Miracle Creek

Mary remembers the night of the explosion, especially Janine’s accusations, calling her a “whore” and a “stalking slut” (324), which were devastating, especially considering Matt was the one who had assaulted her, “who’d pretended to be a caring friend before exposing his true motives, who held her down and pushed his tongue into her mouth as she tried to scream out, who got on top of her and forced her hand inside his pants, wrapping it around himself so hard it hurt, using it like an object […]” (324).

There was a part of Mary who was flattered by Matt’s attentions; she’d even told her SAT classmates when “they all said they couldn’t make her birthday dinner” that it was “no problem, and actually, she was meeting up with a guy later anyway, a doctor” (326). However, Mary wanted romance, not sex.

As she runs away from Janine on the night of the fire, thinking of all this, she sees “a cigarette sticking out of a pyre of twigs and dried leaves, positioned precisely in the middle of an open book of matches. It felt like a gift to her, an offering. As if fate were calling to her, inviting her to light the cigarette” (327). Mary thought the dive was over and everyone had gone home. When she realizes what has happened, she tried to return to the barn to help, to put out the fire, but she is thrown by the force of the explosion.

Pak tries to deny what Mary has said, but Young knows the truth. What is more, Young realizes that Mary wants to tell the truth, that “sometimes, when you were guilty of something, others’ pretense that you weren’t responsible was the unbearable part. It was infantilizing, demeaning” (331). Pak still insists that Mary should not confess, that he should take the blame, but Young disagrees. She believes that Mary’s intentions when starting the fire will be considered, that she “didn’t plan anything” and “started the fire on impulse, in the heat of the moment,” which is both human and understandable (334).

Their debate is interrupted by Abe who tells them that Elizabeth is dead. Pak is relieved, and believes this means the truth does not have to come out, but Young argues telling him “in Korean, ‘We did this. We killed Elizabeth, we pushed her to kill herself. Do you even care?” (337). However, Young leaves it up to Mary. She tells her that she should do the right thing. Young is unmoved by Mary’s tears: “She wanted Mary to hurt, to think of what she’d done and feel an unbearable shame, because the alternative would mean the unthinkable, that she was a monster” (338). Young says she will not turn Mary in, but she will not lie, either. Young leaves the shack, and Mary follows her, asking Young to be with her when she confesses. Young is grateful for the renewed intimacy between her and Mary, as well as relieved that Mary is going to do the right thing, that she is not a “monster.”

Young is in the woods by the remains of the barn, thinking over all the events that have happened. Mary confessed, and was sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. Pak and Matt were charged with perjury and obstruction of justice; Pak was sentenced to “fourteen months in jail and Matt a suspended sentence with probation” (347). However, Matt’s “treatment of her daughter was the one unpunished act in all this that she could not forgive” (347).

Young marvels at all the tiny elements that lead to the fire, all the little things that, if they had shifted even slightly, would have meant that Kitt, Henry, and Elizabeth would still be alive. She knows, however, this is how life works, that all things, “[g]ood things and bad—every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness—resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential” (348). Young is moving in with Teresa, where she will do her own penance, helping kids like TJ and Rosa, thanks to the money Elizabeth had left to her ex-husband. Teresa and Young created “Henry’s House, a nonresidential ‘home base’ for special-needs children providing on-site therapy as well as day care and weekend camps” (349).

Young is grateful for the opportunity to do such work, and grateful for the renewal of her relationship with Mary. As she leaves the site of the fire, she feels han, an emotion with “no English equivalent, no translation. It was an overwhelming sorrow and regret, a grief and yearning so deep it pervades your soul—but with a sprinkling of resilience, of hope” (350).