Reading Time: 117 Minutes

Title: The Strength of Responsibility
Series: The Weight of Actions
Series Order: 2
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Contemporary, Family
Relationship(s): Maddie Buckley & Howard “Chimney” Han
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: canon typical violence, discussion of canon domestic violence, discussion of Postpartum Depression, discussion of past suicidal thoughts, in parts not Chimney friendly
Author Note: Translations available on master post.
Beta: starlitenite
Word Count: 93000
Summary: When Maddie left to get help for her PPD, she didn’t expect to find her family in shambles once she eventually returned. It is a struggle to deal with the consequences of her and Chimney’s actions, but in the end, there is only strength to be found in taking responsibility for her life and the future she intends to build for her daughter.
Artist: Twigen

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Chapter 01

“Long time since we went out for a beer together,” Tommy said as they settled in the booth, each cradling a beer in front of them.

Chimney huffed. “Last two years were crazy, right? First the pandemic, then becoming a dad for me.”

Tommy laughed. “Yeah. Wouldn’t have ever thought to see you settle down, really. Glad you found someone, though.”

Chimney grinned and shrugged, sipping his beer. Until Maddie had come along, he hadn’t expected children or to settle down either. For years he had been convinced that he wouldn’t make a good father with the bad example he had grown up with, and he hadn’t really felt the urge for children either, not even while babysitting Denny when Hen and Karen had needed a couple of hours for themselves. He was sure that Maddie and he would have never planned for children, but Jee-Yun was a very happy and most welcome accident.

“How’s your family?” Chimney asked.

Tommy grinned brightly. “Great. My oldest is starting middle school, can you believe it? Time flies!”

“I hope like hell all of you threatening me with that are wrong, wrong, wrong,” Chimney muttered into his beer and rolled his eyes. “Hen and Karen said the same thing, that Denny’s just grown up way too fast. I hope my baby will stay my baby for a long time to come.”

“That’s not how that works, buddy,” Tommy laughed. “Enjoy all the time you have with her before she develops into her own very independent little person and thinks it’s uncool to hang out with her dad most of the time. I’m already dreading the time when Alice and Adam are old enough for that bullshit now that it’s happened with Lucy.”

“First date is the next big event for Lucy, isn’t it?”

Tommy shuddered. “Don’t you even start!”

Chimney grinned. “Just saying.”

“Don’t think you won’t get that back when Jee-Yun is that age, my friend,” Tommy said darkly.

Chimney shrugged, his grin not faltering. He still had a lot of time before his little angel would even think about any dates, and he would keep holding onto his conviction that time wouldn’t fly for as long as he possibly could. “You’re still with the 217, right? What can you tell me about B shift in your house?”

Tommy leaned back with a frown and silently watched Chimney for a long time. “I’m taking over as captain of B shift on February 20th. Why are you asking?”

Chimney stared, his mouth hanging open. He had had a meeting in the Chief’s office the day before where he’d had to update his progress in the mandated anger management program, and he had been informed during that meeting that he would be transferred to the B shift of the 217 in March. He hadn’t gotten any more information about his new station yet, but he had reached out to Tommy immediately to find out what he could expect there.

With this news, his own transfer there suddenly made a little more sense. Maybe they wanted to give him a soft landing in his new house by putting him somewhere where he knew—and more importantly trusted—his new captain. It was really the least they could do for him.

“Wow.” Chimney cleared his throat. “That’s great news! Congratulations! I didn’t expect that, but I’m really happy for you! I didn’t even know you were going for the position!”

Tommy grinned and shrugged. “Thanks. Will be a hell of a first appointment as captain. There has been a lot of turnover on B shift in the last three or four years. No one who is there right now has been with the 217 longer than two years, and we’ll get two new firefighters in February and a new paramedic in March. I’ll change shifts in two weeks to get a feel for the crew before I take over as captain. I know most of who is already there of course, but I went through enough changes of captains at the 118 to know it’s easier if we have already worked together for a little bit before I take the helm.”

“Why so much unrest?” Chimney asked. Maybe there was reason to worry, even with Tommy as his new captain.

“Bad luck, mostly,” Tommy said. “People got injured, others moved away for family reasons, retirement. Six people retired out of B shift in the last two years, the old captain makes seven now.”

Chimney made a face. “So, nothing wrong with anyone on shift per se.”

“Nope. The 217 has good people. And I hope it stays that way with the new people coming in.”

Chimney nodded. He sighed and waved a hand. “Say hello to your new paramedic starting in March. Got the news yesterday that I’m getting transferred to your house. They didn’t tell me you’d be my Captain, though!”

Tommy put down his glass with a loud thud and leaned over the table. “What the hell? You’re leaving the 118?”

Chimney shrugged. He fisted his hands under the table and took a deep breath. It still stung that he wasn’t able to go back to his own team, but his union rep had made it very clear that there was no chance for Chimney to fight that decision. It might have been different if he had fought the charges Buck had brought against him and won that trial, but Chimney tried not to wonder if he would have made another decision there if he had known this earlier. He would have to make the best out of the situation as it was now.

“Not by choice.” Chimney pursed his lips and stared at the table. “But things are as they are, and I’m happy I’ll have at least one familiar face there.”

“What happened?” Tommy asked aghast. “I thought you would never leave the 118. You stuck it out with Gerrard until we found something the union couldn’t argue him out of. After that, I really thought you’d be at the 118 until the day you retired.”

“That was the plan,” Chimney muttered. He clenched his teeth and shook his head. “It’s a fucked-up story, but I guess you’ll get fed the official line when you see my file anyway.”

Tommy frowned, but he waited for Chimney to go on.

“My girlfriend’s brother has been part of the 118 for a little over five years,” Chimney began slowly. “In fact, I met Maddie because he asked for help when she moved into her first apartment here in LA. She was in a bad situation then, but we hit it off as friends right away.”

“Buckley,” Tommy nodded. “The guy who replaced me, right?”

Chimney huffed. “He couldn’t ever really replace you, but yeah. He’s a hothead, barely thinks before he acts. Wouldn’t have ever expected him to stick it out for this long.”

Tommy chuckled. “Now you know how I felt about you in the beginning.”

“I wasn’t half as bad as him, believe me,” Chimney said, grinning. “Whatever. Last October, right after our shift from hell during the blackout, Buck and I had a pretty bad argument. Maddie wasn’t … She is slowly getting better now, but she was pretty bad off for a while after Jee-Yun’s birth. She left to seek treatment after the blackout, but she hadn’t told me, and … You have no idea how worried I was about her. She brought Jee to the 118 while I was on my way home and then left, only leaving me some cryptic video message.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Tommy muttered.

Chimney shrugged. “She’s back home and we’ll work on getting back to where we were before. But anyway, I had an argument with Buck about her. We were both pretty out of line with a lot of the things we said, and it got physical by the end.” He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at his beer. “For some reason I still don’t understand, Buck decided to go to the police afterward. While I was trying to find the missing mother of my daughter, he went to the police and spun our argument around to make an assault out of it.”

Tommy leaned back, his hands pressed flat on the table and blew out air between his teeth. “Wow. What an ass.”

“He also sent me to Boston on a wild goose chase when he knew Maddie had never left the greater LA area.” Chimney took a deep breath and shook his head. “Whatever. I got arrested in Boston because of that bullshit, can you believe that? Until then I had no idea what was even going on here. When I was back in LA, he insisted on going through with the charges filed against me. And of course, the LAFD had to react to that somehow.”

Tommy crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t tell me that kind of bullshit went before a judge, and you actually got convicted for it.”

Chimney gritted his teeth. “I … pled guilty.”

Tommy blinked. “What?”

“Maddie is … Her ex was horrible. When she left him, he followed her here and abducted her. You remember when I was in the hospital because someone had stabbed me in the gut? That was him. He nearly killed her and she had to kill him in self-defense. And now she’s had to deal with PPD and everything, I didn’t want … It was easier this way. I didn’t want her to have to deal with a trial, and my lawyer told me the chances of getting away scot-free were slim.”

“Damn,” Tommy muttered. “You know, this sounds like Buckley isn’t really happy about your relationship with his sister. Putting her through that crap when he knows she isn’t doing well just to get one over on you.”

Chimney shrugged. “Maddie and I are a family, Buck won’t ever be able to change that. I have thought about that, too, already. Even confronted him with it. He denies it, of course.”

Tommy scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Of course he does.”

“Maddie and I will figure ourselves out. We’re on a break right now, because frankly, her leaving the way she did—it did a lot to damage the trust between us. But we love each other, and I know we’ll eventually figure this out.”

“And because of that situation with Buckley, they’re transferring you to another station?”

Chimney nodded. “I’m sitting out a four-month suspension right now, but really, that’s kinda a godsend. And they thankfully count it starting from early November when I was arrested, even though I was technically on FMLA leave at that point. Gives me a lot more time to spend time with Maddie and Jee-Yun. And starting March 3rd I’ll be your new paramedic. I’m way less apprehensive about that now that I know you’ll be my new captain. I think you’ll be a good one.”

Tommy grinned. “I think you’ll be a good fit with the other paramedics.” He frowned and pursed his lips. “You won’t be listed as the most senior paramedic, though. We just had an in-house promotion for that on B Shift.”

Chimney huffed and nursed his beer for a while. Losing that position stung nearly as much as having to leave the 118. He had worked hard to get where he had been, and Buck’s insistence on dragging family matters out into public had cost him nearly all of it. “I have been informed, unofficially of course, that I’ll never again be in a position of authority over anyone.”

“Bullshit!” Tommy nearly shouted.

“What can I do?” Chimney asked. “I pled guilty to the charges and that’s all they see. They don’t care that I did it to protect the mental health of my girlfriend, of the mother of my child.”

“Still bullshit,” Tommy muttered darkly. “After all you did for the department, you deserve better. But it’s good you’ll be under my command. Let’s wait a year or two, let them forget about the bullshit Buckley pulled. I’m sure we can find a way to make this right for you as much as we can. What did the rest of the 118 say about this? Especially Hen and Bobby?”

“I honestly haven’t talked to Bobby about any of this yet. He hasn’t called me and I’m hesitant to reach out to him. Buck is … special to him. I don’t know why, really, but Bobby even forgave him for suing him, so I’ll just have to assume Bobby’s on his side now as well.”

Tommy frowned. “Buckley sued Bobby? For what? Though, that seems to be his go-to solution.”

“Long story,” Chimney muttered. “But I’ll be happy to tell you all about it later. The point is, Bobby had the chance to transfer Buck to another house after that, but he didn’t. As far as I know, he didn’t protest my transfer, and that’s all I need to know about that situation, right?”

“I’m so sorry,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “I really thought he would be better than that. And Hen?”

“Hen is as unhappy as I am, but she’ll stick it out with the 118. Did you know she’s in med school?”

Tommy stared at Chimney open-mouthed. “No. Really? How? Why? And how the hell does that work with our schedules?”

Chimney laughed. “Karen and Hen somehow manage to make it work. She’s in the middle of her second year now, and she is really happy with it. She had an accident while driving a patient to the hospital a while back, and that really threw her. Somehow dealing with that led to med school. She’ll make a good doctor. Bobby is giving her a lot of leeway so that she can balance school, our job, and her family. I understand why she won’t rock that boat. She won’t stay in the job for much more than another year anyway.”

“Okay, tell me more about Hen and med school!” Tommy leaned forward and braced his arms on the table. “That’s much more interesting than bullshit about Buckley.”

“Agreed. We can go back to Buck’s bullshit when we’ve had a couple more beers,” Chimney said grinning.

It had been a good idea to meet Tommy, not just to get a feel for the 217, but also to reconnect with his old friend. Maybe he should do that with more old friends he had slowly lost contact with, especially over the last year or two.

***

Maddie laughed as Josh pulled her into a fierce hug as soon as he saw her. She was running a little late after dropping Jee-Yun off with the Lees, but everyone kept telling her that her being late was something to be expected until at least Jee was in school.

“It’s so good to see you, Maddie!” Josh said, holding onto her tightly. “I missed you.”

Maddie grinned and patted his back. “I missed you, too. And I’m sorry for just vanishing.”

Josh shook his head and took half a step back, holding onto her shoulders. “Don’t be. You did what you needed to do for yourself. Let’s sit down. I’ve already ordered your favorite in the hope that it is still your favorite!”

“Thankfully the pregnancy did not change my taste in coffee!” Maddie shuddered as they sat down at the table in the corner of the café Josh had chosen. “Oh god, that would have been horrible! There are teas I just can’t stand anymore, and it’s not even those I drank too much of during the pregnancy. And apple juice. I mean, that’s not a big loss, but still. I would have resented it so much if that had happened to my coffee!”

“Nothing should ever mess with your taste in coffee!” Josh agreed amused.

“How have you been?” Maddie asked. Josh looked tired, much more than coming off a night shift would warrant.

Josh inhaled deeply. “I would like to apologize to you. I was … I feel I wasn’t a very good friend to you. I knew that you weren’t feeling very good and that Chimney would be at work nonstop during the blackout. I’m sorry I didn’t come by to make sure you had everything you needed.”

Maddie chuckled sadly. “I really wasn’t your responsibility, Josh. And you were working as much as Chimney.”

“But I wasn’t,” Josh said. “All the dispatchers were able to go home in between shifts. We only have so many workstations, especially with the power restrictions we had to work with. I could have … should have come by your place to make sure you had everything you needed. I’m sorry that I didn’t.”

Maddie bit her tongue to give herself a moment to take in what Josh had said and think about it, instead of just reacting to it. She was prone to reacting first without taking in what the person she was talking to had really said. It was something she had become aware of during therapy, and something she was working on relentlessly.

The first time she had noticed this behavior in herself had been while talking about Buck with her therapist, and her desperation about how often their opinions clashed, especially when Buck wasn’t doing what she knew would be best. It had startled her when she had recognized how pretentious she sounded with that, and that Buck wasn’t the only one whose opinion she regularly dismissed in that way.

Maddie was working hard on that ingrained reaction, mostly because she had had to admit to her therapist that many of the fights with her brother since she had come to LA could be traced back to that behavior of hers. Talking about Buck and Daniel, working through her very difficult emotions concerning both of her brothers, had been a huge part of her therapy, much more than she had ever expected. She wanted to build a good relationship with Buck, and recognizing that the looming shadow of Doug wasn’t the only obstacle to achieving that goal had been difficult and painful.

“I’m very grateful for your concern, Josh,” Maddie said finally. “It’s much more than I think I deserve, really.”

“Maddie…”

She shook her head and raised a hand to stop him. “Let me finish, please? Because the thing is, I don’t think … I really don’t think it would have changed anything. Going to therapy, taking time just for myself to deal with everything I have had to deal with in the last couple of months was something I desperately needed.”

Maddie paused when the waitress came with their coffee, and she stared at her mug for a long time in silence, thankful that Josh didn’t try to interject again. “I should have sought out that kind of help a long time ago. It was a mistake that I didn’t do it right after I arrived here, or at the latest after Doug showed up.”

“You deserve so much more than you give yourself credit for,” Josh said quietly.

Maddie sighed and shrugged. “I shouldn’t have needed to fear for my daughter’s life to get help for myself. I should have taken care of this before becoming a mother.”

Josh raised his brows and smiled softly. “Except that Jee-Yun wasn’t anywhere in your or Chimney’s life plan, was she? I’d agree with that reasoning if you’d set out to become a mother, but you didn’t. And additionally, even if you had worked through all of that before, PPD could still have hit you. Most likely still would have hit you. I think you should give yourself a break there.”

Maddie shook her head. “My point is, this would have happened anyway even if you had come to check on me during the blackout. Maybe not right away, or maybe not in the way I did it eventually. Or maybe I would have shoved Jee-Yun at you and fled right then and there.”

“I’m really not good with babies or toddlers,” Josh muttered uncomfortably.

“I’d still have known she would be safe with you,” Maddie said quietly. “Safer than I felt she was with me anyway.” She inhaled deeply. “Overall, I don’t have regrets over what I chose to do, you know? I’m sad about some of the consequences, but … those were the actions of others that I don’t have any influence over.”

There wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t wish what had happened between Chimney and Buck would have just been a bad dream. And she also wished Chimney had never lied to her about it, because she didn’t know if she could ever overcome that personal betrayal.

