Chapter 28
title: "The Interview Room" wordCount: 2766
The USCIS waiting room smells like industrial cleaner and fear, and I'm pretty sure I'm contributing to both.
Daniel sits three chairs away. Not beside me. Three chairs, like we're strangers who happened to arrive at the same time. His hands rest on his knees, fingers spread wide, and I can see the edge of something green under his right sleeve. My grandmother's jade bracelet. The one I gave him two months ago when he asked what her name meant.
"Chen," a woman calls from the doorway. Not my full name. Just the surname, like I'm already reduced to paperwork.
I stand. My legs cooperate, which feels like a minor miracle given that I've been awake for thirty-six hours and my last meal was half a protein bar at four am. Daniel stands too, but the woman—Officer Mendez, according to her badge—shakes her head.
"Just Ms. Chen for now."
"We were told this would be a joint interview," Daniel says. His voice has that careful flatness that means he's about to argue with someone.
"It will be." Mendez's smile doesn't reach her eyes. "Eventually."
I follow her down a hallway that's somehow both too bright and too dim, fluorescent lights humming overhead like they're placing bets on my failure. She opens a door marked Interview Room A and gestures me inside.
The room is exactly what I expected: gray walls, gray table, gray chairs. A camera mounted in the corner. A box of tissues on the table that feels more threatening than comforting.
"Have a seat, Ms. Chen."
I sit. The chair is metal and cold even through my jeans.
Mendez settles across from me and opens a folder thick enough to be a novel. My life, apparently, condensed into forty pages of bureaucratic documentation. She flips through it slowly, like she's refreshing her memory, but I know she's already memorized every word.
"Let's start simple," she says. "What time does your husband wake up on weekdays?"
"Five-thirty." The answer comes automatically. "He runs before work. Six miles, same route every time, unless it's raining."
"And when it rains?"
"He uses the gym in his building. Hates it, though. Says the treadmill feels like lying."
Mendez makes a note. "What does he eat for breakfast?"
"Black coffee and whatever I made the night before. He doesn't cook." I twist my grandmother's bracelet around my wrist. "He can make toast without burning it, but that's about his limit."
"Does he take sugar in his coffee?"
"No. He tried once because I do, but he said it tasted like drinking a lie."
Another note. Mendez's pen scratches across the paper, and I can't tell if I'm passing or failing.
"What's his relationship with his uncle like?"
My stomach drops. "Complicated."
"Elaborate."
"Richard raised him after his parents died. Daniel's grateful, but—" I stop, trying to find words that won't sound rehearsed. "Richard treats him like an investment. Like Daniel owes him something for every meal, every tuition payment, every opportunity. And Daniel lets him because he doesn't know how to separate gratitude from guilt."
Mendez looks up from her notes. "That's very specific."
"You asked."
"Most people would say 'they're close' or 'they have some issues.' You just gave me a psychological profile."
My nails dig into my palms. "You wanted to know about their relationship. That's their relationship."
She flips to another page. "What does your husband do when he's stressed?"
"Goes silent. Completely silent. He won't deflect or make excuses, he just stops talking." I can feel my pulse hammering against my ribs. "And he says 'I can handle it' when you try to help, even when he obviously can't."
"Does he have any scars?"
"Small one on his left knee from falling off his bike when he was seven. Another on his right hand from a cooking accident—my fault, actually. I was teaching him to dice onions and he wasn't paying attention."
"What was he paying attention to?"
The question catches me off guard. "Me. He was watching me instead of the knife."
Mendez writes something that takes longer than any of her previous notes. When she looks up again, her expression hasn't changed, but something in her eyes has shifted.
"What does your husband want that he won't admit to wanting?"
I open my mouth. Close it. The answer is there, sitting in my throat like a stone, but saying it out loud feels like betraying something private.
"Ms. Chen?"
"He wants someone to choose him first," I say quietly. "Not because he's useful or successful or because he can solve their problems. Just because he's him."
The pen stops moving. Mendez studies me for a long moment, and I can't read her face at all.
"One more question," she says. "Why did you marry Daniel Park?"
There it is. The trap I've been waiting for since I walked into this room.
I could lie. Say it was love at first sight, that we met and knew immediately, all the romantic bullshit that people expect to hear. But Mendez isn't asking because she doesn't know the answer. She's asking because she wants to see if I'll tell the truth.
