The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 12: Jasmine

She shook her head. "Not right away. My parents and my grandmother had a falling out when my parents first got married, and they hadn't been in touch with each other for several years. She didn't even know that I had been born."

"Who took care of you, then?"

"I was in foster care for two years," Jessica told her. "But there were some difficulties placing me after I lost my sight, so the foster system exerted a greater effort to find a blood relative to take me in."

Hae-ri was surprised by this. "How did you lose your vision?" she asked. She'd assumed that Jessica had been blind since birth, though now that she thought about it, she had no earthly reason to have come to this conclusion. Perhaps it was only that Jessica seemed so self-possessed that it seemed difficult to imagine someone adapting so well to living without sight if they had lost the ability to see as an adult.

"The place I was in when I was in foster care... it was a terrible place. My foster parents owned a restaurant, and they would leave us children in the back when they had to mind the front. They had chemicals, cleaning products everywhere and they never troubled to child proof the place. I'm sure if it had ever been inspected by the health department it would have been closed down due to health code violations. But that's neither here nor there at this point, I suppose. The point is, when I was three years old, my foster brother threw lye in my eyes."

Hae-ri drew a sharp intake of breath, horrified. "Oh, my God."

"I was in the hospital for three weeks," Jessica told her. "I almost died. I'll never forget that feeling as long as I live. Like someone had thrown liquid fire into my eyes. The doctors repaired the burns to my skin, but they said I'd never see again."

"What happened to your foster parents?"

"They were charged with criminal neglect and were both sentenced to jail time. My foster brother was placed in a state home. Then the social worker found my grandmother, and she saved me. I came here to live with her, and she taught me to see in the dark. She taught me how to play the piano and how to bake cookies. She showed me how to get around on my own, how to live as a blind person."

"And you've lived here ever since?"

"For the most part. She thought I had a special talent with the piano, and she encouraged me to further my musical studies. When I was seventeen, I auditioned for a place at Juilliard, and I was accepted."

Hae-ri was impressed. "That was an incredible opportunity. You didn't go?"

"No, I did go to New York. I studied there for a year. I loved it. I had wonderful teachers and classmates, and I learned a tremendous amount."

"So what happened? Why did you leave?"

"When I was nineteen, my grandmother grew very ill. She tried to keep it from me, but I knew something was wrong. She didn't want me to abandon my studies, you see. But I came back here in South Korea to visit and she finally admitted to me that she was sick. I stayed here to take care of her and never went back. She didn't approve of my choice, but I never regretted it. I stayed here with her for six years after that, and then one day, after all that suffering, she just slipped away. I was holding her hand and I felt the life leave her body." She smiled sadly. "After that, I didn't much feel like leaving here again."

"How long ago did your grandmother pass away?"

"About twenty years ago. It was a little over a year after she died that Samael first came into my life."

Hae-ri could see now how a charismatic stranger might have appealed to this lonely, grief-stricken young woman. She'd had so much loss in her life that having a charming, attentive man show up on her doorstep must have felt like God was finally rewarding her forbearance. Like he'd tailor made her a companion who shared her love of music and literature and delivered him right to her.