“Consequences?” Josh asked with raised brows.

Maddie ran her tongue over her lips and squinted at him through her lashes. “You haven’t had much contact with Buck or Chimney, have you?”

Josh shrugged. “Not really, no. I’ve texted Buck on and off, a little more since he and Eddie got together, but he never talked about you or Chimney. And Chimney never responded to my text when I asked if he needed help with anything, so I respected the space he clearly wanted to have. What happened?”

Maddie closed her eyes tightly and wrapped her hands around her mug as she told him what had happened between Buck and Chimney after she had left. It had been nearly two months since she had learned about it, and she had talked about it in therapy ad nauseam, but she still didn’t know what to think or feel about any of it—either Chimney’s actions or Buck’s reaction to it. The certainty she had felt about it during her first conversation with Buck had vanished shortly after, though she would never share that development in her thoughts with her brother. He was already plagued by too much guilt about all of it anyway, and when she ignored her emotional turmoil, she still thought he had made the right choice.

“Damn,” Josh muttered. “I had no idea … I don’t know what to say.”

Maddie shrugged. “I don’t think there is anything to say. It happened and now all of us need to find a way to live with it, to move on and learn to deal with the consequences.”

“So, you and Chimney?”

“We need to find a way to co-parent our daughter,” Maddie said. “I don’t want her to grow up with parents who hate each other, or who don’t talk to each other, or who are so self-absorbed in their problems they forget about her. I won’t be a mirror of my own parents. Moving forward, Jee will always be the most important thing in my life.”

Josh nodded slowly. “I can understand that.”

Maddie bit her lip. “Do you, really? I don’t think anyone else does.”

“I’m not a parent and I don’t expect to ever be one, but from all that I’ve heard, isn’t that what parenthood is all about? Working your ass off to give your child the best possible life?”

Maddie laughed, feeling suddenly much lighter than she had ever had in the past weeks when talking about this. “Yeah, of course. But most people manage to more or less still have their own life. And whenever I say I’ll consider what’s best for Jee-Yun first in everything I do, people assume I’ll just give up my own life.” She sighed. “And of course, everyone seems to have an opinion about my relationship with Chimney.”

“Including Chimney?” Josh asked hesitantly. “How did he react to you breaking up with him?”

“He…” Maddie huffed. “You know exactly how to ask about the difficult things first, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Josh murmured. “You don’t have to answer that, of course. Or anything else.”

Maddie shook her head. “No, it’s okay. Maybe it’s … a good idea to talk about all of it with you. I think you might be the most unbiased person I can find in this.”

Josh raised his brows. “I really don’t think I’ll be unbiased at all.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “That’s why I said most unbiased. Because you are friends with both of us, but you are also not personally involved in the situation.”

“I take from all of this that Chimney isn’t too happy about your breakup.”

“I think he … might not have accepted yet that it is a breakup at all,” Maddie muttered, avoiding Josh’s gaze. She paused to take a sip of her coffee and set the mug down with a deep sigh. “I think he believes we are on a temporary break and that we will eventually fix our romantic relationship. I don’t know how to make him understand that that won’t happen.”

“Maybe you just need to give him time,” Josh said.

“No.” Maddie frowned and shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him believe there is a chance for us to go back to how it was before … I don’t even know before what. Probably before we both went back to work after Jee was born. Everything started to go downhill once we started working again. I’m convinced at one point Chimney knew that wouldn’t be an option for me, and that’s the reason he lied to me and Hen about it in the first place.”

“Lied?” Josh frowned and leaned half over the table. “You didn’t mention anything about him lying.”

Maddie rubbed her hands over her thighs uncomfortably. She hadn’t mentioned it earlier because most of the time it made her unbelievably angry and sad at the same time. “Chimney told me—and Hen long before me—that he had injured Buck by accident. That Buck had tried to hold him back by grabbing his arm, and that in his attempt to get away from Buck, he accidentally hit him in the face with his elbow. He said Buck was lying about Chimney hitting him to get him into trouble. That the whole police investigation was just some kind of revenge plot against him because Buck blamed Chimney for my leaving and for my poor mental health.”

Josh exhaled slowly. “Can I play devil’s advocate for a minute here?”

“There’s a video of the whole incident,” Maddie said quietly. “There is no doubt about what really happened.”

Josh frowned. “How is there a video?”

“Buck’s then girlfriend was in the loft. Taylor, the reporter from Channel 8? I’m not sure why exactly she started filming, but she did, and Chimney never even noticed she was there as well. He didn’t know anything about that video when he told Hen and later me his story.”

“Okay.” Josh blew out a breath. “I have to say I’m glad that video exists.”

“Yeah,” Maddie whispered. “I think Buck expected me not to believe him without it. He didn’t say anything about it, he just showed me the video.”

“Would you have believed him?” Josh asked.

Maddie opened her mouth in protest, only to close it without saying anything. Eventually, she shrugged. She wanted to believe that she wouldn’t have doubted her brother’s word, but she knew Josh was right to question it. There had been instances in the past when she hadn’t believed Buck when in retrospect she knew she should have believed and listened to him.

At the same time, she often wondered if she would have been able to make another choice about her and Chimney’s relationship if Chimney had been honest with her, if he hadn’t lied to twist the truth, but had shown regret for his actions. More often than not she wished he would have given her the chance to find that out, and that alone made her think she might have opted to believe Chimney over Buck.

“I’m glad you don’t have to wonder which of them has been telling you the truth,” Josh said. “And I’m sorry things with Chimney are so complicated now.”

Maddie nodded silently and sent him a tired and shaky smile.

“I’d still opt for giving Chimney a little bit more time,” Josh said. “You mentioned he’ll be transferred away from the 118 after his suspension. That’s a hell of a lot of change for him. Sometimes you can only deal with so much change at once, and he might need to deal with that change at work first before he can deal with the permanent change in your relationship.”

Maddie bit her lip. “Maybe. You haven’t asked. If I’m sure, I mean.”

“Did you forget the conversation we had after Greg took us all hostage?” Josh asked with raised brows.

Maddie frowned because she couldn’t recall what Josh was talking about.

Josh chuckled. “We both might have had too much wine that night. I asked you how you had found the courage to trust any man again after what happened to you.”

“And I told you that I had made sure Chimney knew our relationship would be over if he ever showed any kind of violence, either aimed at me or others,” Maddie whispered, remembering. They had definitely had too much wine that night, she still remembered the headache the next day. “And that I trusted him because he had agreed to that without hesitating even for a moment.”

Josh nodded. “You also told me that all my future partners would just have to live with my trust issues. That I didn’t owe it to anyone to put aside my coping mechanisms for them. That if they really deserved to have me in their life, they would accept my past and the way I had chosen to deal with it.”

Maddie chuckled wetly. “See, you are more unbiased than anyone else.”

“I feel I’m pretty biased to your side in all this,” Josh said.

“You’d think Buck would be the most biased in my favor, wouldn’t you? But he feels mostly guilty that what happened between him and Chimney has cost me the happiness I had found with Chimney. And I think my therapist personally believes I should cut any and all contact with Chimney, though he of course is too professional to say that.”

“Or maybe you are projecting what you think most people would expect from you?” Josh suggested.

Maddie blew out a breath. “Maybe.”

“Because I can see how many people would expect that if they hear your story. I honestly would expect that if I heard this story about two strangers in this same situation. And I would have supported you if that had been your solution. But I’m glad for Chimney’s sake that your trust in him doesn’t seem to be completely broken.”

Maddie swallowed. “I told Chimney … he needed to go to therapy and not fight the charges against him if he wanted a chance to be a part of his daughter’s life.”

“Good,” Josh said.

“You really think so?” Maddie asked hesitantly. “You don’t think I blackmailed him into something that might not have been in his best interest?”

“Do you really think therapy is not in his best interest?” Josh asked. “I can’t talk about the charges, but I can’t believe a lengthy trial would have been better. Especially if that video you mentioned would have been used as evidence.”

Maddie shrugged.

“And in the end, it wasn’t blackmail but you making sure he knew and respected your boundaries,” Josh said. “A boundary you had told him about previously. I’m glad he followed your demand. Maybe eventually you two will be able to be friends again.”

“I still love him,” Maddie said quietly.

Josh smiled softly. “I gathered as much. That’s not something that just vanishes in most cases, not even if the trust between you is broken. But sometimes love isn’t enough, is it?”

“I try to remind myself of that,” Maddie whispered. “Is it foolish to wish it could be enough?”

“I don’t think so,” Josh said quietly. “I think as long as you don’t pressure yourself into doing things that make you feel unsafe, nothing you’ll do is foolish.”

“Thank you.” Maddie cleared her throat and rubbed her fingers over her eyes to rub away the tears she really didn’t want to shed.

“I’m here for whatever you need,” Josh said.

“You are a good friend.” Maddie frowned when Josh flinched at her words. “Okay, enough about me for the moment. What’s going on with you? Because I know you worked through the night, but those rings under your eyes aren’t just from that!”

Josh shook his head, chuckling unhappily. “It’s just fair play to bare my own soul now, is it? I made a pretty big mistake a while ago and I’m still dealing with the consequences.”

“What kind of mistake?” Maddie asked softly.

“After the blackout, someone I had started with at dispatch was transferred back to us. She is … she was … She had transferred to St. Bernadino not too long after you started because her family moved, and I didn’t bother to find out why she had transferred back now.” Josh trailed off with a sigh.

Maddie frowned. “Okay. What happened to her?”

“Not to her,” Josh muttered. “She was fired shortly before Christmas because of her behavior with other dispatchers. Especially the younger ones. May Grant came to me to talk about her concerns the very first day this dispatcher joined our team, and she wasn’t the only one over the following weeks, but I … didn’t take any of them seriously for a long time.”

Maddie leaned back and stared at Josh, her head cocked to the side. That wasn’t a reaction she would have expected from Josh, and he clearly deeply regretted it. “Why?”

Josh shrugged. “I’ve known her for a long time. Once upon a time, I was good friends with her. And I knew she could be a lot, so I just assumed … or maybe I just didn’t want to believe that her exuberance and boldness had turned into something darker. She always pushed against people, but at some point between her leaving and coming back, it turned into outright bullying. Looking back now, I recognize that bullying even happened right in front of me a couple of times, but because I wanted to believe the best of her, I didn’t see it.”

“To such a degree that you didn’t even listen when others complained about her?” Maddie asked skeptically.

“I really can’t explain it,” Josh murmured. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the last couple of weeks.”

“But you eventually saw what she did?”

Josh shook his head. “Not until it was forcefully shoved into my face in such a way that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. After I dismissed May’s initial concern, she started to gather evidence and sought out others who had fallen victim to the bullying. When she felt she had enough, she requested an official meeting with Sue and me, and … the end of the story is that said dispatcher will have to find a new job, and I question if Sue’s plans to train me as her successor aren’t foolish and detrimental to our colleagues.”

“Because you made one mistake?” Maddie asked.

“But is it only one mistake?” Josh asked. “Or did I dismiss similar complaints in the past? And how can I expect May or anyone else who was caught up in this to ever trust me again as their supervisor? Will they come to me if they have a problem in the future, or will their go-to solution forever be to go around me like May had to do because I didn’t leave her any choice?”

“Have you talked about this with May? Or any of the others?”

Josh shook his head. “I apologized, of course. But I didn’t think I should … pester them with questions. It’s my mistake to deal with.”

“Maybe you should do that. Ask them if there is a way to earn their trust again,” Maddie said. “Show them that you are working through the problem, that you recognize that this other dispatcher wasn’t the only problem in the situation.”

Josh shrugged.

“Walk me through the things she did,” Maddie said. “And how everyone else reacted to it. Maybe I can be your unbiased viewpoint now and point things out you missed so far.”

Josh sent her a grateful smile and took a deep breath. „Yeah, okay.“

Chapter 02

“You are a lifesaver!” Maddie declared as she collapsed into the chair with an exhausted groan. “I’m so sorry that I’m late! I hate LA traffic!”

She had barely greeted Albert when she had come home, instead going right to the bedroom where Jee-Yun was already sleeping. Maddie had clearly been distraught to miss saying good night to her daughter and had spent a full fifteen minutes watching Jee-Yun sleep.

Albert laughed. “I don’t mind. I’m always happy about spending more time with Jee-Yun. And she was an angel, as always.” He carried the last bowl over to the table. He had started to cook as soon as Maddie had texted him that she was stuck in traffic on her way home from therapy. “I hope you don’t mind that I appropriated your kitchen. I thought you wouldn’t want to have to cook for yourself or wait for takeout after being stuck for an hour behind that accident.”

“I’ll never say no to someone else cooking for me!” Maddie said. “Though, when did you learn to keep the kitchen clean right away?”

Albert grinned. “When I couldn’t drive Buck crazy with a messy kitchen anymore.”

Maddie laughed. “I see.”

“I’m thankful Buck let me live with him, really. But let me tell you, that was as difficult for me as it was for him! I had to find a way to pay him back in some way!”

“Was banging his neighbor slash failed date part of that?”

Albert made a face and shuddered. “That was a huge mistake. And no, it wasn’t. When I apologized to Buck he called me pussy blind, and I guess that’s a pretty good description.” He didn’t even know anymore why he had dated Veronica other than that the sex had been great. “She tried to reconcile now that we are neighbors again. I don’t know how I could ignore some of the things she is saying all the time.”

“So, you aren’t getting back with her?” Maddie asked.

Albert shuddered again. “No, never. And I hope she gets that message soon. Buck warned me when we made that deal about his apartment, but I thought he was exaggerating.”

Maddie laughed. “Valid assumption.”

“You weren’t part of the accident, right?” Albert asked as he filled his plate with rice and the curry he had thrown together from the things he had found in Maddie’s fridge.

“No, that happened a couple of cars in front of me. I was just stuck and couldn’t go anywhere until they had cleared the road. I’m perfectly fine if a little stressed out about it. Jee really didn’t make any fuss about going to bed?”

Albert shook his head. “We were at the park earlier. I think that was as exhausting for her as it was for me. I can’t believe how fast she is, and she isn’t even walking yet. But pulling herself up on everything she can reach. Sometimes I think she’ll start climbing things before she starts walking.”

“Right?” Maddie shook her head grinning. “I’m glad you got over your fear of handling babies. Buck told me stories! But I don’t know what Chimney and I would do without you and the Lees stepping in whenever we need it.”

“Don’t believe anything Buck has told you about me and Jee-Yun!” Albert protested in mock outrage. It was true, of course, that he had been too afraid to even hold his niece for a long time, but he didn’t think that could or should be held against him. Jee-Yun was the first baby he had ever had close contact with, and he didn’t know how anyone wouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes and hurting them when faced with caring for a baby.

“I can tell you stories about him as a child to hold against him in return,” Maddie suggested.

Albert leaned forward eagerly. “I won’t say no to that!”

Maddie nodded. “Then we have a deal. This is delicious! Why did you never cook for me when we lived together?”

“Because you wouldn’t allow me into the kitchen?” Albert said with raised brows. “I offered and you always said no!”

Maddie huffed. “Because Chimney and Buck both told me you were a mess in the kitchen!”

Albert shrugged with a grin. It was hardly his fault she had believed that, but he also suspected that it had been her hormones making her suspicious of everyone else’s cooking. Maddie hadn’t trusted ordering food either during her pregnancy, preferring to cook for herself. Sometimes even just her inability to get her own groceries at that time had driven her crazy, but there had hardly been a way around it with the situation they had been in.

“Thank you for making dinner,” Maddie said. “And for babysitting, and for being here in general.”

“Always,” Albert said softly. “You are family. I’m happy to help with everything I can.”

Maddie nodded and bit her lip. Albert knew it was difficult for her to believe that, and from everything he knew about her past, he understood why she doubted other people offering help. As far as he knew, she had never had anyone to support her until she had come to LA, which had only been a little over a year before he had come here himself. That wasn’t a lot of time to learn that there were people in her life now she could depend on. They would just need to show her that it was true.

“Can I ask you something?” Maddie said after they had eaten in silence for a while.

“Of course.”

“I noticed that you never shorten Jee’s name and that you’re always frowning at Chimney when he does it,” Maddie said.

