“I don’t care,” he’d answered.
That had been a lie. He did care, but not for the reasons Dawn thought.
In order for him to feel okay about his concession, he’d had to make it part of his ultimate revenge.
Dawn had managed to keep him secret for years. That ended today. Her mother would turn around to see him, the Chinese boy she had never wanted Dawn to tutor. Then she’d recoil in horror at how far her daughter had sunk. She might even yell and scream at Dawn for daring to bring a Chinese hoodlum to her door.
This forced meeting would be even more satisfying than when he’d outed Dawn to her family nine years ago. And her mother’s upset would make up for any confusion he felt about not only allowing Dawn to leave Rhode Island but also escorting her all the way to Texas.
He braced himself, more than ready for this confrontation.
However, her mother didn’t turn around as they came up the sidewalk. Not even when they stopped right behind her and Dawn called out, “Mom. Mom!”
Eventually, Dawn resorted to touching her mother’s shoulder, which made her mother jump and nearly drop her pruning shears before whipping around to see who had scared her.
Gyeong Kingston was both smaller and more delicate than Victor expected. She was a couple of inches shorter than Dawn, with long black hair that she wore tied back in a loose braid. He now understood Dawn’s story about how her father insisted on calling her mom Doll. If you put an Instagram filter over the fine lines around her eyes and mouth and perhaps added an eyelid surgery, she would look exactly like a doll you’d find in a package.
She gasped when she saw the daughter she hadn’t spoken to in nine years standing there.
“Dawn?” she said, her mouth falling open with utter shock…right before her expression softened, and she threw her arms around her daughter. To both Victor’s and Dawn’s shock.
“Dawn! Why didn’t you tell me you are coming down here to see me?” she demanded, drawing back to sign and speak at the same time.
Her warm brown eyes so similar to Dawn’s landed on Victor. “And who is this man in a suit that you’ve brought with you?”
“I tried to call you, but you never answered,” Dawn told her, ignoring the second question.
“Oh. I didn’t check my phone this morning!” Her mother waved a dismissive hand as if the technology everyone else considered essential was completely optional for her. Then she lamented, “No one ever calls me except for your brother and the doctors anyway, so what’s the point? That’s why you scared me half to death when you showed up here without any warning whatsoever.”
Victor found himself suppressing a smile. Dawn had been right about her mother’s facility with guilt trips. She’d slipped that one in with seemingly no effort.
“I shouldn’t have scared you,” Dawn replied. “I was calling your name before I tapped you on the shoulder. But you didn’t hear me. What’s going on with your implant?”
Her mother huffed. “Oh, that silly ear of mine!”
After a moment of confusion, Victor realized that “ear” must be how she referred to the cochlear implant she received shortly after returning to America.
“Earlier this week, I accidentally got in the shower without taking the external processor off, and it shorted out! Can you believe that?” Her mother spoke-signed to Dawn.
“What?” Dawn’s eyes widened with worry. “Mom, how are you going to get through surgery without being able to hear what everyone is say—”
“What is this?” Gyeong seized Dawn’s left hand, cutting her daughter off. “You got married and didn’t tell me?”
“We weren’t exactly talking,” Dawn started to say with an embarrassed grimace.
She might as well have not wasted her breath.
“You got married and you didn’t tell Byron to tell me,” her mother amended.
Before Dawn could answer, Gyeong’s accusing gaze dropped to Victor’s hand with the laser focus of an Asian mother who thought her daughter was entirely on the shelf. “You got married to a Korean boy without telling me?”
“He’s not Korean,” Dawn answered, rubbing at her temple with the hand her mother wasn’t holding in a death grip. “And we weren’t talking. Remember?”
“He’s Korean!” her mother insisted. “Look at his big boy build. Like one of those Korean YouTubers. How do you call them? Thirst traps!”
“He’s not Korean,” Dawn insisted. “Also, what are you watching on YouTube?”
“Hold on, Dawn’s Husband…” Gyeong glared at Victor, her formerly warm brown eyes now laced with suspicion.
Victor stilled, waiting for her to put two and two together and realize he was the same Chinese boy she hadn’t wanted her daughter to date fifteen years ago.
But then her mother asked him, “Have you had lunch yet? I made bulgogi last night and I’ve got plenty of leftovers.”
Gyeong bounced into the house without waiting for an answer. Leaving him and Dawn to follow.
“My mom and I are nothing alike. Like, we might as well come from two different planets.” Dawn had told him that once when they were teenagers. But at that moment, Gyeong reminded Victor very much of her daughter on their first anniversary.
After taking off their shoes inside the front door, they found her mother in the kitchen, pulling glass Pyrex dishes out of the refrigerator.
“Sit! Sit!” she told them, waving them toward the kitchen table. “All I have to do is heat this up in the microwave. It will be ready in just a few minutes. Do you want some wine with lunch? I’ve got Riesling. Riesling goes great with bulgogi.”
“That’s what I said!” Dawn crowed, shooting Victor a triumphant look. But then she frowned and asked-signed her mother, “Are you supposed to be drinking the day before your surgery?”
“It’s okay,” her mother insisted, pulling down three glasses.
“Not for me, mom, thanks. I don’t drink,” Dawn said with a hasty glance towards Victor.
“You don’t drink?” her mother answered with a laugh. “You are no daughter of mine!”
Her mother had probably meant that as a little quip as she bent down to open a standalone wine fridge at the far left of the outer wall’s counter. But with her back turned, she didn’t see the way Dawn visibly flinched, as if her mother had slapped her.
Jokes like that, Victor supposed, were what the internet often referred to as “too soon.”
He also noted that the little fridge was nearly as stuffed with bottles as Dawn’s had been before Victor had Wayne clear it out.
“You’ll have a glass with me, right, Dawn’s Husband?” Gyeong said when she stood back up with the bottle. The bottle was already uncorked. And Victor wondered if her slightly flushed face had less to do with the windy day than this not being her first glass.
Dawn’s eyes darted between him and her mother, obviously distressed. And that was how he discovered the hard way, that he still didn’t love seeing her upset. Not unless he was the one who put her in that state.
“None for me either,” he signed to her mother. Not out of solidarity with Dawn, he insisted to himself. Rather because he wanted to stay sharp and clear for this once-in-a-lifetime meeting.