Choosing if and when and how to share the truth might be the deepest, most painful necessity of growing out into the world and into yourself.

Sometimes we wrongly guessed how much others could bear. It was in the curve of a question mark—should I or shouldn’t I?—in which we all lived. In the end, her mother had decided to keep Margot and her father a secret from themselves, to protect them both. Margot would need to forgive all of them—Mina, her father, Mrs. Baek—so that she could one day begin to forgive herself.

After several minutes of feeling the sun on her face, Margot untied her gray hoodie from around her waist. She walked with purpose, although she had no idea where she would end up—which direction and where. Like a fire, she needed air. She even had the urge to run for the hell of it.

She passed a small park with a playground. Children rode the swings high or chased each other down slides, laughing and running, a commotion of joy. She walked in front of a gas station, then a Korean grocery store, and found a strip mall with several businesses, including a salon, huge posters of women with ’80s hair in the windows.

Her mother used to cut Margot’s hair in the dim light of the dining area next to the kitchen. She laid sheets on the floor, draped a towel around Margot’s shoulders, and, with a comb and scissors in hand, worked her way around Margot’s head.

“Your hair is so shiny,” her mother said. “So soft.”

Margot never knew how to receive her mother’s compliments because she had grown accustomed to her barbs—about her acne, her wrinkled clothes, her creaseless eyelids, the beginnings of a double chin. It was as if her mother believed that any ego at all would be too big for this home, too big for this family. Her fundamental responsibility was keeping Margot in check.

But every now and then, her mother would direct her attention to herself, brandishing a quiet and devastating memory—a cold injection, almost a relief, a reprieve from her gaze, into Margot’s veins.

“When the nuns cut my hair, they never cared,” her mother once said. “They never made it pretty.”

Or: “There was a girl at the orphanage who would beat me,” she said. “She told me that she was going to destroy my face, set fire to it.”

Margot never knew how to respond to these intense sudden offerings of the self, bottomless and rare, as if the statements had been at the edge of her mother’s psyche, the edge of her mother’s survival, and any further conversation could push her over the brink, plunge her head underwater. Instead, as her mother cut her hair, Margot waited in silence for the signal that she had finished—removing the towel as a cape, brushing Margot’s shoulders, picking off the bits stuck to her face. And then Margot was temporarily set free.

Inside of the salon, which smelled vaguely of hair dye and perms, a slim young woman with chestnut-colored hair, a French-striped shirt, and trendy chunky white sneakers, greeted her eagerly. Margot sat in the waiting area where she noticed, among the one-inch-thick beauty and lifestyle magazines, a copy of the local newspaper in Korean. On the cover was an image of Mr. Park, sympathetic, genial with his Paul-Bunyan-teeth smile. Margot seized the paper, trying to decipher what she could—the photograph of him and the image of a silver Mercedes sedan parked on a dirt road.

“I’m ready for you now,” the stylist said, both gracious and curious about Margot, like a visitor from a foreign planet. She never paid much attention to her looks and it was obvious.

Margot held out the newspaper. “Did you see this? Do you know what happened to this guy?”

The stylist peered at the front page and said, “Oh. They found him dead yesterday afternoon.”

Margot gasped. “On Christmas?”

She remembered Mrs. Baek’s arm trembling from the weight of the gun, Margot holding her breath. Her smile, the glimmer in her eyes, as if she had figured out the solution to this mess—Margot’s mother, her friend dead, a stalker with a past of terrorizing women, abusing his power. I am ready, she said.

“He was retired but owned a restaurant in Koreatown. A rich man.” She motioned for Margot to rise.

“What happened?” In the black pleather chair, Margot faced herself in a clear mirror, wide and ceiling-high.

The stylist draped a gray cape over her body and untied Margot’s long hair—releasing the tangled mess that it had become. She grabbed a wide-tooth comb and tried to break apart the knots without tearing too much.