"Because I needed a green card," I say. "And he needed—" I stop. "He needed to feel like he was helping someone."
"So it was fraud."
"It was an arrangement." My voice is steadier than I expected. "We were honest with each other about what we wanted. No one was being used."
"And now?"
"Now it's—" The words stick. "It's different."
"Different how?"
"I know what time he wakes up because I wake up with him. I know he hates the gym treadmill because I've listened to him complain about it seventeen times. I know about his uncle because I've watched Richard make him feel small, and I know about the scar on his hand because I was there when it happened, holding a dish towel to stop the bleeding while he insisted he was fine." I'm talking too fast now, but I can't stop. "I know he goes silent when he's stressed because I've sat with that silence and learned to wait it out. I know what he wants because I've seen him not ask for it over and over again."
Mendez closes her folder. "Thank you, Ms. Chen. Someone will come get you when we're ready for the joint interview."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
She leaves me alone in the gray room with the humming lights and the box of tissues I didn't use.
Twenty-three minutes pass before the door opens again. Not Mendez this time—a man in his fifties with silver hair and a suit that probably costs more than my monthly rent.
"Ms. Chen, I'm Investigator Torres. I'll be conducting the joint portion of your interview." He doesn't offer his hand. "Your husband is waiting in the conference room. If you'll follow me."
The conference room is bigger than Interview Room A, with a window that looks out onto the parking lot. Daniel sits at the far end of a long table, and when I walk in, his eyes find mine immediately. He looks exhausted. The jade bracelet is visible now, resting against his wrist bone.
I take the seat across from him. Torres sits at the head of the table, positioning himself so he can see both of us without turning his head.
"Let's establish some ground rules," Torres says. "You'll each answer my questions independently. No conferring, no looking to your spouse for confirmation. If I think you're coordinating your responses, this interview ends and your case is denied. Understood?"
"Understood," Daniel says.
I nod.
Torres opens a laptop and turns it so we can both see the screen. "I'm going to play you a recording. I want you to listen carefully."
He presses play.
Static, then voices. My voice. Daniel's voice. The garden yesterday, when I thought we were alone.
"—don't know if I can do this," I'm saying. "Stand in that room and lie about us being in love when we're not even speaking to each other."
"We don't have to lie." Daniel's voice is quiet, almost lost under the sound of wind through leaves. "We just have to show up."
"That's not enough."
"It's all I have, Nora. Showing up is all I've ever had."
There's a long pause on the recording. I remember that pause. I remember standing there with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to decide if I should leave or stay.
"You're worth showing up for," Daniel says. "Even if you don't believe that yet."
Torres stops the recording. The silence in the conference room is absolute.
"This was recorded yesterday at approximately four-fifteen pm," Torres says. "Forty-eight hours after your fraud investigation was opened. Sixteen hours before this interview." He looks at me, then at Daniel. "Ms. Chen, in your individual interview, you stated that your marriage began as an arrangement. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"And Mr. Park, you confirmed the same in your interview."
Daniel's jaw tightens. "Yes."
"So my question is this." Torres leans back in his chair. "When did it stop being an arrangement?"
I don't know how to answer that. There wasn't a moment, wasn't a clear line between before and after. It was gradual, like water wearing down stone—imperceptible until suddenly you look up and the landscape has changed completely.
"I don't know," I say.
Torres turns to Daniel. "Mr. Park?"
"I don't know either." Daniel's fingers brush the jade bracelet. "It wasn't one moment. It was—" He stops, searching for words. "It was her teaching me to cook and me burning everything. It was learning that she catastrophizes when she's anxious and talks herself through it out loud. It was watching her build something from nothing and refuse to give up even when she should have." He looks at me directly for the first time since I sat down. "It was realizing I knew her grandmother's name and what the bracelet meant and how she takes her coffee, and I didn't learn any of that from fraud prep."
My throat is tight. I can't look away from him.
"Ms. Chen," Torres says. "Do you love your husband?"
The question should be simple. Yes or no. But nothing about this is simple.
"I don't know if love that grew from lying can be real," I say. "I don't know if it counts when it started as fraud. But I know that when he goes silent, I wait. I know that when he says he can handle it, I stay anyway. I know that I gave him my grandmother's bracelet because I wanted him to have something that mattered, and when I saw him wearing it today, I—" My voice cracks. "I wanted to believe we could survive this."
Torres makes a note on his laptop. His expression gives away nothing.