Albert sighed. “You know that I had only heard stories about Chimney before I came here, right? I mean, I think I saw him once or twice when he called while I was using Appa’sAppaDad computer. So, I had this picture of him in my head, a pretty idealized picture of my independent brother in a foreign country. Getting to know him was a pretty big shock after that because he wasn’t at all what I had imagined him to be.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “I can understand that. It’s still strange to imagine that you never met him for the first twenty years of your life.”

Albert shrugged. “AppaAppaDad never wanted to come here for a visit, but at the same time, Chimney also never wanted to come to Seoul for a visit, right? And I understand that last part better now that I know him. But it’s still painful sometimes to see how much he has divorced himself from every single aspect of anything Korean.”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean by that,” Maddie said with a frown.

Albert sighed and put his knife and fork down beside his plate. He leaned back and contemplated how to explain what he had seen in his brother for as long as he had known him. Albert knew the Lees had seen it as well and disapproved of some of Chimney’s choices in that regard, but they had never discussed it with him in detail. He wondered sometimes if they had ever talked about it with Chimney because he himself never felt comfortable enough to bring it up with his brother.

“Chimney avoids anything Korean as far as I can tell,” Albert said. “The two times I took his call when I was a child, he greeted me in English, and I know he only ever talked in English during his calls with AppaAppaDad. I never thought anything about it until I came here and noticed that not speaking Korean isn’t the only thing he is avoiding. I’m frankly surprised the two of you chose a Korean name over an American name for your daughter, though … even that choice goes against every tradition I know from home.”

“I chose Jee-Yun’s name,” Maddie said, and Albert thought she sounded taken aback. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I…” Albert sighed. “Looking at it from a Western perspective, as you both are clearly doing, nothing is wrong with it.”

“And looking at it from a Korean perspective?” Maddie asked worriedly.

Albert sighed. “We don’t name children after ancestors or relatives, neither dead nor living. It’s … a dishonor to the child. I was surprised about that choice, but I assume Chimney said nothing about that when you chose the name?”

Maddie sucked in a breath and bit her lip, avoiding his gaze. “No, he didn’t say anything. He was pleasantly surprised, and I thought it was a good way to honor his mother. I know how much he misses her, and that he wishes every day she could have met her granddaughter.”

Albert nodded silently. When he had learned his niece’s name, he had had to bite his tongue hard not to question Chimney about it, even though he knew it wasn’t his place. He’d had a very long conversation with Anne about it, because he had been very offended, and he knew his father would be furious when he learned about it.

“I want Jee to grow up knowing about her heritage,” Maddie said softly. “I want her to learn as much about Korea as she will be learning about California and the US. I’ve started to look for classes where I can learn Korean. And now I feel I have already alienated her from that.”

“We also don’t shorten our names in that way,” Albert said, deciding to come back to her initial question to give himself time to find a reply to Maddie’s conundrum. “If someone has a nickname, it’s never a shortened version of their name.”

Maddie huffed. “It was Chimney who started that.”

Albert shrugged with a smile. “As I said, I feel he has completely divorced himself from everything traditionally Korean. I know he legally changed his name as soon as he had achieved citizenship here and he gave up his Korean passport pretty soon after that.”

“Changed his name?” Maddie asked.

Albert chuckled. “Do you think his parents named him Howard when he was born in Seoul?”

Maddie frowned.

“My brother was born as Han Won-Yong, and I was born as Han Won-Jea. I went to an international school where most classes were taught in English and where I had a lot of foreign classmates. I chose the name Albert in second grade, I think, because it was just something all my Korean classmates did.”

“Why Albert?” Maddie asked.

Albert laughed. “For Albert Einstein. Back then I dreamed of becoming a scientist and revolutionizing my field of study the same way Einstein had done.”

Maddie laughed. “When did you give that plan up?”

Albert felt himself blush and cleared his throat. “When I was fourteen, my parents sent me to a summer camp where we could use real chemistry and physics labs to conduct some experiments. I … made a mistake and caused the lab to be closed for the rest of the day. No one was hurt, but my experiment basically blew up and I never dared to step foot into a lab again if I could at all avoid it.”

Maddie bit her lip, but that didn’t help much to keep her laughter at bay. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be this amused about a clearly traumatic memory.”

“It’s not too traumatic anymore,” Albert said grinning. “Except for my continued aversion to laboratories and experiments. My friends have teased me enough with it to desensitize me.”

Maddie shook her head, still chuckling. “I’m sure it can be a very entertaining tale in the right circumstances.” She exhaled loudly. “I never thought about … To be honest, for the longest time I thought Chimney had been born here, so I never thought about his name.”

Albert shrugged. “I think more often than not Chimney wishes he had been born here. I know he started the process to apply for US citizenship as soon as he was 18 and could do so, and as far as I know, he has never been back to Korea since his parents brought him here when he was five.”

“Have you been back?” Maddie asked.

“Of course.” Albert raised his brows. “I have been visiting my parents at least once every three months, barring the time during the pandemic when travel was too restricted and I was living with you and didn’t want to risk bringing anything home from the journey.”

“Oh.” Maddie’s shoulders slumped down and she watched him warily. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not something I tell Chimney,”” Albert said. “Because I know it’s not something he would understand.”

In truth, Albert thought it would inevitably lead to an argument if he ever told Chimney about his frequent visits home. While his relationship with their father could be difficult and strained at times, over all, Albert had a very good and peaceful relationship with both of his parents. His father had been furious at the beginning about Albert coming to Los Angeles and deciding to stay and make a life here, but Albert had known from the very beginning that it was mostly fear driving his father. In his mind, he had already lost one son to America, and he didn’t want that to happen with Albert as well.

Albert had grown up with stories about his father’s first wife and his estranged brother, and he had always known how hurt his father was by the distance between Chimney and their family. Learning Chimney’s side of that story after coming here had made him want to lock them both up in the same room until the sheer boredom of nothing else to do would make them talk and clear up the misunderstandings and miscommunications of more than half of Chimney’s life. He thought his father might take that chance if he got it, but he was also pretty sure that Chimney would never reach a point where he would be open to really mending fences.

“You have a much better relationship with your father than Chimney, don’t you?” Maddie asked. “Despite appearances.”

“Yeah,” Albert shrugged. “I think sometimes Chimney resents me for that. So, I don’t talk about it with him. I’m glad that I finally know him, you know? Even though he isn’t the brother or even the person I expected him to be, I’m just glad to finally have a relationship with him.”

Maddie smiled softly. “I know he doesn’t always show it, but I know he is glad you just barreled your way into his life.”

Albert laughed. “I only managed that because you helped me. I think if you hadn’t been here, he would have never offered me his couch to stay on in the beginning. I mean, technically, you were the one who offered me Chimney’s couch without so much as consulting him.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “I think that was one of our first true fights. And I still don’t know how else he thinks that situation could have gone. You are his brother, for Christ’s sake!”

“I don’t think you made a mistake with Jee-Yun’s name, by the way,” Albert said. “It might offend some people, but in the end naming a child after a relative is part of your culture. And I think Chimney does see this very much as honoring his mother, and what the two of you think is the most important thing in this, right?”

Maddie smiled hesitantly. “I hope so. I just … Thank you.”

“You are a great Mom, and that you were sick for a time and had to get help doesn’t change anything about that, you know?” Albert said. “Jee-Yun will grow up so very much loved by everyone around her. Including you. Especially by you, really.”

“I think I will stop shortening her name,” Maddie murmured, looking down at her long empty plate.

“Have you talked with Chimney at all about your plans for how to raise Jee-Yun?” Albert asked carefully. “You said you are looking for classes to learn Korean, but I can’t imagine that Chimney will ever speak Korean with her.”

Maddie swallowed and shook her head slowly. “No, we haven’t…” She sighed deeply. “I just assumed, I guess. But even if Chimney doesn’t want to speak Korean with Jee-Yun, I still want her to learn both English and Korean from the very beginning.”

“I’m happy to teach her,” Albert offered. “And to help you learn as well. I’m sure Anne and John will be happy to help you as well. For the most part, I only speak Korean with them anyway. It’s nice to have that little bit of home around.”

“Do you miss a lot about Korea?” Maddie asked.

Albert shrugged with a grin. “Depends on the day, really. What I miss the most on any given day is the food. I really regret that I never learned to cook much of our own food. UmmaUmmaMom really didn’t like people in her kitchen while she was cooking, it would make her so anxious.”

Maddie pointed at the table between them. “You can clearly cook.”

“Food that’s not Korean, yeah,” Albert agreed. “I wasn’t living at home when I was going to college, and my roommates and I often experimented with foreign dishes. If we wanted to have Korean food, someone would call their mother or we would eat out somewhere.”

Maddie laughed. “And your mothers would just cook for you? How many roommates did you have?”

“We were four guys,” Albert said. “And yes, our mothers would just cook for us when we asked and make sure our fridge was always filled. We felt very independent and grown up to cook for ourselves sometimes when really, we were all terribly coddled and indulged by our parents. The worst thing is that two of those roommates haven’t changed overly much since then. Talking to them is always so startling now because it just shows me how much I have changed since I came here.”

“Anne offered to teach me some recipes,” Maddie said.

Albert frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “What did you do to get that offer? What do I have to do to get included in that?”

***

Albert fell down on the chair with a loud groan. He had spent four hours carrying dirt and plants across the yard for Anne, and he had been startled by how much time had really gone by. He had grown a lot stronger while training for the fire academy and after starting his probationary period at the 133, but nothing had prepared him to be directed as a pack mule by Anne for the whole morning.

“I’m sorry,” Anne chuckled. “We should have taken a break a long time ago.”

“It’s really no problem.” Albert waved her away and thanked her with a smile when she put a glass of her homemade lemonade in front of him. He drank most of it in one go and put the glass down on the table with a sigh. “I’m happy to help. And I know John has some problem with his back, so I’m glad to take this task off his hands.”

Anne smiled and refilled his glass before she sat down on the table as well. “I’ll repay you with lunch.”

Albert grinned brightly. “That’s always the best payment. Though, I wouldn’t mind you teaching me a couple of recipes. I heard from Maddie you are teaching her to cook Korean food. I’m kinda jealous!”

Anne raised her brows. “Shouldn’t you already know all about that?”

“I might have never bothered to ask Mom to teach me while growing up?” Albert said sheepishly. “She of course cooked whatever I asked for, but she never offered to teach me how to cook. I think she really doesn’t like anyone in the kitchen with her.”

As he had told Maddie the previous day, he had been very spoiled growing up, and even after leaving home for college, though he hadn’t been aware of that. Albert had only really become aware of how spoiled he had really been when Taylor and Buck had taken him shopping for a new bed because he hadn’t had the slightest clue about shopping for furniture. In a couple of months, when Maddie’s life would have hopefully settled down again, he would need to find a way to thank her for the soft landing she had orchestrated for him here in LA, because Albert knew now that he would have hopelessly failed if Maddie hadn’t made Chimney give him a chance in the beginning.

Anne chuckled. “I think your father might have a thing for women who ban everyone from their kitchen. I remember Howie’s mother being very peculiar about that as well.”

Albert bit his lip. “Can I ask a question that might be a little … intrusive?”

“If you accept that I might not answer.”

Albert nodded. “It’s about Chimney. Because I have been wondering … Maddie mentioned Jee-Yun learning Korean alongside English, but I can’t remember ever hearing Chimney speak Korean.”

Anne sighed and looked down at the table, her fingers trailing along the edge of the wood. “Yes. Before his mother died, Korean was something reserved only for her. If I remember correctly that started before your father even returned to Korea. And I think after his mother’s death, speaking Korean was too connected to her memory for him.”

Albert hummed thoughtfully. He couldn’t imagine turning his back in that way on the language he had grown up with. Not too long after Albert had settled in LA, he had deliberately searched out the Korean community to be able to speak Korean with someone, and he barely ever spoke English with Anne and John. It had been a profound comfort especially while he had been recovering from his accident, and not only because sometimes he just hadn’t remembered the right words in English during that time.

“Maddie wishes for Jee-Yun to learn Korean?” Anne asked.

“Yeah. I told her I’d be happy to help with that,” Albert said. “Not sure how Chimney will react, though. Either to Maddie’s wish or my offer.”

Anne nodded slowly. “We will see. And we will help in whatever way we can. That’s all we can really do, be there for both of them and help them figure out a path forward. But in the end, they have to figure the important things out between themselves.”

“I know it’s foolish to wish there would just be some miracle cure.” Albert sighed and shook his head. “Can I ask another question that might … not be something you feel comfortable answering?”

“Go on,” Anne nodded.

Albert blew out a breath. “I’m curious, I guess. Or insecure. I asked Chimney once about our father, and why he had stayed here even after his mother had died, but he was really not prepared to talk about any of it. He said Father abandoned him. But … the knowledge I grew up with is quite different to how Chimney regards that situation.”

“What information did you grow up with?” Anne asked softly.

“When I was very young, I knew my father was waiting for my brother to finally come home,” Albert said hesitantly. He bit his lip and stared out the window. “To this day, there is a room for Chimney in my parents’ house. Mom keeps it clean and the sheets fresh, as if Chimney would really just come home at any time. But at the same time … they barely talked about him. I knew I had a brother, but I didn’t know much more than that. My parents didn’t talk much about Chimney, at least with me, but the little I would listen in to here and there taught me that Dad was waiting for him to come home, that he was convinced Chimney would come home one day.

“I think I was eleven or twelve when … Dad gave up, I think. He gave up on ever reconciling with Chimney, on Chimney ever coming home. I don’t know why, really, but it changed him. He told me once, before he gave up, that he was waiting for Chimney to overcome the grief for his mother. He said Chimney projected all his anger over his mother’s early death on him. It always confused me, because when I thought about being in my brother’s place and losing one of my parents, I always pictured myself clinging to the one I had left.

“Another time Mom told me that Dad had come back to Seoul without his first wife and my brother because they had decided to stay in their new life and that Chimney had chosen this new life even after losing his mother. She isn’t exactly … she would accept Chimney with open arms for Dad’s sake, but she isn’t exactly fond of him. She still keeps his room clean, though. And she has tried for years to convince Dad to come here for a visit. I don’t think she’ll ever succeed in that, though. I don’t think he will ever be ready to face the grief of losing his first wife by coming here. So, he’ll keep waiting for Chimney to come to visit him, but I honestly can’t see that happening ever.”

“No, I agree,” Anne said. “I don’t think Chimney plans to ever return to Korea. He might change his mind eventually if his daughter asks about visiting the country where half her family comes from, but even then, he won’t visit your father.”

“Do you know why Dad didn’t bring Chimney back to Seoul after Chimney’s mother had died?” Albert asked. “I can’t … I never understood why he didn’t do that. I mean, at least since I did the math and figured out how young Chimney had been then.”

“It’s a mix of what both of them have told you,” Anne said. “Your father came here for Jee-Yun’s funeral. I believe he had come to visit her a couple of times in the year prior, but in that time, he never met with Howie. Which was something Howie had explicitly demanded. I think that is something he forgets when he thinks about your father. Howie was very adamant about staying here. His mother had already made arrangements with us as soon as it had become clear that she wouldn’t win her battle against the cancer.

“After the funeral, your father tried to talk with Howie, but Howie didn’t listen to a single word. So, your father sat down with John and me and made sure that we had all the legal rights we needed to take care of Howie, and he set up a trust fund so that Howie would be supported financially until he was twenty-five.”

Albert swallowed hard, his heart breaking for his father and his brother both.

He knew how much losing his first wife had hurt his father. His parents had met three years after Jee-Yun had died, but Albert couldn’t remember a single day when he hadn’t known his father to be profoundly sad in some way. On most days it wasn’t weighing down on him, but it was still there in the way he sometimes hesitated after a laugh, in the worried frown when he watched Albert’s mother, in his lingering near her whenever they were in the same room as if he feared to lose her.

Albert had also learned since meeting Chimney that his brother wasn’t any less affected by losing his mother and the bad relationship with their father. After Albert had been able to overcome his own hurt feelings over the rude welcome Chimney had given him, he had been able to recognize where Chimney’s reaction had come from. Chimney longed for a better relationship with their father and even now still resented Albert for his relationship with him, but at the same time, he was unable to so much as give their father a single chance to talk.

Albert shook his head. “That’s another relationship I would really like to have a miracle cure for. They are both so hurt by the state of things, but they are also both too stubborn to change anything about it.”