“A jogger in Griffith Park. She found some clothes on the road, a wallet, keys, cell phone. So she called the police.”

Margot tilted her head, following the motions of the comb. Her heart raced.

“They found his body. He was less than one mile away, in the bushes.” The stylist raised her brows and smirked as if amused by the calamities of men. Margot liked this woman at once.

“The bushes?” Margot asked. She imagined the dense gray vegetation in the hills—the mixed chaparral and sage scrub. The sunbaked and herbaceous scent. The dry fuel.

The hairstylist lowered her voice. “Naked.”

“What?” Margot cringed.

“He was naked.” She escorted Margot to the sink to wash her hair. “Someone shot him in the leg.”

“In the leg?” Margot tilted her head back. “But how did he—”

“The animals ate him.” The stylist adjusted the towel under Margot’s neck. “One of my customers said that his whole face, arm, almost everything gone,” she said, before the blast of warm water.

Margot could feel they were both trying their hardest not to laugh. Yes, death was sometimes funny. Maybe it was a Korean thing, but after these weeks of pain and stress, she couldn’t help but delight in the absurdity of it all. It was almost a piece of performance art.

Bravo, Mrs. Baek.

Standing on the sidewalk, Margot called Miguel as soon as she left the salon—hair angling down toward her chin in a sharp bob. The sun had begun its descent, blasting wildly from the west. She shielded her eyes with her hand, inhaling the exhaust of cars zooming by, kicking up the dirt and bits of dried leaves that would stick to her skin. A ragged palm tree across the street basked in the last of the golden light before the city bathed in a soft dream of pinks and purples—changing and fleeting—and the brash glare of street-and headlights, the adrenaline, the thousands of feet on the gas, ruined the romance.

After she filled Miguel in, he said, “They found his body on Christmas Day? Lord. She fed those animals.”

“I mean, it had to be Mrs. Baek, right?” She hurried down the street toward her mother’s apartment. “Not to be messed up, but . . . I’m glad we didn’t call the police.” She ducked under a scattering of pigeons, wings flapping treacherously close to her head. “I am still worried about her, though.”

“What do you think happened?”

“She lured him somehow to take her up there. He was naked. Ugh.” She shuddered at the image. “Maybe she tricked him into thinking that she changed her mind, that she was interested in him and wanted to hook up or something? People go up into the park for that, you know.”

“What else is nature for?”

She laughed. “Maybe she told him that they had to go into the bushes.”

“And she shot him in the leg?” Miguel asked. “This story is a gift, Margot.”

She crossed the road before a car careened in front of her.

“And no one heard his cries?” he asked.

“Maybe it was kind of remote. In the middle of the night,” she said, catching her breath.

“And the animals ate him?” Miguel asked.

She tripped on an uneven part of the sidewalk and couldn’t help but laugh at both herself and the absurdity of life. She had for whatever reason imagined a Disney-animated version of all the wildlife—Snow White’s friends, round and wide-eyed—flitting and dancing around Mr. Park’s body.

“And they haven’t caught her, right?”

“Nope, not from what I can tell. I googled it. He parked his car, got out, and removed his clothes at some point. Someone in the online comments thought it might be the mob or a gang or something. Anyway, I hope she’s okay.”

“What are you gonna do now?”

The sun disappeared behind the buildings and the world appeared to be melting around her. Bathed in the sharp air of the oncoming night, Margot inhaled the faint aroma of a leftover pork pozole reheated on a stove through an open window. She still dreaded returning to the apartment.

“I’m pretty exhausted,” Margot said. “I think I’ll sleep until the new year.”

“Do you want to go out on New Year’s Eve next week?” Miguel asked.

“I don’t know.” A part of her wanted to head back to Seattle as soon as she could get rid of everything. She could take the contents of the safety-deposit box with her. She had Mrs. Kim’s phone number; she could always reach her later to find out more about her father. She didn’t need to stay in LA anymore.