"Mr. Park, same question. Do you love your wife?"
Daniel doesn't hesitate. "Yes."
"Even though the marriage started as fraud?"
"The marriage started as an arrangement," Daniel says carefully. "Two people being honest about what they needed. That's not fraud. That's just—" He pauses. "That's just two people trying to survive."
"And when did survival become love?"
"When I stopped thinking about what I needed and started thinking about what she needed. When I learned to sit with her silence instead of trying to fix it. When I realized that showing up wasn't enough—I had to show up as someone she could trust, not someone who made decisions for her." His voice drops. "When I understood that loving her meant letting her choose, even if she chose to leave."
Torres closes his laptop. The click echoes in the quiet room.
"Here's what I think," he says. "I think you entered into a fraudulent marriage for immigration benefits. I think you both knew exactly what you were doing and did it anyway. I think you lied on your application, lied in your initial interviews, and would have continued lying if you hadn't been caught."
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the table.
"But I also think," Torres continues, "that somewhere in the middle of your fraud, you accidentally fell in love. And I think that complicates things considerably."
He stands. Walks to the window. Looks out at the parking lot where cars sit in neat rows, waiting.
"The law doesn't have a provision for 'we started lying but then it became real,'" he says. "Marriage fraud is marriage fraud, regardless of whether feelings developed later. But the law also recognizes that relationships are complicated, that people change, that intentions aren't always clear-cut." He turns back to face us. "Officer Mendez and I need to discuss your case. That will take approximately thirty minutes. You're free to wait here or in the lobby."
"What happens after thirty minutes?" I ask.
"After thirty minutes, we'll tell you our decision."
He walks toward the door, and I think that's it, we're done, but then he stops with his hand on the handle.
"One more thing," he says. "The recording from yesterday—do either of you know who submitted it to our office?"
Daniel and I look at each other. I shake my head.
"No idea," Daniel says.
"Interesting." Torres opens the door. "Because it was submitted anonymously at six am this morning with a note that said 'evidence of genuine relationship.' Someone wanted us to hear that conversation. Someone wanted us to know your feelings are real."
He leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.
Daniel and I sit in silence. The jade bracelet catches the light from the window, throwing green shadows across the table.
"I didn't know you still had it," I say.
"I haven't taken it off since you gave it to me." He touches it gently, like it might break. "You said your grandmother wore it every day of her life. That it was the only thing she brought with her when she immigrated. I thought—" He stops. "I thought if I wore it, maybe I could be worth that kind of trust."
Something in my chest cracks open. "Daniel—"
"You don't have to say anything." His voice is rough. "I know I fucked up. I know I treated you like a problem to solve instead of a person to trust. I know I made decisions without you and tried to control everything because I was scared of losing you. I know all of that, and I know sorry isn't enough."
"It's not," I say. "But it's a start."
He looks up. Hope flickers across his face, tentative and fragile.
"If we survive this," I say slowly, "if they don't deport me and we somehow make it through—things have to be different. You have to talk to me. You have to let me make my own choices, even when you think you know better. You have to trust that I can handle things."
"I know."
"Do you? Because you say you know, but then you go silent and make decisions alone and act like you're protecting me when really you're just protecting yourself from having to watch me struggle."
He flinches. "You're right."
"I don't want you to agree with me. I want you to—" I stop, trying to find the right words. "I want you to fight with me. I want you to tell me when you're scared instead of pretending you have everything under control. I want you to be a person, not a solution."
"Okay," he says quietly. "Okay, I can—I can try to do that."
"Trying isn't enough."
"Then I'll do it." His hands flatten on the table, mirroring mine. "I'll do it because you're right. Because I've been so focused on fixing things that I forgot how to just be with you. Because showing up isn't enough if I'm showing up as someone I think you need instead of who I actually am."
The door opens before I can respond.
Officer Mendez walks in, followed by Torres. They both look serious, but I can't read anything beyond that. Mendez carries a folder—a different one, thinner than before.
"Ms. Chen, Mr. Park," Torres says. "We've reviewed your case."
My heart stops. This is it. This is where they tell us it's over, that love isn't enough to erase fraud, that I have seventy-two hours to leave the country.
"Before we give you our decision," Mendez says, "we need to discuss something. Alone."
She looks at Torres. He nods.
"Mr. Park, Ms. Chen—there's someone here who wants to speak with you."
The door opens wider, and Nora's mother walks in.