Chapter 210: Good News
She looked at Sean.
"Reyes said they’d give them phones," said Sean quietly.
Mia’s hand moved to pick it up and then stopped an inch away from the table, hovering there for a second that was longer than a second.
She picked it up.
"Hello," she said.
The sound that came through the phone was audible from where Sean was sitting. Not words immediately. Just a specific sound, the kind that happened when someone had been holding something for twelve days and had finally been handed a phone and dialed a number they’d been told was safe and heard someone answer.
Mia’s face changed completely.
Not dramatically. Just the specific thing that happened when something enormous arrived through a small speaker pressed against someone’s ear. She pressed her free hand flat against the table like she needed something solid.
"Soo-Jin," she said. Her voice came out different from how she’d been speaking all day. Softer. Stripped of everything except the fact of it. "I know. I know. It’s okay."
Makima came back to the table and read the room in one second and sat down quietly.
The three of them stayed very still while the sound continued from the phone, Soo-Jin on the other end doing what people did when the thing they’d been holding for months finally had somewhere to go.
Mia wasn’t saying much. Just small things. "I know." "You’re okay." "I know." The specific sounds of someone holding a space for someone else rather than filling it.
After a while the sounds from the phone changed. The quality of them. Still Soo-Jin’s voice but different, words becoming clearer as the first wave of it moved through.
Mia listened. Her expression shifted through things Sean couldn’t entirely name, things that lived between relief and sorrow and something that was neither.
"The test," said Mia. A pause. "You did? Tell me." She listened. "Of course you did. I told you." A pause. "I always knew you would."
Sean looked at the table.
He thought about a seventeen year old sitting somewhere across the city with a phone a victim support person had handed her, calling a number she’d been keeping in her head for however long Mia had told her to keep it.
He thought about a chemistry test on a Wednesday in the middle of all of this.
"Listen to me," said Mia. Her voice had settled into something steadier now, the practical quality she carried when something needed to be done rather than felt. "You’re going to go home. Your parents are there. Your mom has been calling the support line every hour apparently." A pause. "I know. I know you were scared to tell them." Another pause. "Soo-Jin. They don’t care about any of that. They just want you home." She held the phone against her ear and looked at the table and her jaw tightened briefly. "Yes. Go home."
A longer pause.
"I’ll see you soon," said Mia. "I promise." A beat. "Yes I promise. I don’t say things I don’t mean. You know that." The corner of her mouth moved slightly. "I’m glad the test went well. Go home."
She lowered the phone.
Looked at it for a moment.
Put it face down on the table.
The apartment was quiet.
Makima stood up without saying anything and went to the kitchen and came back with three cups of tea she’d made at some point in the last five minutes without anyone noticing her do it.
She set them on the table and sat back down.
Mia wrapped both hands around her cup.
"She passed the chemistry test," she said finally. "She was telling me about the test while she was crying. She got eighty-four percent." She looked at the cup. "She studied for it in the house on Meridian Street while she was waiting for something to happen that she didn’t know the shape of." She paused. "Eighty-four percent."
Sean said nothing.
"Her parents are there," said Mia. "At wherever they took her. Her mom hasn’t left since they called her this morning." She turned the cup slowly in her hands. "She said her mom held onto her for a long time without saying anything. Just held on."
Makima looked at her tea.
"She said she wanted to call me first," said Mia. "Before she talked to anyone else. Because I was the one who told her help was coming and she wanted me to know it came." She pressed her lips together briefly. "She said I told you someone was coming. I never said that. I just told her help was coming. She added the someone herself." She looked at Sean. "She figured out there was a specific person even though I never said that."
"She’s smart," said Sean.
"Eighty-four percent smart," said Mia.
Something moved through her expression that was complicated and human and real.
"I told her I’d see her soon," she said. "I don’t know when that is or what it looks like. But I told her."
"It’ll happen," said Makima. Simply.
Mia looked at her. "How do you do that."
"What," said Makima.
"Say the thing that’s actually true instead of the thing that sounds reassuring," said Mia. "Most people would have said I know or I’m sure you will. You said it’ll happen. Those aren’t the same thing."
"No," said Makima. "They’re not."
"It’s a skill," said Mia.
"It’s practice," said Makima. "The same thing eventually."
Mia held her cup for a moment. Then she looked at Sean.
"The fifteen year old," she said. "Ji. Has she."
His phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at it.
Reyes.
All twelve confirmed home or in care as of six fifteen PM. Jiyeon Park has been reunited with her family. The briefing about responsibility happened exactly as you requested. Her support worker confirmed she heard it and understood it.
He turned the phone so Mia could see the message.
She read it.
He watched her read it and watched what happened to her face when she did.