Page 2 of The Way Back Home

There’s a pause before she speaks, and the hair on my arms stands up before she says a word. When her voice comes through, it’s tired, more than just her usual exhaustion from standing over a stove all day.

“Are you busy right now?” she asks.

“Just at dinner with my coworkers. End of midterms thing.” I glance back toward the restaurant window, catching a glimpse of the group still laughing over drinks. “Why, what’s up?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your night.”

“It’s fine, Mom.” I cut her off gently, unease already twisting in my gut. She doesn’t usually apologize for calling. “What’s going on?”

Another longer pause. I hear her breathe in slowly, steadying herself.

“Seyeon.” Her voice softens. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

My fingers tighten around the phone.

“Mrs. Nam passed away.”

I don’t really hear what she says right away, the words hovering just out of reach as if my brain’s refusing to let them through. Then they sink in, and everything in me stills. My stomach drops out from under me.

“She passed peacefully,” my mother continues, her voice careful and gentle. “In her sleep. The girl at the store found her Monday morning when she didn’t open up like usual.”

My legs give out from under me, and I lower myself down onto the curb. I brace my elbows on my knees, staring blankly at the pavement between my shoes.

My mother keeps talking, but nothing she says gets through. My chest feels tight, cinched like a fist closing around my ribs, I can’t breathe right. I press the phone harder against my ear, but all I can focus on is the pressure building behind my sternum.

I drop my head into my free hand, elbow braced on my knee, staring at nothing. The soju from dinner sits in my stomach, blurring the edges of everything, but it doesn’t stop the weight pressing down on my chest. If anything, it makes the ache duller and somehow worse, like trying to cry with a pillow over your face.

Mrs. Nam. Gone.

I can’t wrap my head around it. She was always just there, a fixture as permanent as the store itself, sitting behind that counter with a bowl of sunflower seeds and complaints about the neighborhood kids who tracked mud through her aisles. I can’t imagine her gone. The idea seems ridiculous. Impossible.

My mother’s voice continues through the phone, soft, threading through my haze like she’s trying to hold my hand through the receiver.

“Seyeon, I wouldn’t ask this of you, but I have to.” She pauses, giving me a moment to brace. “Mrs. Nam named you in her will.”

That gets through. I blink, sitting up a little straighter.

“Me?” I croak hoarsely, startled at the sound of my own voice.

“I know you have work,” my mother continues, quickly to soften the blow. “And I know how you feel about coming back home. But they need you here, Seyeon. For the reading.”

The world tips sideways. It feels like someone’s grabbed my shoulder and yanked me off balance. My stomach churns.

Home.

Not the safe, sanitized version of home I’ve built here with my apartment and my classroom and my purposefully maintained distance. The real one. The one with narrow alleys and shuttered restaurant fronts, the town I haven’t set foot in for over a decade, out of pure necessity for my own sanity.

My mother keeps talking, and I catch pieces of it through the ringing in my ears. The funeral’s tomorrow, she says. She’s helping organize it, been running back and forth all day trying to get everything settled with such short notice. She knows I probably can’t make it, not with so little warning. The will reading is set for Sunday, but if it’s too soon, she says, they can try to push it back. Give me more time.

I close my eyes, feeling the sting behind them, and swallow hard, my throat tight.

“It’s fine,” I say, cutting her off before she can offer another apology I don’t need. I sound steadier than I feel, inside I’m still reeling, spinning. “I’ll be there.”

There’s a small pause on the other end, like she’s checking to make sure she heard me correctly.

“You will?”

“Yeah.” I press my palm against my eye, breathing out slowly. “I’ll figure out the details. Just … send me the address for the reading. And the funeral information, if you have it.”