“I don’t think Howie will ever be able to recognize that they are both at fault for where their relationship is today,” Anne said. “He used his anger over his father leaving them here in LA to deal with his grief for his mother. We tried to mitigate that, but … for a long time, John and I also weren’t sure how to act with Howie. Maybe if we had not been as careful and hesitant in taking the role as his foster parents, we could have helped him mend his relationship with your father.”

“Hesitant?” Albert asked confused.

Anne sighed deeply and stood. She turned to the fridge and started to take out the ingredients she had clearly already prepared for bibimbap. For a while she puttered around silently with her back turned to Albert.

After a while, she stopped and braced her hands on the counter. “We did not want to overstep any boundaries with Howie. We had taken him in without hesitating, of course. We had truthfully already fostered him for months before his mother died because she was in no state to take care of him. We made as many mistakes as your father in taking care of Howie at that time. But we only understood how much we had failed in showing him that he was part of our family after our Kevin died. We know Howie pulled back from us because he didn’t feel like he had a place with us. It cost us ten years of his companionship.”

“I wouldn’t have suspected that,” Albert said quietly. “Ever since I came here, he has always spoken very fondly of you. I was really glad to learn that he had found the comfort of family here.”

Anne took a deep breath and continued to prepare the food, still without turning to face Albert. “It was Maddie who brought Howie back into our life, who made him reach out to us. We will never be able to thank her enough for that.”

Albert chuckled. “She is really great at that.”

“I believe that meeting Maddie and falling in love with her is the best thing that ever happened to Howie,” Anne said. “And I hope for him that he won’t lose her. We will need to do everything in our power to help him accept the change in their relationship and to help both of them build a family around that change.”

“Do you think the therapy he is going to will help him with that?” Albert asked.

Chimney had only just started therapy and had had appointments for it for less than a month, but somehow Albert was disappointed to not already see any changes in Chimney. Rationally he knew that it would take time, of course, but he also knew that there were only so many mistakes Chimney could make before even a friendship with Maddie would prove impossible. The sooner Chimney recognized that the better.

“It will,” Anne said, finally turning around to look at him. “We will make him see reason. I let him lose what was left of his family once, which also cost him his relationship with you for the first two decades of your life. I won’t let that happen again. If that means keeping a barrier between him and Maddie until he can think clearly again, John and I will do that.”

“Chimney needs to understand that Maddie won’t ever be open to more than friendship again,” Albert said softly. “I … She didn’t exactly talk about her ex when I lived with her, but I could still see the trauma he left behind in her. She set this boundary for herself, and whether Chimney thinks it’s fair or not doesn’t matter. That boundary isn’t about Chimney at all, it’s about Maddie surviving what she did, and finding a way to trust men again. He has to accept that boundary. And currently, he doesn’t.”

“He is very much in love with Maddie,” Anne said quietly. “And he has convinced himself that love can conquer all. But I agree with you. Their love won’t conquer all.”

“And how do we make him see that?”

Anne shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Albert nodded slowly. He didn’t either.

“All we can do for the time being is to be there for both of them, together and individually,” Anne said. “You, Buck, John, and I are their family. We will get them through this one way or another. That is what family is for, protecting and sheltering them in their time of need, but also telling them the hard truths no one else will tell them.”

Chapter 03

Maddie braced her arms on the kitchen island, her hands folded together, and watched Chimney playing with Jee-Yun with a soft smile. Sometimes when all three of them were together, especially here in the apartment, she managed to forget for a little while how much had changed for them since last October. She allowed herself to get lost in that fantasy of a perfect little family for a moment, to imagine they were still all three living together and building a family.

She had told Josh a couple of days ago that she still loved Chimney, was still in love with him, and that she sometimes wished that that could be enough. It was moments like this when Maddie saw Chimney laughing and teasing their daughter that she doubted her own decisions. Chimney was a good man, and she couldn’t imagine that she would have wanted anyone else to be the father of her child. She could see the future they had dreamed of together right in front of her in these moments, and more often than not wished she could hold onto it.

Chimney caught Jee-Yun with a laugh when she flung herself at him after she had pulled herself up on the couch. She wasn’t walking yet, but Maddie expected to see her daughter take her first steps any day now. Jee-Yun didn’t miss a single opportunity to pull herself up, but as soon as she let go of her support she would topple over her own feet again. When around people she trusted Jee-Yun had even made a game out of pulling herself up to her feet and then falling against the person playing with her.

“Did you see that?” Chimney asked, turning with Jee-Yun in his arms to look at Maddie. “That was very nearly a first step all on her own!”

Maddie chuckled and left her place in the kitchen to sit down in the area they had cleared out in front of the couch for Jee-Yun to play at. “It will happen any day now!”

“It’s so great to see her progress, see her growing every day,” Chimney said, his smile turning wistful. “And at the same time … I met up with Tommy for a beer the other day, and I told him I wanted her to stay my baby for a long time to come. He threatened me that time would just fly by when we talked about his own kids.”

“Right?” Maddie carded her fingers through Jee-Yun’s hair, who was babbling nonsense at them and patting Chimney’s face with her little hand. “She is growing so fast. Soon enough we’ll be celebrating her first birthday.”

Chimney huffed. “Nope. Don’t remind me!”

Maddie laughed and leaned against the couch. Even though neither of them wanted to think about the fact that it had already been a year, they would need to start planning for the birthday party soon. She had no idea about that yet, and every time she thought about it, she became a little sad, not necessarily because of the time that had already gone by, but because they had barely had any contact with other parents with children Jee-Yun’s age.

That was really one of her biggest regrets about how they had handled her PPD, that it had deprived Jee-Yun of contact with other babies. Maddie had hidden away so much that they had stopped going to the new parents group they had initially been part of right after Jee-Yun’s birth. They had just now started to go to a baby swimming class with Jee-Yun and another group where parents met to let their babies play with each other while exchanging tales about the joys and woes of having to care for a baby who would soon turn into a toddler. It was good to find this connection to other parents and to see Jee-Yun interact with other children her age, but so far Maddie hadn’t struck up anything resembling a friendship with anyone.

Jee-Yun yawned and leaned against Chimney’s chest.

“I think it’s time for a nap for someone,” Chimney whispered.

“I’ll make us coffee while you bring her to bed,” Maddie decided. “It’s a little early for her usual nap time, but we had an exciting morning and an early lunch, didn’t we?”

“The park is always exciting,” Chimney agreed as he carefully stood, rocking Jee-Yun slightly. She was still trying to keep her eyes open, but Maddie knew she would be asleep before Chimney reached the bedroom.

Maddie watched them for a moment before she returned to the kitchen for the coffee. They had met in the park right after breakfast after Jee-Yun had spent the previous night with Chimney and the Lees. Maddie had brought everything for a picnic, but they had returned home for a proper lunch.

“I spent two hours last night just watching her sleep,” Chimney said quietly as he returned from the bedroom.

Maddie laughed. “I know that feeling.”

“Is that why you brought her cot into the bedroom?” Chimney asked.

Maddie shrugged and leaned against the kitchen counter beside the coffee maker while waiting for the coffee to be done. “Partly. I mean, it felt wrong to have her sleep in a different room than me. And now we at least have the living room to sit in and talk while she is sleeping, and we don’t need to worry about waking her. That I can watch her sleep during the night from the bed is really just a bonus.”

“I met with Tommy because I was notified that I’ll be transferred to B shift of the 217. Turns out, Tommy will be my new captain, though I only learned that from him today and he also didn’t know that I would be his new paramedic yet.”

Maddie smiled. “I’m glad you’ll have someone there you already know. You got along well with Tommy, right?”

She had wondered for a while now if that was something Chimney was worried about. The only time he had ever joined a fire station had been the 118 and she knew how horrible his first years there had been. Having to join a new station had to bring up those memories.

Chimney rolled his eyes. “We had a rocky start, but he eventually warmed up to me, yeah. It was always good working with him, even when he thought I wouldn’t make it long on the job. I’m looking forward to working with him again.”

Maddie cocked her head. “Isn’t the 217 one of the stations with a plane?”

“Yep.” Chimney grinned and rocked back on his heels. “I asked, and sadly as a paramedic they won’t let me learn how to fly it. Some of the firefighters know how to fly the plane, but we have a dedicated pilot on the shift who is only there to maintain and operate it. But I’m sure when Jee-Yun is old enough, I’ll be able to get a joy ride on the plane for her or all of us.”

“I’m not sure I would want to get on that plane,” Maddie said, shuddering slightly. “I hate flying, did I mention that? I’m not sure I want Jee-Yun to fly in anything if it’s not absolutely necessary!”

Chimney cocked his head and raised his brows. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“I preferred to take the bus when I came here!” Maddie said. Half of the reason had of course been that she had felt the bus would have been more difficult for Doug to trace, but taking the plane had only ever been a very fleeting thought.

“It will be a couple of years before Jee is old enough to enjoy that anyway,” Chimney said grinning. “Let’s revisit that topic when the time comes.”

Maddie blew out a breath, hoping that Chimney would just forget that idea wholesale. Having a plane available had to lose it novelty after a couple of months. “When’s your first shift at the 217?”

“March 3rd,” Chimney said.

“I start working again at the end of March,” Maddie said. “So, we really need to find a daycare for Jee-Yun soon. We can’t expect Anne and John to take care of her all the time when we are both on shift.”

“Or a nanny,” Chimney said. “If you have a night shift while I’m on shift, daycare won’t do much good.”

“Both, maybe?” Maddie sighed. “Can we afford both?”

“We can look into it.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing that you are moving to B shift,” Maddie said. “Buck and Albert are both on A shift, so if we don’t find another solution one of them can look after Jee-Yun during those nights. Or I can talk with Sue and make sure that I won’t work nights when you are on shift. That might be the best solution, with Buck and Albert as backup for the hopefully few occasions it doesn’t work out.”

Chimney made a face.

Maddie pursed her lips and frowned. She knew Chimney was still angry at Buck, though he tried very hard not to show it when she was around. She hoped he would get over that soon, mostly for Jee-Yun’s sake. Maddie didn’t want Jee-Yun exposed to that kind of tension in her family.

“What are those pamphlets I saw on your nightstand about?” Chimney asked after a tense moment of silence.

“I want to start learning Korean,” Maddie said, grinning. She was relieved about the change of topic because bringing up her brother inevitably always made Chimney’s mood turn sour. “I’m looking for classes that will work with my schedule. Which is not easy. But Albert offered to help me, so I might just take online classes and depend on Albert to practice actually speaking Korean.”

Chimney shook his head. “Why?”

“So that I can understand Jee-Yun when she speaks Korean,” Maddie said, chuckling. “I don’t want my daughter to speak a language I don’t understand. And I don’t want to hold her back.”

“You think Jee-Yun should learn Korean?” Chimney asked taken aback.

“Of course,” Maddie said. She watched Chimney carefully, suddenly recognizing that her conversation with Albert should have been more of a warning. Chimney didn’t look happy, though to be fair she hadn’t planned for this to come up because he saw the information about the classes she was looking at. Until her conversation with Albert, she hadn’t thought it was necessary to talk about this with Chimney, and she had still been wondering how to bring it up with him. “It’s part of her heritage. I wouldn’t want to deprive her of that.”

“I think we should let her decide for herself if she wants to learn a language she’ll never really need,” Chimney said.

Maddie shook her head. “How do you know she’ll never need it?”

“I haven’t spoken Korean with anyone but my mother since before my father left our family,” Chimney said dismissively.

“And that’s your decision,” Maddie said quietly. “There are at least three people in Jee-Yun’s life who’ll be happy to speak Korean with her whenever she wants. I think it will be a lot easier for her to grow up bilingual and decide later on against speaking Korean than having to learn the language later in life.”

Chimney shook his head. “You can’t make that kind of decision on your own.”

“Neither can you,” Maddie said with a frown. “I would be happy if you would teach Jee-Yun Korean yourself, but I understand if you don’t want to. She’ll have Albert, John, and Anne to teach her.”

“She doesn’t need to know Korean!”

Maddie sighed. “And will you deprive her of all her Korean heritage?”

Chimney reared back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Maddie said. “Do you plan to disallow her to learn anything about your side of the family and Korean culture in general? I think it’s sad that you turned away from it so completely, but I understand why you did. But I think our daughter should grow up learning as much about Korean culture as she will learn about American culture.”

“This is bullshit,” Chimney muttered.

Maddie rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Why?”

“Jee-Yun will spend all of her life here in America,” Chimney started.

“How do you know what she’ll decide to do with her life when she is an adult?” Maddie asked. “She could very well decide to go to Korea for a while, either to visit or to live there for a couple of months or even years, or even the rest of her life. That’s her decision to make. And I think in her place I would be very curious about the place her uncle once called home, and where her father was born.”

Chimney huffed and shook his head.

“I think it would be a mistake to teach Jee-Yun your resentment for everything Korean,” Maddie said. “I understand why you turned away from everything that reminded you of your connection to your father, but I don’t want that to be our daughter’s legacy.”

“It’s not resentment!” Chimney said through gritted teeth. “I decided that I wanted to become an American citizen, and that’s what I worked hard for most of my teenage years.”

Maddie sighed. “So, you want Jee-Yun to grow up without knowing anything about Korea?”

“I don’t see what’s bad about that,” Chimney said. “All her Korean family that matters are here.”

“And when she starts asking about it?” Maddie asked. “And let’s be clear, she will start asking at one point. At the latest when others start asking her where she comes from. Or when someone talks to her in Korean because they assume by her appearance alone that she has to know the language, has to have grown up with it.”

“That’s other people’s problem if they project their expectations on her, not hers.”

“That’s the biggest bullshit I have ever heard from you,” Maddie said crossing her arms over her chest. “Jee-Yun will have to learn to handle that kind of situation because as much as we would want to try, we can’t shield her from that forever. I’m not even asking you to change your own ways, I’m just asking you that you don’t discourage her when Albert and the Lees—who you declared her grandparents—teach her. And when they teach me. Because I want to know what Jee-Yun will learn.”

Chimney shook his head. “I don’t like this, and I don’t see the necessity.”

Maddie closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “I think we need to sit down soon and talk very thoroughly about both of our parenting goals. That is clearly something we have neglected for too long with everything else that has happened. I have to admit that I just assumed our child would grow up bilingual from the very first moment that I knew I was pregnant.”

“You know that I don’t speak Korean anymore,” Chimney said.

“But I also know you understand it perfectly fine,” Maddie said. “I didn’t know you had actively chosen not to speak Korean since before your father left until you told me just now. I thought you answered your father in English to spite him, but that you would have spoken Korean with Anne and John occasionally at least.”

“You are right,” Chimney said, crossing his arms over his chest. “We need to talk about our parenting goals. And how to handle this kind of situation in the future. I don’t like that you just made decisions about Jee-Yun without talking with me about it.”

“That’s something we both did in this situation,” Maddie said softly. “I would prefer we have this discussion without Jee-Yun sleeping in the next room. And maybe not here.”

She didn’t want to have memories of any kind of argument in this place, there were already too many painful memories for her connected to this apartment. She wouldn’t be sad to leave this apartment behind when she eventually looked for a new one later in the year.

She also didn’t want Jee-Yun to have even a fleeting memory of them fighting. Maddie hoped with everything she had that they would be able to find a good balance in being a family long before Jee-Yun would be old enough to even just retain an emotional impression of a time when her parents had been struggling with each other and their relationship.

Chimney shrugged. “Sure.”

Maddie turned to the forgotten coffee machine and filled two cups, adding milk and a little sugar to her own while leaving Chimney’s cup as it was. She put the cup in front of him silently, hoping that for now this topic was finished before it turned into an outright fight.

The silence stretching out between them felt uncomfortable and Maddie felt her daydream from earlier uncomfortably shattered. It wasn’t the first time that she had to recognize that they hadn’t been working together as perfectly as she had thought they had in the past, but it was the first time that she had proposed a scenario for how to handle it.

***

Chimney leaned back in the chair he had chosen and watched Maddie thoughtfully. They were sitting in the Lee’s garden, and Chimney already felt aggravated that this kind of conversation was even necessary, and also that they couldn’t have it at home. He tried to be as accommodating of Maddie’s needs as he could be, but for some reason he felt this crossed a line.

