The Complication (The Program #6)(105)

“I feel a little sick,” I tell Marie, looking up at her. And I do, a swirl in my stomach, nausea. Marie apologizes again and tells me it’s the medication.

She poses her finger over a key but looks at me one last time. “I’m going to start mapping now,” she says. “I need you to focus. I don’t know what you’ll find, but we’re all here. You just need to remember.”

“I will try,” I say, and close my eyes.

“Now,” Marie says. “Think back to the very first time you saw your grandfather’s face. The oldest memory you have of him. Find it.”

There’s a sting at the same time she hits the enter key, and I groan, a headache hitting behind my eyes. I keep them squeezed shut. Wes is still touching me, but the feeling of it fades.

It’s like I’m falling backward, eyes up to the sky, plummeting. And then, suddenly, I crash like a meteor striking earth.

“Now tell me what you remember,” Marie says, and the words drill straight into my head.

? ? ?

I was climbing out of the black car that had been idling at the curb for fifteen minutes. There was a black scuff across my white shoes, and I tried to keep up.

“Cynthia,” the old man said as he tugged me toward the house. “I expect you to be quiet, understand? They need to get a good look at you.”

I nodded that I did understand, but I was too scared to tell him that I just wanted to go home. My father would be waiting for me, and when I didn’t get off the bus, he’d be scared. He wasn’t well, but he was trying. Since my mother died, he’d been trying really hard.

The man—Dr. Pritchard—had been meeting with me at school for the past few weeks. After my mother died, the counselor worried I wasn’t being properly cared for at home. They brought in this doctor, and he’d warned my father. After that, Dr. Pritchard would come talk to me every day, checking on our progress.

But today he took me from school, and he brought me to this house in a town I’d never been to before. I’d never really been anywhere.

Dr. Pritchard held my hand tightly as he rang the doorbell, and I looked up at him, my eyes wide. When he noticed, he pressed his lips into a smile and smoothed down my hair.

The door opened.

The man who opened it was older than my father, but he clasped his palm over his mouth the minute he saw me, his eyes watering behind his glasses. I stepped closer to Dr. Pritchard, using both of my small hands to hold one of his.

“Now, now,” he said to me warningly. “This is Mr. Masterson. He’s your grandfather.”

I looked up at the man in the doorway, and I knew he wasn’t my grandfather. My mother told me a long time ago that all of my grandparents were already in heaven, and when she was in the hospital bed, she whispered that I shouldn’t be scared for her. I shouldn’t be scared because she was going back home to her mother. And that she’d take care of her.

The man in front of me looked kind, and I did my best to smile. At that moment, a woman joined him, and she moaned when she saw my face.

I tried to hide behind Dr. Pritchard, nervous, but he put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me forward. Put me on display.

“It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” Dr. Pritchard said, and the older woman nodded her head. The man next to her couldn’t look at me anymore.

“She’s perfect,” the woman said, shaking her head slowly. There was a soft flinch in her mouth, a twitch. “How did you find her?” she asked.

“She was one of many candidates,” Dr. Pritchard told her kindly. “But I think she’s the best choice.” He looked down at me again, warmly. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“I want to go home,” I whispered, and my lip jutted out. I wanted to see my father. My room. My dog.

Dr. Pritchard tsked, but the woman stepped forward, holding up her palm. “It’s okay, honey,” she said to me. “It’s okay.”

Her voice was soothing; I’d always wanted a grandmother—a sweet one. She squatted down in front of me and ran her palm over my arm, trying to comfort me.

“You look just like her,” she said like I should be proud.

The woman gently pulled me into a hug, and the second I was close, she started to cry into my shoulder. I hated watching adults cry. My father had cried every day since my mom died.

But last night, after he tucked me into bed, he told me that he loved me. It was the first time he’d said it in a really long time. When I left for school in the morning, his car was already gone, and I walked to the bus alone.

“I want to go home,” I repeated louder. The woman pulled back, brushing my hair, nodding like she understood. And then she looked up at Dr. Pritchard, and they were both quiet, staring at each other.

The old man behind her walked back into the house. And the woman, my grandmother, leaned close to me and whispered, “You are home, Tatum.”

? ? ?

My eyelids flutter open, and the scene of the apartment floods in. There’s a buzz deep in my head, and Marie tells me not to move.

“They kidnapped me,” I say out loud, and my breath hitches.

“What happened after that?” she asks.

But I don’t want to go further into the memory, don’t want to obliterate everything I know about my grandparents. My eyes well up, tears spilling over.