Novels by Yuna

My mother smiled and stopped near the departure board. She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching my face the way she used to when I was a child recovering from a fever."You look strong, Harper," she said quietly."I am strong, Mom.""I know," she said. She reached out and adjusted the collar of my coat, her fingers brushing against my chin. "For a long time, I thought my job was to keep the world from touching you. I thought if I kept the secrets quiet enough, the bad things would stay outside the door." She dropped her hand and sighed. "I was wrong about that. The world gets in anyway.""You did what you thought would keep us safe," I said. "I am not carrying anger about that anymore. I left it on the bridge in November.""Robert called me on Sunday," she said.The mention of my father's name between us was still new enough that it carried a small vibration in the air, but my mother spoke it naturally, without looking away."What did he say?" I asked."He said he is pac

The second floor apartment in the red brick building smelled of floor wax and old radiator iron when the real estate agent unlocked the door on a Saturday morning in mid January.The agent was a woman named Mrs. Gable who wore sensible boots and carried a clipboard filled with floor plans. She did not try to sell us the space with loud speech or exaggerated promises. She simply opened the wooden door, turned on the overhead lights, and stepped back so Joel and I could walk across the threshold first.I liked her immediately for that.The living room was rectangular and wide, with three tall sash windows that looked down onto the quiet street corner. The morning sun was pale and winter white, but it poured through the glass and illuminated the natural grain of the hardwood floor. Someone had sanded and polished the timber recently, and it glowed with a warm honey tint under our boots."The building was constructed in nineteen twenty four," Mrs. Gable said from the entryway. Her voice

The week between Christmas and New Year had a rhythm of its own.The city moved slower during those days. The streets were less crowded, the offices were half empty, and the morning light seemed to linger on the buildings as if the sun itself was in no hurry to begin the next chapter.I sat in William Carr’s office on Tuesday morning with a folder of foundation documents on my lap.Carr looked different than he had in the autumn. The deep lines of tension around his mouth had softened, and the careful, guarded posture he had maintained for as long as I had known him was gone. He looked like a man who had finally set down a suitcase at the end of a very long journey."Robert called me yesterday," Carr said. He was leaning back in his chair, a cup of coffee resting on his desk."He told me," I said. "He said you two talked for two hours.""Three," Carr corrected with a faint smile. "He spent the first hour complaining about my corporate statements to the press. He said my prose was too

Dinner on Christmas Eve was the first meal my entire family had eaten together since I was four years old.I sat at the foot of my own kitchen table and watched them. My father sat on my right with a glass of water near his hand. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and his forearms rested on the dark wood in a way that looked completely natural. My mother sat across from him. She had taken off her blue cardigan and left it on the back of the couch. She was wearing a simple cream blouse that made her look younger, or perhaps it was simply the way her face had softened since morning.Joel sat at the other end of the table with the quiet confidence of a man who knew exactly where he belonged. Audrey sat between Joel and my mother, her plate already piled high with food she had inspected and declared acceptable.The apartment smelled of roasted garlic, rosemary, and fresh bread. Joel had spent three hours in the kitchen moving with the steady focus he brought to everything he cared

My mother arrived at nine the next morning.I went downstairs to meet her because she was not the kind of person who navigated unfamiliar building entries without help and I wanted to be the first thing she encountered.She came through the front door with her bag and her blue cardigan and her red eyes that she was clearly pretending were not red."Mom," I said."I am fine," she said."I know," I said."I just cried a little in the car. It is done now.""Okay.""Is he—" She stopped."Upstairs," I said. "He is making tea."She pressed her lips together. "He always made terrible tea.""So do I apparently," I said. "It is genetic."She laughed, wet and surprised, and I put my arm through hers and walked her to the lift.I had thought about this moment for two days. Whether to be in the room or give them the room. Whether to have something playing in the background to ease the silence or let the silence do what it needed to do.In the end I did none of my planning.My father was in the ki

Planning Christmas turned out to be the most emotionally complicated thing I had done since the treatment chair.Which was saying something.I had a father coming who had been dead for twenty-five years. A mother who had kept him that way. A boyfriend who had never met either of them in the same room. And Audrey, who had invited herself before I finished the sentence, which I had expected.I stood in the middle of my living room on a Wednesday evening making a list and Joel watched me from the couch with the expression he got when he thought I was doing too much and was choosing not to say so yet."Say it," I said without turning around."I did not say anything.""You are thinking loudly."He shifted on the couch. "I was going to say that Christmas is three weeks away and you are planning it like a military operation.""It requires logistics.""It requires food and people who love each other," he said. "Which you already have."I looked at my list. Guest count. Sleeping arrangements.