He had been agitated ever since he had left their apartment the day before after he and Maddie had had this weird non-argument about Jee learning Korean. He still didn’t see the point in that plan, and he didn’t know why Maddie was so insistent on it. He hadn’t thought for a moment Maddie would think it important that Jee-Yun learned Korean. He hated the thought of speaking Korean, and every time he was forced to have a conversation with his father he was reminded why he had no interest in speaking that language anymore. In her last year while fighting against the cancer, Chimney had exclusively spoken Korean with his mother, and it should remain something reserved only for her.

“I don’t feel comfortable putting Anne and John out like this,” Chimney said when the silence had stretched on too long.

“Anne offered when I called her yesterday to ask if she could look after Jee-Yun while we talk,” Maddie said quietly. “And I think this is a good place. Mostly neutral, but also private.”

Chimney shrugged. He knew that John was busy with some volunteer work and that Anne was happy to take a walk with Jee-Yun, but he still felt that they were putting them out by occupying their home. Ever since he had reconnected with them after the long years of silence following Kevin’s death, he constantly feared eventually overstepping with them again. They were more like parents to him than his father had ever been, but he was only too aware of how fragile the bond with them really was. Losing Kevin had proven how fast he could lose them as well.

“I feel we started this conversation from the wrong perspective yesterday,” Maddie said without meeting his gaze. “Though, I really hadn’t expected you to be this opposed to Jee-Yun learning Korean. I … Honestly, I think you would be depriving her of knowledge she has every right to know.”

“Why?” Chimney asked skeptically.

“Don’t you think she deserves to know where she comes from?” Maddie asked. “That she has every right to know where she comes from?”

“Jee-Yun has two American parents,” Chimney said darkly. “In my opinion, that’s all she needs to know.”

Maddie shook her head. “That’s true about her parents, sure. But she has a Korean uncle and Korean grandparents. She has a Korean name. If you are so opposed to teaching her anything about Korea, why didn’t you protest when I chose a Korean name for her?”

Chimney furrowed his brows and stared at her, but she still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It’s my mother’s name, why should I have protested that?”

“At some point, Jee-Yun will want to learn about her name,” Maddie said. “I think that might be the first thing she’ll ask about considering that she is the only one in her family using a Korean name. She’ll notice that it’s different and ask about it. I thought we would tell her about her grandmother then, and the origin of her name. Did you have other plans?”

“Of course we will tell her about my mother!” Chimney said. “I don’t know what that has to do with our discussion from yesterday, though.”

Maddie bit her lip. “I really don’t understand why you are so opposed to Jee-Yun learning Korean. I don’t see the problem with it. I would even like to visit Korea with her while she is growing up. I know you haven’t been back since you came here with your parents, but surely … do you not have any good memories at all of your childhood in Korea?”

Chimney huffed. “My father succeeded in tainting all of them. And I thankfully barely have any memories of that time at all.”

He had never had any desire to return to Korea, and he had been glad when his mother had fought his father on returning. He had hated the thought of leaving his friends behind and moving to a country he had barely any memories of. As much as he despised his father for first abandoning him and his mother while she had been ill and dying, and later not so much as even fighting for Chimney after his mother had died, he was ultimately thankful that his father had allowed him to stay in Los Angeles. It was the only thing he was grateful for regarding his father’s actions.

“I don’t want Jee-Yun growing up resenting a part of herself,” Maddie said softly. “And I fear she will do exactly that if you … push your own resentment for your father on her.”

“I would never do that!”

“Aren’t you already?” Maddie asked.

Chimney reared back. “What?”

Maddie shrugged. “I feel like we are going around in circles. You don’t want Jee-Yun to learn Korean because you don’t see any value in it, and I have inferred from that you also don’t want to teach her any Korean traditions. Anne asked me last week if we would celebrate DoljanchiDoljanchitraditional Korean celebration of a child’s first birthday for Jee-Yun. She had to explain to me what that is, of course, and I looked up some more information later. I find the idea of it very charming, though I would prefer to keep it small. But now I’m afraid to even ask your opinion about it.”

Chimney stared at her open-mouthed. He hadn’t thought about that at all, and his first reaction was anger at Anne for bringing it up. But before that could burst out of him, he stopped himself and took a deep breath. He remembered Kevin’s Doljanchi, and how much it had meant to Anne. It was, in fact, one of his most vibrant childhood memories, though he had barely been eight when it had taken place. He should have expected Anne to bring it up for Jee-Yun’s first birthday, he just wished she had done it with him and not Maddie.

“You want to celebrate a Doljanchi for Jee-Yun?” Chimney asked.

Maddie smiled and her whole face lit up. “I think it sounds lovely.”

Chimney felt like someone had punched him in the gut as he saw her immediate excitement being dimmed when he didn’t react right away. It had become so very rare to see Maddie truly happy since Jee-Yun had been born, and he really didn’t want to take that away from her again, even though he didn’t see any value in going to all the trouble of preparing the Doljanchi.

Chimney sighed, hard-pressed not to roll his eyes. “Okay. I don’t care much about how we celebrate her first birthday as long as we celebrate together, so why not.”

“Thank you,” Maddie whispered.

Chimney rubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. He gritted his teeth as he tried to find an argument that would make Maddie change her mind about her plans for their daughter.

“As I said,” Maddie continued quietly, “I don’t expect you to suddenly change completely how you feel about anything Korean. I just ask you to work on yourself and your reactions enough that Jee-Yun won’t come to believe she does something wrong whenever she asks about Korea or talks about what she learned from Albert and the Lees.”

Chimney shook his head. He didn’t know why Maddie couldn’t see what she was really asking of him, how she thought he didn’t need to change for this. He would have to turn his back on decisions he had carried for most of his life. He had very deliberately made the decision to leave his father’s culture behind as much as he could and to embrace the culture his mother had yearned for so much but had never been able to fully experience.

Maddie sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “I guess we have some more time to figure this out.”

Chimney huffed. “This has come pretty much out of the blue for me, you know? I didn’t know you had any of those ideas! And I’m especially stumped because you said you have thought about this since long before Jee-Yun’s birth.”

“Not really thought about it,” Maddie said with a frown. “It was something I just never questioned. I didn’t think ‘I want my child to grow up bilingual’. This whole time I was thinking ‘I wonder what it will be like to see my child growing up bilingual’ and wondered how I could support her in that. I’m honestly pretty intimidated by learning Korean myself.”

“You don’t need to learn it either,” Chimney said.

“I will,” Maddie said. “I never want to be in a position where I’m unable to understand my own child. At least from a language perspective.”

Chimney frowned unhappily.

“I think we need to make a plan and set goals for some parenting decisions,” Maddie said. “We clearly at some point lost the ability to … communicate with each other about the important things.”

“Yeah,” Chimney agreed. “The damn pandemic.”

Maddie shook her head. “It might have started there, but I don’t think that’s the root of our problems.”

“No?”

Chimney was convinced that the forced separation during the early pandemic and most of Maddie’s pregnancy was the main reason they had ended up in the situation they were in now. He couldn’t imagine that Maddie’s PPD would have turned out as bad as it had if doubt about their relationship hadn’t crept into her thoughts when Chimney needed to stay away from her to protect her. That very doubt was still driving her now, and Chimney hated seeing her hesitate and turn away from him.

Maddie sighed. “No. I think it just brought forward things we had never noticed before. Like that we aren’t talking about our plans for the future. I mean, honestly, before I became pregnant, we hadn’t made any plans for our future. And back then that was perfectly fine, just going from one day to the next and not taking anything into consideration except enjoying our lives. But we didn’t have a child depending on us then.”

“I had always planned to share my future and the rest of my life with you,” Chimney said.

Maddie huffed and smiled sadly. “And still we never talked about it.”

“You are right,” Chimney agreed. He hadn’t thought they needed to talk about it back then, but maybe that had been a mistake. And of course, the situation had also changed. “So, let’s talk about it now.”

Maddie raised her brow and looked at him quizzically.

“I looked into the commute from here to the 217 and even from our apartment to the 217,” Chimney said. “That won’t do long term. So, I thought we should start looking for a new apartment sooner rather than later. Somewhere in the middle between dispatch and the 217.”

Maddie pursed her lips with a little frown, but she nodded. “I think it’s a good idea for you to look for a new apartment. With a room Jee-Yun can call her own. I’ll start looking for an apartment of my own soon as well. I want her to have her own room soon.”

“Yeah, of…” Chimney froze. “Wait, what do you mean ‘look for your own apartment’?”

Maddie closed her eyes and slowly blew out a breath. “Exactly what I said. You need a new apartment anyway because you can’t stay with John and Anne indefinitely. And I need a new apartment because our old one is not a very good choice to raise a child in.”

“No.” Chimney raised his hand and shook his head. “What I meant was that we should look for an apartment together! There is no point to get separate apartments only for us…”

“I won’t move back in with you,” Maddie interrupted him harshly. “That should have been clear all along. Our romantic relationship is over, Chimney. I will not revisit that.”

Chimney flinched, not only because of her tone but also because of the way she addressed him. Ever since he had first visited her in the clinic in Burbank she had reverted back to calling him Chimney instead of Howie, and it hurt every time. He knew she used it as a way to put distance between them, but that was honestly only more reason to hate it. After acquiring his nickname, his given name had become something intimate, something reserved for people he was especially close to.

“I understand that we need a break, but…”

“Stop,” Maddie demanded, glaring at him. “Before we ever agreed to go on an official first date, I told you what boundaries I had set for myself. And you agreed to them. You didn’t even hesitate to agree.”

“Because it should have never become a problem!”

“You’re right, it shouldn’t have,” Maddie agreed. “But it did. And instead of owning up to it, you lied to me. And that’s the part that really fucking hurts!” She jumped out of her chair and walked away a couple of feet, her hands fisted at her side as she stopped and turned back to him. “You were so selfish in your own desire to keep our relationship that you decided to violate a boundary I had clearly set even before Doug nearly killed both of us!”

Chimney gaped at her and then he shook his head violently. “That’s not true! I didn’t mean to … I was worried and so panicked over you vanishing! Do you have any idea how it felt that you just left without a word? And that Buck kept it from me that you had called him and told him about Jee?”

Maddie held up one finger. “First, I might believe the explanation of you being in a panic if you had lied to me a day or two after it happened, not weeks later, and after you should have gotten a huge reality check by getting arrested!” She held up a second finger and ignored Chimney’s attempt to protest. “And second, Buck didn’t know anything more than you did from the video I left you.”

“He knew you had been at the ER with Jee!”

Maddie shook her head. “He didn’t! I had only told him the doctor had assured me Jee-Yun was fine. I didn’t tell him what happened or that I had been at the hospital with her.”

“He admitted that he knew!” Chimney spat, jumping out of his chair as well.

“Did he, really?” Maddie asked coldly. “Not before you punched him. I asked Dr. Moreno to transcribe the conversation from the video. I didn’t want to see it again, but I barely remembered what either of you had said because I was so shocked about…” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Anyway, I went through that whole conversation several times during therapy, hoping that I would eventually understand what had happened between you. Buck did not at any point tell you what he knew or didn’t know. You assumed and reacted to that.”

“No,” Chimney shook his head. “That’s not how it happened. I came over to tell him about the letter from the insurance because I finally understood what had scared you so much, and he wasn’t even a little bit surprised. And when I asked him, he didn’t deny anything.”

“Which is not the same thing as admitting to anything!” Maddie nearly shouted, taking two more steps back.

Chimney huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not? It sure as hell sounded like it to me.”

He didn’t see how it couldn’t be Buck admitting his fault the way he had tried to stammer around to distract him. Up until that day Chimney had thought they had been friends, and Buck’s clear betrayal had been like a punch to his gut at that very moment. Instead of helping him understand Maddie’s actions and helping him find her, Buck had actively held back vital information. If anyone should have understood him in October, it should have been Buck.

Maddie shook her head. “I can’t believe you.”

“And while we are already talking about lying,” Chimney said with a scowl. “Did you tell Buck to send me to Boston after you told him where you were, or did he make that decision for himself?”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Maddie said quietly. “There were bells in the background that made him think of Boston. You need to get your head out of your ass, Chimney. You can’t blame Buck for everything that went wrong in the last few months. None of what’s happened between you and me is Buck’s fault or had anything to do with him.”

Chimney frowned and fisted his hands, careful to hide that from Maddie under his crossed arms. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Buck told me you barely let him get a word out during that phone call when he mentioned Boston,” Maddie said. “And even if he had told you that he knew I was in Boston, in those exact words, you taking Jee-Yun on a road trip to the other side of the country was your decision alone.”

“He sent me there so that I would chase my own tail!” Chimney growled. “And so that he had time to plot that whole bullshit of pressing charges against me! If Buck had just…”

“Stop it!” Maddie turned her head away for a moment and when she looked back at Chimney, her face was a mask of anger and disappointment. “This leads to nothing but making me doubt how much I really want you to remain part of my life.”

Chimney felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. He gaped at her open-mouthed.

“We won’t ever be living together again,” Maddie said. “I won’t change my mind about it. I hope, if only for Jee-Yun’s sake, that we’ll eventually be able to be friends, though you aren’t making that easy right now in any way! Look for your own apartment and remember that you have a daughter who’ll hopefully live with you part-time, or at least call your apartment home as much as mine. But don’t expect me to ever move into that apartment with you. It will not happen, under any circumstances. Am I clear?”

“Maddie…” Chimney whispered. He felt lost and didn’t know where her reaction was coming from. He hadn’t thought for a single moment since she had left in October that they would ever reach a point like this.

Maddie shook her head. “I’ll go now before either of us says something we won’t be able to come back from.”

Chimney watched her silently as she turned and hurried away. He felt gutted, and he didn’t know how their conversation had turned from making plans for the future together to Maddie deciding there wasn’t a future for them at all.

 

Chapter 04

Maddie inhaled shakily and rubbed her hands over her face, wiping away the tears she hadn’t been able to hold in anymore as soon as she had turned her back to Chimney. She had known all along that he hadn’t really accepted the end of their relationship yet, but it had still shocked her to be confronted with his conviction of what their future would look like. She regretted a little now that they had had their conversation alone.

“Maddie?”

She took a deep breath before she turned to Anne. She had to have walked past her, too lost in her thoughts to see her even though Maddie had come out to look for her. Anne had said she would go to the nearby park with Jee-Yun to give Maddie and Chimney space, and all Maddie wanted to do after that horrible conversation with Chimney was to take her daughter and go home.

Maddie turned on her heels and tried to smile. “Hey. I came looking for you! I don’t know why I missed you, I…”

“Are you alright?” Anne asked worriedly, watching her with a deep frown.

Maddie sighed. “No. Chimney and I had an argument. But I … really don’t want to talk about it with you.”

Anne smiled softly, her head leaning to the side. “Okay. But please remember that I’m here for you if you need to talk. You are family, Maddie.”

Maddie swallowed and bit her lip. She didn’t know how to voice her doubts about Anne’s offer and the Lees’ acceptance of her into the family. She was grateful, of course, about how they had welcomed her with open arms, but they would always be Chimney’s foster parents first.

“You are as irrevocably a part of our family now as Howie is,” Anne said softly. “You are our honorary granddaughter’s mother. You’ll never lose that place. Howie has all our support, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have our support as well.”

Maddie nodded slowly. “I won’t forget, I promise. But I … I just want to be alone right now.”

“Alone with Jee-Yun or completely alone?” Anne asked.

“Alone with my daughter,” Maddie whispered, not daring to meet Anne’s gaze. She didn’t know what she thought Anne could be judging her for, but she still felt uncomfortable over the prospect of being judged.

“Okay.” Anne pushed the stroller to Maddie, Jee-Yun happily munching on a biscuit with no interest at all in either woman for the moment. “Do you mind if I give you a hug?”

Maddie sucked in a breath and thought about that offer for a moment before she shook her head. If she allowed Anne to hug her now, she didn’t know if she would be able to keep her composure. She didn’t know why she was this rattled by her argument with Chimney when he hadn’t said anything she hadn’t already known he believed, but she wanted to figure this out by herself. She needed to figure this out by herself.

“Please call me when you are home, yes?”

Maddie sent Anne a shaky smile. “Of course.”

