But it felt undeserved, wrong, like a prize won by cheating, and instead of buoying her, it weighed her down with worry that God would see and correct the injustice, make her pay for her lies some other way. She told herself what Pak told her every day-their absence from the barn that night didn’t cause the fire, and he couldn’t have prevented the explosion even if he’d stayed with the patients-and tried to smile back. She was not the defendant, not the one they blamed for the explosion that killed two patients. She’d expected anger, but they smiled as she walked by, and she had to remind herself that she was a victim here. That and pity-for her or themselves, she didn’t know. And now, here were the same people, somber, the hope of miracle gone from their faces, replaced by the curiosity of people reaching for tabloids in supermarket lines. “This,” Pak said, looking proud, “is Miracle Submarine. Her husband had opened the doors to show the freshly painted blue chamber. The patients had all gathered together only once: last July, at the orientation outside the barn. On the right, behind the prosecution, she glimpsed familiar faces, those of their patients’ families. Wasn’t that why brides wore veils-to protect them from stares, to mute the redness of their cheeks? She glanced to the sides.

Modesty, blending in, invisibility: those were the virtues of wives, not notoriety and gaudiness. She kept her head down, just as she had at her wedding twenty years ago she wasn’t usually the focus of attention, and it felt wrong. The small courtroom even looked like an old church, with creaky wooden pews on both sides of the aisle. If it weren’t for the variety in hair color and the snippets of whispers in English as she walked down the aisle-“Look, the owners,” “The daughter was in a coma for months, poor thing,” “He’s paralyzed, so awful”-she might have thought she was still in Korea. Certainly, her wedding was the last time-the only time-that a roomful of people had fallen silent and turned to stare as she entered.

SHE FELT LIKE A BRIDE walking into the courtroom.

Miracle creek book