WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

25 - What Makes a Father

HANA'S POV

I don't go straight to my room when we get home. I tell myself I am going to, that I am going to close the door, crawl beneath my blankets, and spend the rest of the evening pretending that tomorrow doesn't exist, but my feet carry me somewhere else entirely. 

I find my mother in the kitchen, standing at the counter with her sleeves rolled to her elbows, quietly sorting through the groceries she brought home earlier. There is something painfully ordinary about the scene. The soft hum of the refrigerator. The sound of a knife tapping against the cutting board. The faint smell of the tea she always makes in the evening. 

I stand in the doorway for several seconds without saying anything, watching her move around the kitchen as though the world hasn't shifted beneath my feet. Maybe that is what I need. Something ordinary. Something that existed before Aera's words and Jungwon's confession and Niki's warning. Something that belongs to me. 

My mother looks over her shoulder eventually, and the moment her eyes meet mine, her expression changes. She knows me too well. "What's wrong?" She asks, and I almost tell her nothing. It is the answer I've given her for years whenever something hurt and I didn't know how to explain it, whenever I wanted to protect her from whatever was happening inside my head. But tonight the word catches somewhere behind my teeth. I walk into the kitchen instead.

"Mom," I say, and my voice sounds strange even to me. 

She sets the knife down immediately. "What happened?" 

I shake my head. "Nothing happened. I just... I need to ask you something." 

She studies me carefully, and I can see the concern settling into her face. I pull out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sit down, clasping my hands together so she won't see how badly they're trembling. She doesn't sit immediately. She wipes her hands on a towel, then takes the chair across from me, her eyes never leaving my face. 

"You can ask me anything." 

I almost laugh at that because suddenly I don't know if it's true. There are so many things I have never asked her. So many questions I learned to swallow because I thought some things were better left alone. But tonight, I am tired of being the person everyone protects with half-truths while they keep the whole story for themselves. 

"I want you to tell me the truth about our family."

Something happens to her face. It is small. Almost nothing. A pause in her breathing. A slight tightening around her mouth. The kind of reaction most people wouldn't notice because most people aren't their daughters. I notice. And suddenly I know that whatever I'm about to ask has already been sitting somewhere inside her, waiting for me to find it. 

"Why are you asking me that?" She says carefully. 

I look down at my hands. "Because I found out something." She doesn't speak. "And I realized I don't know what's true anymore." My voice cracks slightly, and I hate that it does. "I don't know who I can trust. I don't know what people have been hiding from me. I don't even know if the things I've believed about our family are actually true." 

My mother goes very still. "Hana..." 

"No." I look up at her. "Please don't tell me it's nothing. Please don't tell me I'm imagining things or that I'm too young to understand. I need you to actually answer me. Everyone seems to know something about my life before I do, Mom." Her eyes soften, but I don't let myself be distracted. "How much of my life has been decided by other people without me knowing?"

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she looks older somehow. Tired. Like someone who has been carrying a secret for so long that it has become heavier than the truth itself. "There are things I wanted to protect you from," She says quietly.