She took the stroller and encouraged Jee-Yun to wave goodbye to Anne before she hurriedly left the park. She didn’t turn to look at the Lees’ house while she secured Jee-Yun in her car seat and put the stroller in the trunk. She put on music for Jee-Yun on the drive home, smiling over the nursery rhymes and softly humming along, but when she stopped her car in the parking lot of the apartment building, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the car.

Maddie sat in the car for more than ten minutes, staring in the direction of the front door of the building and wondering why she dreaded walking inside when all she had wanted earlier was to go home. She just wanted to be someplace where she was safe, where she could lock out everything except her daughter for a little while, and…

“Oh.” Maddie sighed and tried to swallow down the lump that was suddenly stuck in her throat.

She leaned forward and rested her forehead against the steering wheel, shaking and giving in to the silent tears for a moment. Maddie had never expected to be in this kind of situation with Chimney, had never thought she would ever dread going home because she couldn’t be sure Chimney wouldn’t eventually follow her there. He had his own key to the apartment—she hadn’t asked him to hand it over to her. She couldn’t even imagine ever asking that of him because part of her would never forget that this had been his apartment long before she had ever been part of his life.

Maddie blew out a breath and looked at Jee-Yun through the rear-view mirror. She had fallen asleep on the way here, something she almost always did in the car. “And where are we going to go now, baby girl?”

Jee-Yun didn’t give an answer, of course, didn’t even so much as twitch in her sleep.

Maddie pulled out of the parking lot without a concrete plan of where to go. She still wanted to be alone, but there was no place she could go for that. Maddie tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She needed to change that, and she didn’t know if it would be enough to just ask Chimney for the keys. That wouldn’t change how she felt about that apartment, and she regretted a little that she hadn’t taken up Buck’s offer to temporarily move into his apartment now. The stairs would have been a problem for Jee-Yun, of course, but she would have somehow found a way to make the situation secure for her daughter.

When she stopped her car in front of another apartment building, Maddie blinked in surprise. She couldn’t remember when she had made a decision about where to go, and she wondered for a moment why she had driven over to Josh’s place. But after a moment Maddie just shrugged and decided to trust her instincts as she pulled out her phone. She should at least call Josh and ask if he even had time for her to visit him before knocking on his door.

Half an hour later, Jee-Yun sat playing in the pack’n’play Maddie always had in the trunk of her car while Josh and she were sitting on his couch and drinking tea. Josh hadn’t hesitated for a moment to invite her up and even offer her his couch to sleep on. He hadn’t even asked about it when she had said she didn’t want to go home and needed somewhere to stay.

“I’m so—”

“Nope.” Josh raised his brows and sent her a look. “Don’t apologize. You aren’t a burden or putting me out, so just stop that thought right there. I’m happy to be here for you, and you don’t need to tell me more than you absolutely need to.”

Maddie pulled her feet up on the couch. “I’m not even sure why I came to you.”

“Why didn’t you go to Buck?” Josh asked.

Maddie chuckled. “No, that’s not … Oh, I know they would welcome me with open arms, but I really don’t want to impose on Eddie and Christopher. I’m honestly still not sure about how fast that developed between them. When I left in early October Buck was still seeing Taylor, and in mid-November Buck told me he was moving in with Eddie?”

Josh laughed loudly, his whole body shaking. “I mean, really. That’s been a long time coming for those two, hasn’t it?”

“I never thought it would happen,” Maddie said. “Sure, Buck’s crush was pretty obvious from the very beginning, but that doesn’t have to mean anything in the end, right?”

“Do you think Eddie is the wrong partner for your brother?” Josh asked.

Maddie shrugged. There was no way she could answer that truthfully, mostly because she had recognized over the last couple of months that some of the things she felt and thought about her brother and their relationship weren’t healthy at all. She wasn’t happy about the relationship choices Buck had made since they had reconnected, and everything she had learned about how Buck had been before she had come to LA had only reinforced her belief that he hardly knew what was good for him.

“Wow.” Josh looked at her surprised. “I take it that’s a yes.”

Maddie shook her head. “Not really. I’m learning that my perception of Buck might be … a little more than just slightly skewed. And that has a lot to do with…” She hesitated and rubbed her thumb over the mug in her hands. She didn’t remember if she had ever told Josh about Daniel or not. “Did either Buck or I ever tell you about Daniel?”

“No.” Josh dragged out the word.

Maddie huffed and summarized the situation in as few words as she could. “I thought I had dealt with it, you know? That I had mourned Daniel a long time ago, and that it didn’t affect my relationship with Buck.”

Josh put his mug on the table and turned to Maddie, watching her carefully. “I’m sorry, but how could you have mourned him? You weren’t allowed to talk about him, or really to even think about him. You never had a chance to mourn your brother.”

“Yeah,” Maddie muttered. “You aren’t the first one to tell me that.”

“So, you have been working through that in therapy as well?”

“I think it’s been as much of the focus as … working out the lingering issues from my marriage,” Maddie admitted. “It’s brought up a lot of things. Among others, that I need to check myself in the way I treat Buck sometimes. Because … making decisions for him was all I did for the first nine years of his life. I remember going to meet his teachers from first grade on, finding excuses for why our parents couldn’t make it and were sending me instead. When the truth was, they just never cared for those appointments.”

Josh cursed under his breath. “I think I’m starting to understand some of Buck’s behavior a little better now. And he really never knew until last year?”

“Never suspected anything,” Maddie said. “We talked about it a little, recently. He … he has decided that he doesn’t want to view Daniel as his brother, really. But he is still happy to talk about him with me. And Buck mentioned that he sometimes wondered about the age gap between us, but that he always figured he had been an accident and that our parents had been too … cowardly to just give him up for adoption.”

Josh made a face. “Ouch.”

Maddie sighed deeply. “Yeah. Anyway, no I don’t know what to think about his relationship with Eddie, but I’m trying not to step into it. It’s difficult. But I don’t want to lose Buck, and I fear … I could very easily right now make that last wrong step to ruin everything between us.”

Josh huffed out a laugh. “I really don’t think Buck would let that happen. Even if you fight for a while, he’ll fight to build up a good relationship with you again. He has proven that more than once since I’ve known the two of you.”

Maddie smiled, thankful for that reassurance. She wanted to believe what Josh had hinted at, that there was nothing she could do that would make Buck turn his back on her. But throughout his life, she had already hurt Buck so often that she didn’t know if she wouldn’t eventually reach a point that broke their relationship. And all the soul-searching she had done over the last couple of months had only made her more insecure about it.

“Do you need help with anything?” Josh asked after several minutes of silence.

Maddie pulled her shoulders up and looked down at her hands. “What do you mean?”

Josh sighed. “Just exactly what I said. You asked for refuge for a little while, maybe as much as a night. But if you don’t want to go home for any reason, we might need to think about a better long-term solution than my couch and a pack-n-play for Jee-Yun.”

Maddie shook her head. “I don’t … I don’t know why I feel this way about the apartment. I … I had an argument with Chimney, but that’s not … I don’t think he actually would come over uninvited.”

“But the possibility is still there,” Josh said quietly.

Maddie shrugged.

“So, do you want to look for a new apartment?” Josh asked.

“That’s what started all of this in the first place,” Maddie muttered. “Or at least … the real argument part. We had kind of argued before that already about Jee-Yun learning Korean.”

“You don’t want her to learn Korean?” Josh asked surprised.

Maddie laughed listlessly. “Oh, no. It’s exactly the other way around. I assumed she would of course grow up bilingual, but Chimney is very opposed to it. So, we talked about having to communicate better about our parenting and about the future, and then Chimney brought up looking for a new apartment. Which is a good idea, now that he knows where he will work in the future. But he assumed we would look for a new apartment together.”

“So, you had to finally make sure he understood that there is no going back to your old relationship. I assume he didn’t take that well.”

“Yeah, not really,” Maddie whispered with a frown. “And then we were suddenly arguing about if Buck had or hadn’t lied to Chimney. I don’t understand why Chimney is blaming Buck for everything. There is not a single thing that went wrong in the last couple of months, hell, in the last year, that he can rightfully blame Buck for.”

“If he blames Buck then he doesn’t have to deal with his own fault in the situation,” Josh said softly.

Maddie closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “And the next time he loses his temper with me or Jee-Yun, he’ll blame us, right?”

It was a thought she had never voiced before, had very desperately tried not to let come up at all. She couldn’t escape from that thought anymore, though. She knew Chimney, and at one point she had trusted him explicitly. One mistake shouldn’t have changed any of it, and yet, it had.

Maddie pressed her fist against her mouth and shook her head. “I hate that I think that kind of thing about him. That I … couldn’t even retreat to a place where I knew he could follow me when all I wanted earlier was to be alone.”

“Do you still want to be alone?” Josh asked.

“No.” Maddie forced a smile on her face. “I think I shouldn’t really follow that kind of urge for a while. Even without the … problem with my apartment, I immediately felt better as soon as you came down to help me carry my things up.”

Josh nodded slowly. “You are allowed to feel whatever you feel, you know? Even if it might seem unfair, no one has the right to tell you what you are feeling isn’t right. And if you don’t feel safe in any situation, no one has the right to forbid you to seek a place where you feel safe.”

“I should not feel unsafe with Chimney,” Maddie muttered, tears of frustration running down her face. “I hate this. I hate it so much.”

“But you do feel unsafe,” Josh said. “At least for the moment. And that’s okay. You aren’t at fault for that. He knew where your boundaries were all along. Can you remember if you felt the same before your argument with him today?”

Maddie sighed and shook her head.

“Where did that argument take place? Were you alone?”

“We met at the Lees’,” Maddie whispered. “I … I was pretty sure we would eventually argue, and I didn’t want that to happen at home. I don’t want those memories there. And yes, we were alone. Anne had taken Jee-Yun out on a walk and John was working.”

“And my previous question?”

Maddie huffed. “If I had felt unsafe, I would have hardly met with Chimney alone.”

“Do you think this could be a reaction not to Chimney specifically but to having an argument with an intimate partner in general?” Josh asked. “Do you remember how you felt in the past after you had an argument with him?”

Maddie looked up at him in surprise. She hadn’t thought about that possibility so far, but something rang true in Josh’s words. There hadn’t been many arguments between her and Chimney in the past, mostly because Maddie had never bothered to get over her instincts to avoid arguments. The biggest one had probably been about the situation with Tara, and she had been too wrapped up in her own head then to care much about Chimney’s reaction or how she felt about that. But there had been other, smaller fights before the pregnancy, and a lot more over the phone during the pregnancy because she had hated that Chimney hadn’t been with her.

Looking back now with Josh’s question in mind, Maddie blew out her breath slowly as she recognized a clear pattern in those fights where they had been face to face. She had felt more uncomfortable than the argument itself should have warranted. The most glaring evidence, though, was that there had been none of that uneasiness when she had fought with Chimney from a distance. It had been a lot easier to stand her ground in those fights without feeling as if she had made a huge mistake afterward.

Maddie slumped against the backrest. “Damn.”

“There shouldn’t ever be a reason for you to feel bad about your own emotions as long as you don’t lash out against anyone because of them,” Josh said.

“How do I get over this?” Maddie muttered tiredly.

“With time, I’m told,” Josh said quietly. “Not that I have gotten over my knee-jerk reaction to some situations yet. But I have overcome some things already, so I’ll keep believing it will eventually also happen with the rest. I’m glad you are finally allowing yourself the help to heal.”

Maddie clenched her teeth. Josh had never held back with his opinion that she should have given therapy another chance a long time ago. They hadn’t ever outright discussed it, but he had mentioned it often enough, had talked about his own therapy often enough, only ever softly prodding her about going back to therapy as well.

“I don’t have time,” Maddie said darkly.

Josh chuckled. “Of course you have time. Chimney will just have to deal with it. And he’ll also have to deal with the consequences if he doesn’t back off. You don’t owe him anything just because you had sex with him in the past.”

“He is my daughter’s father, though.”

“And do you want your daughter to grow up with a father who will teach her men don’t have to respect her boundaries?”

***

Chimney drank half of the beer Hen had given him in one go and then let his head drop back, staring up at the sky. He still didn’t know what had happened earlier with Maddie, and Anne had not been helpful when she had come home. She had watched him silently when he had asked about Maddie and just shook her head with a disappointed sigh when he had explained that they had argued about a new apartment for them.

“Are you going to sit here brooding the rest of the day or will you tell us what happened?” Hen asked with raised brows.

“I don’t know what happened!” Chimney said. “And I’m sorry to hijack your free day.”

“That’s okay,” Karen said with a warm smile. “We are happy to help in any way we can. There is a lot going on for you right now. Hen said you wanted to spend the day with Maddie.”

“Yeah,” Chimney muttered, taking another big gulp from his beer. “That didn’t play out like I thought it would. We fought and she left. I went by the apartment, but she wasn’t there. She also didn’t answer when I called her. I’ve no idea where she and Jee-Yun are right now.”

“Do you worry she might leave again?” Hen asked.

Chimney turned his head away and shrugged. It was something he had thought about, but he hoped she wouldn’t run again. If Maddie kept running away every time something didn’t go her way they would never be able to get back to where they had been before the blackout.

“Have you called Buck?” Karen asked.

Chimney huffed and glared at her. “No. And I won’t. My relationship with Maddie doesn’t concern him at all.”

“But she could be with him.”

“Doubtful,” Hen said softly. “As far as I know, she isn’t too happy about Buck moving in with Eddie so quickly. Going to Buck also means going to Eddie now, and I don’t think she would want to do that.”

Karen rolled her eyes, and Chimney didn’t know if it was about Buck and Eddie’s hasty decision or about Maddie’s reaction to it. He didn’t care either way, really, because the last thing he wanted to do was think or talk about Buck and Eddie. Eddie had clearly chosen his side, and Chimney didn’t care if they burned friendships through their impulsive behavior.

“What did you fight about?” Karen asked.

“That’s exactly the point I’m not really sure about!” Chimney said agitatedly. “We were talking about how to raise Jee at first. Maddie is pretty invested in including Korean traditions in Jee-Yun’s childhood, and I’m not so sure about that. And then I brought up looking for a new apartment, now that I know where I’m transferred to.”

Hen frowned and leaned forward, putting her own beer on the table. “An apartment? As in one?”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course.”

“As in for you and Maddie together?”

Chimney glared at her. “That’s what I said.”

Hen sighed and dropped her head on the table with a groan. “Chimney!”

“Maddie and I will eventually figure all of this out!” Chimney said forcefully. “What’s the point in looking for an apartment for me alone only to have to look for a bigger one after that? I know Maddie can’t really think about that right now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for the future.”

Hen raised her head and looked at Chimney with a blank face. “And Maddie was angry about that assumption, I assume.”

“Assumption?” Chimney asked taken aback.

“I think Maddie has made it very clear where she stands, Chimney,” Hen whispered. “And I don’t know why you can’t recognize that. I haven’t talked to her personally since she went into in-person therapy, but I can still tell you that she won’t ever want to live with you again. It is just not happening, Chimney.”

“She needs time, I know that. Frankly, I need time as well. But we are a family, and we will get through this without our family breaking apart,” Chimney said.

“Being a family does not mean that Maddie and you have to be in a romantic relationship,” Karen said softly. “Or that you have to live together. Those two things have very little to do with each other.”

“I love Maddie!” Chimney scowled. “And she loves me. We won’t let her PPD and all that happened because of it destroy that.”

“Love also doesn’t equal a romantic relationship,” Karen said. “And are you really blaming Maddie’s PPD for your actions?”

Chimney frowned. “That’s not what I said! All of you need to stop putting words in my mouth!”

“Or maybe you need to start thinking about what you are actually saying,” Hen said with a deep sigh. “You know I’m on your side, right? But that doesn’t mean I’ll blindly support you while you run straight into your demise. And that’s exactly what you have been doing for months. You need to start getting out of your head and recognize that what you want is not necessarily what everyone else wants, and that you might just have to accept that some things have irrevocably changed!”

Chimney shook his head. “You mean what I want isn’t what Buck wants?”

Hen frowned deeply and leaned back. “I’m not talking about Buck at all. What’s going on between you and Maddie has pretty little to do with Buck.”

“Except that Buck is the one trying to convince Maddie we aren’t any good together!”

