The Complication (The Program #6)(26)

“He sort of did,” I say, looking in the direction of the kitchen. “Although I don’t think he disagrees with her. But now he’s acting . . . normal. Am I just paranoid?”

“Uh . . . no,” Nathan says like it’s a ridiculous question. “I mean, take a look at your day, Tatum. If you weren’t suspicious, I’d be worried about you.” He falls quiet before looking over at me. “You said you wanted to know everything, and I can fill in some blanks. At least about the night before.”

I stare at him, dread creeping up my spine. “What do you mean ‘the night before’?”

“Hey,” my grandfather calls to us, poking his head out from the kitchen. “These potatoes aren’t going to peel themselves.”

“Have you asked them?” Nathan jokes good-naturedly, and rushes ahead of me into the kitchen. I watch after him, clinging to the edge of what feels like devastation.

“You all right?” my grandfather asks, startling me.

I blink quickly. “Yep. Excited to churn the butter and shuck the corn, too.”

Pop laughs, tossing the dish towel onto his left shoulder, drying his hands on the bottom of the red fabric.

“Well, then,” he says, putting his arm around me when I get to him. “Everything is right with the world.”

? ? ?

My gram comes home from her shift at the hospital, and the four of us chat at the kitchen table about our day—although Nathan does most of the talking. He overtalks when he’s nervous. I mention Wes briefly, and my grandmother doesn’t react, which leads me to believe my grandfather already informed her. Of course he did.

“Oh,” my grandfather says when he’s done eating, swiping a napkin over his mouth. “I grabbed a new battery for the Jeep. Do you need me to put it in?”

“No, I’ve got it,” I say. I only have the basic idea of how to do it, but it’ll give me the perfect excuse to head outside with Nathan. “Want to help?” I ask him, smiling brightly.

“Uh . . . I’m not exactly a car guy, but I can hand you a wrench or something.” He pauses. “I’ll need a wrench, right?”

Me and my grandparents laugh as Nathan and I get up. I put our dishes in the sink and then go over to kiss my gram on the head since I hadn’t gotten the chance to do it when she first came home. It was such a natural response—something I always do; it isn’t until I straighten and see Nathan staring at me, his eyes glassy, that I realize the level of affection.

He was right. There will be an explanation. I know my grandparents love me.

“Let me know if you have any trouble,” Pop says, going over to start the coffeemaker for his and Gram’s after-dinner drink.

“I will,” I murmur, although I’m still watching Nathan’s reaction. In a world after The Program, we have to have some level of forgiveness for the adults in our lives. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to know what’s forgivable. Right now, I don’t think we know the line yet. We’re still learning.

I lower my eyes and walk ahead, plucking my grandfather’s fuzzy sweater from the hook before going to the garage to grab the battery that Pop bought me.

? ? ?

“Do you really know how to change a battery?” Nathan asks as he leans his elbow along the edge of the open hood of my Jeep. There’s a rumbling of thunder in the distance, the night stars blotted out by clouds.

“Pop showed me how once,” I say. “And I’ve seen Wes do it. Figured I’d give it a shot.” I look over at him. He nods and checks to make sure my grandparents aren’t watching out the kitchen window before coming closer.

“It was nice in there,” he says. “Really had me rethinking the entire sinister plotline that was starting to develop.”

“Same.” I sigh and leave the battery where it’s at for now, wiping my hands on the rag I grabbed from the garage. “Now,” I say in a hushed voice. “What were you going to say earlier? What happened the night before I was taken?”

“It was around the time of Casey Jones’s party,” Nathan begins. “One night, you showed up at my house, I don’t know, around midnight. My mom was at a Mary Kay convention in Vegas. You’d been crying, which, let’s be honest, was a bit scary during Program times. You asked if you could come inside, and then we went to sit in the living room. You were shivering, and I was terrified for you. When I put my arm around you, your skin was ice-cold.”

I don’t remember any of this. I don’t even remember his mother being out of town. “Why was I crying?” I ask, feeling sorry for that girl—a girl distant from me.

“That, I don’t know. At the time, I assumed you and Wes had gotten in a fight, or maybe it was because handlers had taken two people from class that day. It could have been anything. I just knew you were broken, and I didn’t know how to help.”

“Well, then—what did I say to you?”

“You asked if you could stay awhile,” he says like it was the most pathetic request in the world. “But it was late. . . .”

The idea of me at his house, broken down like that, makes me feel vulnerable.

“I told you to go home,” he continues. “But you begged me not to send you out into the dark.” His face cracks, and tears well up and spill over. “You told me you were scared of the dark and not to send you into it. So I sat back down, and you crawled over to me and cried. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call Wes, but he didn’t answer.”