like I can wipe away the past few moments.

Seconds pass in silence, the two of us taking each other in. The small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes seem more pronounced, as are the smile lines that frame his mouth. We’ve both got the same small curves at the corners of our lips.

People have said plenty of times that I look exactly like Appa did when he was younger. I used to take pride in that, looking just like my favourite person in the world. But now we’ve gotten to the point where the person I was closest to seems like a stranger. His actions over the past few months make it hard to reconcile the man in front of me with the father who raised me.

“Knock, knock.”

We both turn our heads to see Eomma and Mina standing in the open doorway. The two look like sisters standing side by side, Mina very clearly her mother’s daughter, taking her long, straight black hair and wide brown eyes.

“We’re all finished in Mina’s room. How’s it going in here?”

Appa pushes off the desk, rapping a closed fist against it once and dusting his hands off as if he was the one who actually built the desk. He makes his way toward the door, and I follow after him, smoothing my hand over the wood he just touched.

They swap places, Eomma approaching me as Appa stands next to Mina. It’s reminiscent of the swaps that happened at the beginning of summer as we went back and forth between Eomma’s house and Appa’s new apartment.

It only took a few weeks before I got tired of it and booked a flight to Korea to spend the rest of the summer with my grandparents. I landed back in England a few days ago, leaving myself just enough time to pack my stuff up and get ready to move in here.

Eomma reaches up to hold my cheek. She’s over a foot shorter than me, so I bend my knees slightly to make it easier for her.

“It’ll be okay. Just keep your head down-“

“And focus on my grades. Yeah, yeah, I know.”

I wish I could find more comfort in her words, in her soft voice, which has never been anything but gentle, but I can’t. I step away from her, sitting at my desk again as I wait for this ordeal to end. My parents have barely looked at each other, and I’m growing tired of pretending I don’t notice.

“Take care of your sister,” Eomma says before going back to the door. She gives Mina one last hug, whispering something to her that I can’t make out. Appa hugs Mina, too, and then stands next to Eomma in the doorway. Their arms are so close to touching, but it’s like there’s an invisible force field between them.

“We’ll get going now,”Appa says, trying to get a goodbye from me, but I keep my mouth closed. I turn to stare at my desk instead and hear his small sigh as Mina ushers them out of my room. She returns a few moments later.

“You okay?” she asks, hopping up to take a seat on my bed.

“I should be asking you that.”

“I’m good,” Mina says, and I turn to look at her and see a wide smile on her face. “Excited, actually. I already made a friend!”

“You did?” I try my best to seem enthusiastic as she tells me about the girl in the room next to hers. It helps me to feel a bit more optimistic about how her time at Coates will be.

“We’re going to dinner together later, too!”

“That sounds like so much fun,” I say, my voice going higher like it usually does when I talk to my younger sister.

She’s five years younger than me, and I’ve always been fiercely protective of her. But seeing her smile like this, such a contrast to how she was last year, makes it hard to regret the actions that led to us being here. I’m glad she gets a fresh start.

Her phone pings, and she turns it over in her palm. Her smile grows wider as the screen illuminates her face.

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