Karen burst out laughing, and Chimney was startled mostly by how incredulous she sounded. “I think you need a lot more help than just therapy for anger management. I mean, I know you like to follow your own narrative, and for the most part, I really like you despite that habit of yours, but this is ridiculous.”

Chimney stared at her open-mouthed. He didn’t know what Karen was talking about or how to react to it, but he suddenly didn’t feel very welcome here anymore.

Hen sighed. “What Karen is failing to say politely is that you have turned around the events in your head by blaming Buck for everything. You made a huge mistake concerning Buck, and you have to live with the consequences. That you had to face charges was not Buck’s fault, as much as I, too, wish both of you had found a better way to handle it. And how Maddie reacted to you hitting her brother is not Buck’s fault either.”

“It’s ridiculous that she is holding one mistake made in the heat of the moment against me!” Chimney said, his voice raised in anger.

“Didn’t she tell you long before your friendship evolved to dating that she wouldn’t ever accept a man in her life again who would turn in violence against anyone, no matter who?” Hen asked.

“But that’s not what I did!”

“It is exactly what you did,” Hen said, staring at him intently. “You broke Buck’s face. And even if it had been a slap without causing any injuries instead of a punch, Maddie has every right to enforce her boundaries, even with you. Maybe especially with you.”

“Especially with me?”

“You are the first man she trusted again after she escaped her ex,” Karen said quietly. “You are her child’s father. Not enforcing her boundaries with you will teach your daughter things she won’t want her child to learn. And it will ruin everything she fought for since escaping her ex. Sometimes one mistake is all it needs to cost you everything. Instead of trying to force Maddie into ignoring her boundaries, you should be thankful she is willing to still interact with you at all.”

Chimney shook his head. “I can’t believe either of you! You are twisting around the situation as much as everyone else! I thought I would find support with you!”

“Are we, really?” Hen asked with a sad smile. “You keep saying everything that happened is Buck’s fault. Frankly, I don’t see it, but maybe you can walk me through it.”

Chimney watched her skeptically. He sensed a trap and he hated that he couldn’t even trust his best friend anymore, but maybe this was also finally a chance to make Hen see what was really going on.

“He held back vital information about Maddie after she vanished,” Chimney started, trying to stay calm. Just thinking about it made him want to punch Buck again. “Maddie had called him to tell him that she’d needed to take Jee to a doctor. I know he knew about the ER even if both of them deny it.”

Karen held up a hand. “Why should Maddie or Buck lie to you about it?”

Chimney opened his mouth and closed it again, blinking confusedly. Of course Buck would lie about it to save his face, but he couldn’t come up with an explanation for Maddie other than she was taking her brother’s side on principle. It hurt to think about that. Chimney swallowed hard.

In the end, he shrugged and ignored Karen’s question. “He lied to me about Maddie being in Boston. He knew she was here in Burbank, and he still sent me to the other side of the country.”

“Did he tell you that you needed to go to Boston?” Hen asked.

“What?” Chimney frowned.

“Did Buck force you to go to Boston? I thought so far that leaving LA to search for Maddie even though you didn’t even have a place to start was your idea, not Buck’s”

“Of course it was my idea!”

“So, how is it Buck’s fault that you made that decision?”

“He gave me the wrong information!”

Hen shook her head. “Do you really not see how insane the things you say sound? I know Maddie didn’t want you to follow her, she was very explicit about that in her video. And I know Buck didn’t like that you went to search for Maddie instead of staying here with Jee-Yun. You were on the road long before Buck brought up his suspicion about Boston. That he provided you with information doesn’t make him responsible for your decisions.”

Chimney shook his head and gritted his teeth in anger. “You don’t get it. I think you don’t want to get it.”

Hen closed her eyes for a moment and tapped her fingers against the table. “You are right, I don’t get it. I was furious with Buck about going to the police and pressing charges against you. Because I believed you when you told me he had tried to hold you back and you had hurt him accidentally. I don’t get why you lied to me about that. It gutted me when I finally saw the video and had to recognize that you had lied to me. That you had used me.”

“I didn’t use you!”

“Yeah, you did,” Hen whispered. “Why did you lie, Chimney? Why didn’t you just own up to your mistake?”

“Because I knew that something like what’s happening now would happen!” Chimney growled, putting his beer on the table with more force than was necessary. “That everyone would blame me, that no one would care about the kind of position Buck had put me in! He left me floundering for a week when he knew all along why Maddie had left, and probably also already knew at that point where she was.”

“He was too frantic and worried himself to have known that,” Karen said. “You keep complaining that no one can see your side in any of this, but how can we when you keep denying that you did anything wrong?”

“Wasn’t accepting those fucked up charges enough to admit my mistakes?” Chimney asked agitated.

“But you didn’t plead guilty because you recognized your mistake,” Hen said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t keep arguing that Buck had any fault in your own actions. You didn’t fight the charges because Maddie forced you to. And I’m not sure that was a good choice on her part. Maybe you needed the whole trial proceedings to finally see what you are doing.”

“Or it could have made him dig in his heels even more,” Karen muttered under her breath.

Chimney glared at her and stood abruptly. “It was clearly a mistake to come here.”

“And now you are running away again when people tell you things you don’t want to hear,” Hen said, disappointment clearly written all over her face. “How long do you think you can push Maddie before she decides that cutting you off completely is the only way she can handle this situation with you?”

“I’m not running away!”

“You are,” Hen said. “You haven’t really stopped running away since the moment you hit Buck. I have thought about those days a lot, you know, wondering what had changed when you suddenly decided to take your daughter on a road trip. You didn’t have any more information about Maddie’s whereabouts than the days before. You knew about the accident she’d had with Jee-Yun, and that might have given you insight into her reasons for leaving, but surely not where you could find her. You had already known for days that she had withdrawn money in Oxnard. The only thing that had changed was your confrontation with Buck. So, yes, I think you leaving at that moment was at least partly to flee from the consequences of that.”

Chimney shuddered, frozen in place. It wasn’t true. He hadn’t fled from Buck, there hadn’t been any reason to flee from him. He had left to search for Maddie because he hadn’t been able to sit at home anymore and do nothing. And still, Hen’s words burned in a way he had not expected and couldn’t explain.

“You’re running away now, too,” Hen continued. “You are running away from recognizing that your relationship with Maddie has fundamentally changed and that what you want your future to look like is of no consequence because you lost her trust in you.”

“That’s not true,” Chimney hissed, his hands fisted at his sides.

Hen sighed.

“If it’s not true, why do you get so angry every time it’s brought up that Maddie and you won’t be in a romantic relationship ever again?” Karen asked.

“I’m not giving up on Maddie so easily!”

Karen sighed. “You are a stubborn asshole, Chimney. If you really wanted to fight for her, you would take a step back, accept the boundaries she has set, and give her the space she’s demanding. You would wait patiently and do anything to make her feel comfortable instead of pushing her, instead of forcing your own expectations on her.”

Chimney gritted his teeth. “And what about Maddie forcing her expectations on me?”

“Is she violating your personal space and boundaries when she tells you she doesn’t want to fuck you anymore?” Karen asked bluntly and Chimney flinched. “Because you are violating her personal space and boundaries every time you even so much as hint that you expect to eventually fuck her again.”

Hen cleared her throat, but Chimney could see a grin play around the corner of her lips. “You could be a little less blunt and crass.”

“I think being blunt is the only thing that will eventually penetrate his thick skull.” Karen looked at him coldly. “And honestly, that I can use the phrase ‘you expect to eventually fuck her again’ should put you back on your ass and evaluate what the hell you have been doing the past couple months. You should never expect anything from any woman. Maddie doesn’t owe you anything.”

Something burned in Chimney’s chest, but he couldn’t place what he was feeling. It wasn’t the hot burning rage that had been driving him since his altercation with Buck in October. Additionally, the accusation in Karen’s words wrapped around his chest like a heavy chain and made it difficult to breathe.

Chimney swallowed and turned, leaving his friends without another word. If he could still call them his friends. They had made it very clear, after all, that he couldn’t expect any support from them.

Chapter 05

Albert looked over the materials Maddie had spread out on the table between them with a skeptical frown. They were sitting at the Lees’ dining table, waiting for John and Chimney to come home from their grocery run. It was Saturday, and somehow the Lees had established that Chimney, Maddie with Jee-Yun, and Albert would come over for a shared afternoon and dinner either Saturday or Sunday, depending on which day Albert had free. He didn’t know yet how this evolving tradition would go forward when first Chimney and later also Maddie would return to work, and each of them were on different shifts, but he trusted Anne and John to find a solution for that.

Albert sighed. “You should remember that I don’t have much knowledge about linguistics or teaching languages.”

Maddie chuckled. “Yes, I know. But I was pretty overwhelmed when these books arrived yesterday. To be honest, I didn’t even think about the fact that I would need to learn a new alphabet as well if I wanted to learn Korean. That had somehow completely slipped my mind.”

Albert grinned at her and raised his brows.

Maddie rolled her eyes. “It’s silly, I know. But I thumbed through the books and saw all the Hangul and suddenly it just hit me that this will be even harder than the Spanish and French I learned in school. Or, tried to learn. I’m not sure I remember any French I learned during high school. I just never needed it, you know?”

Anne laughed from her place by the couch where she was slowly walking around the living room behind Jee-Yun, who was holding tightly onto Anne’s hand while carefully setting one foot before the next. Jee-Yun had been very determined to walk the last couple of days, even though she didn’t manage many steps on her own yet. As long as she could hold onto something or someone, she was happily entertained for long stretches of time just by walking along.

“I think it will be less trouble than you expect right now,” Anne said. “You are a bright young woman, and you have all of us to help.”

“I’m not that young,” Maddie muttered.

Albert grinned and bumped his shoulder against hers. He had picked her and Jee-Yun up from the baby swim class this week and seen all the other mostly much younger parents. Maddie had complained under her breath about her age then as well, until Albert had pointed out that she hadn’t even been the oldest mother in the group he had seen. Albert had no idea how to relate to her in this, but he had made it his goal to distract her from that clearly unhappy thought.

“Hangul is a relatively small alphabet, at least,” Albert said. “I found learning Hangul a lot easier than learning Hanja, which is derived from Chinese characters. Just imagine if you had to learn Japanese. I once read somewhere they have the most complex writing system the world over.”

Maddie sighed. “I guess I should try not to think of the worst already, huh?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Albert said. “I believe in you. You’ll get the hang of this in no time. I really admire that you are doing this for Jee-Yun. There are lots of parents who wouldn’t do this.”

Maddie frowned. “You think so?”

“I know so,” Albert shrugged as he thumbed through the exercise book. He could understand why Maddie was overwhelmed, since by the third chapter the instructions were given both in English and Korean, and by the tenth chapter there wasn’t an English word to be seen anymore.

“I went to an IB school and had several friends whose parents came from different countries. Less than half of those parents spoke the native language of their spouse, which I always found confusing. I mean, one of the parents usually spoke their partner’s language, but I also had two friends who grew up with three languages, using their respective parent’s mother tongue while talking to them and speaking English if all three of them had a conversation together. And then they additionally learned Korean because they wanted to know the language of the country they were living in. I never understood those parents because I can’t imagine having a partner and never talking in either of our native languages with each other.”

Maddie stared at him wide-eyed. “That is so strange! Did those parents at least speak Korean as well?”

Albert shrugged. “Many didn’t. They trusted that English was enough to get along. And I guess they never got into a situation that changed their minds. But those were also the parents who never ventured out far from where they worked. I made a lot of friends in school who would only stay around four years in a single place and then move again because their parents got a new assignment. I can understand a little that those parents wouldn’t put much effort into learning the language of the country they were currently staying in.”

“Some people also have a very difficult time learning languages,” Anne said softly. “Not everyone who comes here learns English either. And if they find a community where it isn’t needed much it never becomes a problem for them. Howie’s mother never learned much English. She tried in the beginning, of course, but she got frustrated very fast. She dealt with only other Koreans at her job, and I think that would have been the only place that could have forced her to not give up on learning English. For the longest time, it wasn’t a problem at all.”

“But it became a problem when she got sick,” Maddie said quietly. “Chimney talked about that once when Hen’s mom was sick last year.”

Anne sighed. “It was a very big problem then, yes. And of course, by that time Jee-Yun was much too exhausted by everything to concentrate on learning more English. But that only supports Albert’s point, doesn’t it? It’s very admirable that you are determined to learn a language for no other reason than that your child will grow up with that language.”

Maddie smiled softly and turned to watch Anne and Jee-Yun. “I’ll need both of you and John in order for Jee-Yun to learn Korean while growing up, I think. Chimney wasn’t exactly…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“I hope he will come around at some point,” Anne said. “He associates speaking Korean with his mother, and I think also with losing his mother. We clearly failed him in helping him work through his grief, and you and Jee-Yun are suffering for that now. I am very sorry for that.”

Maddie bit her lip with a frown.

“You know, I think that’s taking away Chimney’s own responsibility for the situation, and I don’t believe that’s a good idea,” Albert said. In his opinion, Chimney already shoved the responsibly for enough of his own mistakes onto others, he really didn’t need support in that. “He’s had nearly thirty years to work through his grief for his mother. At some point it becomes a choice to hold onto the grief for such a long time.”

Anne turned her head to look at him with a pitying smile. “I do hope you’ll still have many years to hold onto that belief before you have to deal with losing either of your parents.”

Albert frowned and pursed his lips. He didn’t think he deserved that kind of gentle scolding, but he decided against arguing his point. She was right in so far that he couldn’t imagine losing either of his parents, especially in the circumstances as it had happened to Chimney, but that didn’t mean his opinion about the way Chimney still clung to the grief over his mother was invalid. Albert was convinced it had had a negative impact on Chimney the whole time, and now it was also negatively affecting the family he had started to build.

“I don’t want to pressure Chimney to speak Korean if he doesn’t want to,” Maddie said. “And he clearly doesn’t want to.”

“We will happily teach Jee-Yun,” Anne chuckled. “But sooner rather than later she will start speaking to her father in Korean, and I truly hope when that happens that he will be ready to answer her in the same way.”

“Yeah,” Maddie whispered. “She won’t understand his grief for a long time to come.”

“And that’s a good thing,” Albert said darkly. “She doesn’t need to understand it, or to even be confronted with it.”

“I talked with Chimney about Jee-Yun’s first birthday,” Maddie said, a smile lighting up her whole face. “He agreed to a Doljanchi, and I think that’s a first step in the right direction for him.”

Anne scooped Jee-Yun up in her arms and whirled her through the air in a half circle, making the little girl squeal in delight. “That is a wonderful idea,” she said softly as she sat down at the table with them, Jee-Yun in her lap. “Though, there isn’t much time left to plan. Usually, the preparations start a long time before the first birthday.”

Maddie shook her head, laughing. “I read something about that. But I don’t want it to be something big. Just our family and friends.”

Anne watched Maddie for a moment silently. “I can understand that. We went for a comparatively small celebration for Kevin as well. I mean, John’s and my families were pretty big and all located around here at the time, so even with just family and our closest friends we reached just over fifty guests.”

Albert bit his lip grinning, not bothering to mention to Maddie that the few Doljanchis he could remember attending had all been bigger than that. He knew his own had been a lot bigger, with a lot of his father’s business partners attending as well.

“I really just want something small,” Maddie said with a worried frown. “Our family, a couple of friends. Enjoying some good food together. And I’m really intrigued by the … oh, I forgot the name. The fortune-telling game.”

Anne chuckled. “The DoljabiDoljabiA game during the Doljanchi, where the child choses an item from a display. Guest usually bet on the choice.. The most important part of any Doljanchi.”

“Yes, that one,” Maddie nodded with a grin. “I was a little lost reading about all the items Jee-Yun should choose from, though. I mean, the list was pretty long and we can’t just put two or three dozen objects in front of her right?”

Albert grinned and shook his head. “You’ll choose to offer her six or seven. I always thought it was more of a reflection of what the parents wanted for their child than anything the child might predict for their future. We can go through all the possible objects at one point and I can explain their meanings to you.”

“Do you plan to go with a traditional dress for Jee-Yun?” Anne asked, rocking Jee-Yun slightly from side to side.

Maddie’s eyes shone with delight as she nodded. “She’ll look so cute. You’ll have to show me a good place to buy the dress for her.”

Anne huffed and glared at her. “You will not buy my granddaughter a premade dolbokDolboktraditional dress for the Doljanchi. I made my own for Kevin, I’ll make one for Jee-Yun as well.”

“I…” Maddie stared at her wide-eyed, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. “You would … I mean, that would be fantastic. But I don’t want to put you out.”

“Nonsense.” Anne shook her head. “It won’t be any hassle at all!”

“Do you plan to invite your parents and AppaAppaDad?” Albert asked as a distraction. He knew how easy it was to make Maddie cry, and he really didn’t want her to burst out in tears now, even if they would be happy tears.

Maddie sighed and wiped the tears from her eyes. “My parents won’t come. And would your father really come?”

“He has not been back in America since the funeral of Chimney’s mother,” Albert said quietly. “Chimney isn’t the only one who has dealt quite unreasonably with his grief over Jee-Yun senior, in my opinion. So, to answer your question: No, I don’t think he will come. But I expect him to send a present at least. And I still hope that someday Appa and Chimney will be able to talk about everything that happened between them. Not inviting Appa would … be the death knell for that hope.”

Anne frowned. “I thought you had reconnected with your parents, Maddie.”

Maddie huffed. “I tried. But I … There was a lot going on for me, and I forgot how they really are. I somehow convinced myself that my child deserved to know her grandparents, but … Jee-Yun will be better off never meeting them. And thankfully they have ample reason not to want to meet Jee-Yun.”

“Such as?” Anne asked with raised brows.

Maddie huffed. “I’m sure you really don’t want to know either.”

Anne gave her a look and waited.

“You know about … I mean, did Chimney tell you about Daniel? I don’t remember if I did.”

Anne sighed. “He told us that you had another brother who died during childhood and that Buck was young enough not to remember him. For some reason, no one in your family ever talked about your brother and Buck only found out recently.”

Maddie blew out a breath. “Yeah, that’s not even half the story. But we can go into that later. Our parents broke when Daniel died. And I think until they came to visit last year that I still hoped they would someday become the parents that I remembered from before again. I know I can’t in any way comprehend their loss, but…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

“I know what it feels like to lose a son,” Anne whispered. “How old were you when your brother died?”

“Nine, nearly ten, really. Buck’d just turned one.”

Anne exhaled slowly, rocking Jee-Yun softly in her lap. “And when you say your parents broke…?”

“I practically raised Buck until I left for college. And I think … I didn’t notice this back then, of course. I was way too preoccupied with myself and then I met Doug and everything … Whatever. They didn’t bother to take care of Buck even then. And I only really understood the whole scope of that last year. Or maybe now during therapy because I have been talking a lot about Daniel and how losing him that young and having to care for my baby brother after that is shaping me as a mother now.”

Albert shuddered as he saw Anne’s gaze turn cold for a moment before she turned her head to the side, shoulders tense. “The thing I regret the most about the months after Kevin died is that we let Howie drift away from us. And that we didn’t fix it until you came into his life, Maddie. There is not a single scenario in which I can imagine neglecting a minor child because I lost another child. We gave Howie space because we thought he needed that to deal with his own grief, and somehow that turned into more distance than we had expected. But if he had been a minor, dependent on us, we would have made sure he had all the support he needed to get through that time. If you don’t want to judge your parents for what they did, I will judge them harshly for you in your stead.”

Maddie laughed wetly. “I judge them, alright. At least since I gave up hope on ever getting back the parents I lost along with my brother. That just didn’t happen until recently.”

“I would not want to have people like that in my child’s life either,” Anne said, dangerously quiet.

Albert nodded in agreement. He knew some more stories that Maddie had shared with him about her childhood, and some of the things she had told him made a lot more sense after he knew there had been another Buckley brother once upon a time. From what he had heard from Buck, the whole reveal about his dead brother had been an accident, but Albert had wondered from the beginning if Maddie’s resolve to keep quiet about it had just broken with her pregnancy.

“That’s not even…” Maddie sighed and folded her hands in her lap, staring down at the table. “One reason I think they won’t come here for Jee-Yun’s birthday is that they can’t bear how life keeps going on for Buck and me. That’s another thing I only started to see recently, but they … resent every milestone, every accomplishment either of us reaches that was denied to Daniel. It’s worse with Buck than with me, but that might just change now that I have a child.”

Anne huffed. “I don’t know your parents, but I can’t say I like them very much.”

“You should still send them an invitation,” Albert said. “Because their rejection of their grandchild’s first birthday party will be reason enough to deny them any access in the future.”

Maddie huffed. “That sounds very mercenary.”

“My father and grandfather built a very successful business out of nothing,” Albert said, shrugging. “I learned not to take any hostages before I learned to write.”

Maddie stared at him open-mouthed. “I didn’t know that.”

Albert shrugged again. “I’m not surprised. I know how much Chimney has divorced himself from our family’s history, from our legacy.”

Maddie bit her lip. “But you said inviting your father when we know he won’t come would be to preserve the opportunity for Chimney and him to reconcile one day. But at the same time, you say my parents not coming is reason enough to keep them away in the future.”

“There are several differences between your parents and Appa,” Albert said, rolling his eyes. “Do you think they will even send a present for Jee-Yun?”

Maddie turned her head away, drawing her shoulders up. “No. They … There are other reasons why they won’t come. They won’t understand why we are following a Korean tradition for Jee-Yun’s first birthday. They probably hoped her mixed heritage wouldn’t be too visible and could be mostly overlooked.”

Anne huffed. “That kind of people. I’m not even surprised after what you told us earlier.”

“They aren’t very loud about their opinions at least,” Maddie muttered darkly. “And that was one time I was glad for their disinterest in Buck, because it was one less thing I needed to unteach him concerning their opinions. I don’t doubt they will start telling everyone they don’t have a son once they learn Buck is with Eddie now.”

Albert gritted his teeth. “Wow, that’s … That they left you to raise Buck suddenly seems like a blessing because it might have just saved both of you from inheriting their bullshit views.”

Maddie chuckled wetly. “Maybe.”

“So, not coming and not sending a present is a clear sign of rejection from them,” Albert said. “Appa not coming, but surely providing a well-reasoned excuse and probably sending a pretty outrageous gift, means he recognizes his granddaughter. And it won’t leave Appa with the impression that Chimney has completely turned away from him now.”

“Outrageous gift?” Maddie asked aghast.

Albert shrugged. “Money isn’t exactly a concern for him, and sometimes that means he doesn’t know what is appropriate. I think he barely remembers his own childhood when money was a problem for his family, and what is deemed appropriate for someone who doesn’t have much money. You realize there was a reason I was a spoiled little twat when I first arrived here, yeah?”

Maddie grinned. “I don’t know, I thought you were adorable.”

Anne chuckled. “At least you are aware of your own faults and are learning to overcome them.”

Albert rolled his eyes and pushed a sheet of paper over the table to Jee-Yun as she nearly climbed onto the table from Anne’s lap in her attempt to reach it. Maddie pulled out a set of crayons from her bag and for a moment they watched how Jee-Yun rolled some of them over the table before taking one in each hand. Anne had to keep hold of the paper as Jee-Yun started to push both crayons over it at the same time.

“When will your courses begin?” Albert asked, turning his attention back to the books Maddie had brought with her. “Or did you buy the books without having a course booked yet?”

Maddie snorted “Why would I do that? With my luck, I’d just have bought the wrong ones. I’ll have two in-person classes each week all through March, and after that it’s online classes once a week.”

“Just in time for when you start working again,” Albert noted.

“Exactly. And the online part is a course for people who work in jobs with changing shifts. There is one class every week, but it takes place several times throughout the week. I can sign up for the class I’ll manage to attend as soon as I know my schedule.”

Anne brushed her free hand over Jee-Yun’s head, who didn’t let that distract her from her drawings. It was nothing more than colorful scribbles, but Albert was sure by the end of the day it would end up hanging on the Lees’ fridge, nonetheless. They were fully embracing their role as grandparents, and hanging up Jee-Yun’s first trials at art was just part of that.

“How much does the course cost?” Anne asked.

Maddie shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. Sue and Josh worked some miracle and the insurance I have through work pays half of my medical bill for the time I spent in the clinic, and nearly all of my outpatient treatment now. And I have … the money I got from Doug’s estate.”

Albert frowned and turned to her. “I thought you didn’t want to touch that.”

“I got over that,” Maddie muttered. “I learned to view it as compensation for everything he put me through. And I deserve to use it to do something good for me.”

Albert smiled, though he was still worried. “Of course you do.”

“For a while, I thought about putting it in trust for Jee-Yun, but…” Maddie shook her head and blew out a breath. “But the last thing I want is for her to have anything connecting her to him. This way, I’ll use it for me and it will still benefit her.”

“That’s very true,” Anne said. “And it’s better than just letting it lie around uselessly.”

“Okay,” Maddie clapped her hands together, which prompted Jee-Yun to drop her crayons to answer with enthusiastic clapping of her own. Maddie laughed and shook her head. “Since Chimney and John seem to be taking a while, maybe we can use the time to tackle on my fear of learning a new writing system. I don’t even know how to go about that.”

“I guess the first step is what every first grader has to do. Practice writing your letters.”

Maddie sighed. “Right. The boring part I’m pretty sure I avoided as a child as much as I possibly could.”

Anne laughed. “And is that kind of laziness something you want to teach your daughter?”

Albert frowned. “You avoided that? I loved doing those exercises! I remember my English teacher scolding me because I had worked ahead in the exercise book at home.”

Maddie made a face and leaned away from him. “You did, really? I always found it terribly boring and repetitive.”

“But repeating the task is the point of it all, isn’t it?” Albert asked. “So that you get used to the movement of your hand and won’t have to think about that anymore. I always found it relaxing. A little bit like meditation.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “I got to that point in the end without the boring repetition, didn’t I?”

Albert huffed and shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s how you should go about it this time. When you needed to learn English, you had to use it all the time and didn’t have a choice but get the practice you needed. This time, you’ll have to search out any situation in which you’ll need what you learn. Anyway, after learning how to write the symbols, you need to learn which sounds go with each symbol or combinations of symbols.”

“So writing that down in the alphabet I’m used to?”

Albert made a face and wiggled his head from side to side, not sure if he wanted to shrug or shake his head. “I think that could go very wrong. Because transcribing from Hangul to the Latin alphabet or the other way around bears the risk of information getting lost.”

Maddie frowned. “Such as?”

Albert pursed his lips as he tried to decide on an example he could use. “I told you I had a lot of foreign friends in school, right? There was this British girl I had as a classmate in seventh and eighth grade. Her name was Jessica, but because of the way Hangul works, everyone who only saw her name transcribed would call her Jesh-ka. The letter we use for the sound of the i in her name is pronounced differently when combined with the letter for the sound of the double s before it and at the end of the syllable. And of course, what should have been the j was also more softly pronounced following the Hangul. We were young enough and used to so many different languages mixing that we laughed it off, but AppaAppaDad has told me of people getting bent out of shape about their name constantly being pronounced wrong.”

“It can be very jarring,” Anne said quietly. “Especially if it starts to feel that there isn’t any effort being put into trying to learn how to say it correctly. Or if it is used in a way to insult the person. Howie’s mother was very upset about Americans regularly mispronouncing her name.”

Maddie frowned. “Mispronounced how?”

“Chimney has taught you how to pronounce her name very well,” Anne said. “But I have heard Buck struggle with the pronunciation. He gets it wrong more often than not, and he wasn’t aware of that until I told him. The y in how her name is written in the Latin alphabet is nearly silent, yes? And what little is pronounced of it merges with the u. That is not a sound you encounter in English, so of course it is difficult to learn to pronounce for people who speak only or even just mostly English.”

“I didn’t notice that Buck was pronouncing it wrong,” Maddie whispered.

Anne shook her head, chuckling. “I’m not surprised. The difference might also be difficult for you to hear. You will come across a lot of those situations while learning Korean. And I have already started correcting Buck. He was very thankful for that.”

Albert watched Anne, his head cocked to the side. “I never asked before, but … I mean, just ignore me if this is rude. Do you have a Korean name?”

Anne laughed. “It’s not rude at all. And no, I don’t. I’m third generation American and my parents were both very invested in cutting their ties to Korea. I even had to learn Korean on my own, so I very much support you, Maddie, in not putting Jee-Yun in that same position. It always felt as if I had to make up for something. And before you ask, John does have a Korean name. He hasn’t used it for longer than I have known him, though it’s still on all his legal documents and he has no plans to ever change that.”

“Wait!” Maddie held up a hand. “This reminds me of a question about what you told me the other day, Albert. You said your Korean name is Won-Jae, right? And Chimney’s was Won-Yong. Why the Won in both names?”

Albert chuckled. “I don’t think we have time to go into the details of generational names and how they are determined by every individual clan. But I’m happy to explain that to you later on. Even a couple of times if you don’t get the hang of it right away.”

Maddie blinked. “I have so many questions, but … I also feel I made another mistake with Jee-Yun’s name. Should I have considered this generational name thing? Did I stomp all over another tradition without even knowing?”

Anne frowned. “Another tradition?”

“Albert told me that it’s usually not done to name a child after a relative,” Maddie whispered, staring at the table with a deep frown. “That it’s considered bad luck for the child. And now this…”

“Don’t worry so much about your daughter’s name,” Anne said softly. “She will grow up with both sets of traditions, and sometimes they won’t blend very well. Is it a tradition in your family to name children after relatives?”

“Kind of,” Maddie said with a shrug. “I mean, our parents didn’t do it, but they are both named after a relative. Mom after her great-aunt and Dad after his great-grandfather.” She blinked. “Oh. Daniel was named after our maternal grandfather, but neither Buck nor I are … I never noticed that until today.”

Anne scowled, the muscle in her jaw flexing, and Albert leaned over to Maddie, whispering, “I don’t know if I wish they will never come to visit again, or that they will come to visit so that I can witness Anne telling them about themselves.”

Maddie chuckled. “I really don’t think it’s worth the drama.”

“I don’t believe it’s worth inviting these … people to Jee-Yun’s birthday, or any other occasion,” Anne muttered darkly.

“I still think you should offer them an invitation to the Doljanchi and after they decline you can tell them that they aren’t welcome in your life anymore,” Albert said. “I think Buck already took that step, right?”

Maddie sighed. “Yes, he did. I wasn’t happy about it, but I know it was the right thing for him to do. I should have done the same a long time ago.”

“Sometimes you need the right moment for that kind of decision,” Anne said with a sad smile. “And if you hadn’t reached it until now, that’s okay. You didn’t have any responsibility for anyone but yourself before.”

“But that time is over for the rest of my life now, isn’t it?” Maddie said with a soft smile, watching Jee-Yun who had gone back to vigorously pushing two crayons at the same time over the sheet of paper that was already mostly covered. “I have a responsibility to Jee-Yun, and I won’t let my parents ruin her life as well.”

“Is your life really ruined?” Anne asked softly. “I think you have managed quite well for yourself, and so has your brother. You are both successful in your chosen paths despite their attempts to put as many obstacles in your way as they could.”

Maddie bit her lip and shrugged. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment, you know? I feel as if I wasted years of my life because I was too weak to—”

“You aren’t weak,” Anne interrupted her. “You aren’t weak for needing help over the past months, either. You are a survivor, and you are so strong for taking your life back. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

Maddie rubbed her hands over her face and inhaled shakily.

“Anne’s right,” Albert murmured, just because he felt he needed to say something as well.

Maddie chuckled. “Do you know how many people have already said something like that to me? That doesn’t mean it gets easier to believe, you know?”

“Someday you will believe it,” Anne said. “And I think the way you are standing up to Howie’s expectations right now also proves how much you have grown, how far you have come. I have talked with some people since I learned about your ex-husband. Some people stumble into the trap of finding abusive partners over and over again and never learn to stand up for themselves, to guard their own boundaries. I’m so very distraught about Howie’s behavior right now, but at the same time I’m very proud of you, Maddie.”

Maddie let out a sound that was a strange mix between a sob and a laugh. “I’m really glad that you are here for both Chimney and me the way you are. I don’t know where we would be without you.”

“You will always have family in John and me, no matter what else might happen in your life,” Anne promised with a warm smile.

 

 

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