Although I expect this memory to be shocking, or sad, I don’t get the grimness in her expression. Before I can think too much, she inserts the needle, and I feel the burn race up my vein. I wince, and Wes slides his hand onto my ankle.
Marie removes the syringe, covering the needle tip, and slips it into her bag. She places the metal crown on my head, brushing my hair away from my face. The dose was definitely strong, because I feel the first wave of warmth splash through my chest.
Things blur before getting clearer, still frayed at the edges. I sense it immediately: I can no longer lie. Not even to myself.
James coughs at the kitchen table, and the sound of it is heavy and dry. Sloane gets up and goes over to him. She stands behind his chair as he tries to catch his breath. He swallows hard and looks up at her. Her expression shatters—all pretense of bravery gone—and he nods her toward him.
“Come here,” he murmurs, and she wraps her arms around him, and he reaches up to rest his hand in her hair.
I hear James whisper that he’ll be okay. He’ll never leave her.
And I wonder if anyone has ever been more in love than Sloane and James. What would that be like, to have your fates be so completely and utterly intertwined? I glance at Wes, finding him watching with anticipation, worry.
Warmth spreads over my skin, crawls up and seizes the back of my neck like a grip. I love Weston Ambrose, and he loves me. I stare over at him, the edges of my vision shading in, and Wes smiles encouragingly.
“It’s your dimples,” I say out loud, making Marie look at me. Wes smiles wider.
“What is?” he asks, his thumb tracing along my ankle.
“The feature I love best,” I say. “You asked me once, and the answer is your dimples, every time.”
He has no idea what I’m talking about, but he nods anyway like he does.
“I see the medication is working,” Marie says to no one in particular, and takes out her laptop, her fingers clicking quickly on the keys. There is a buzz in my head, and it startles me.
“Sorry,” she says. “Checking the connection.” She taps a few more times, and then she adjusts her chair next to me, computer balanced on her lap. “Are you ready, Tatum?” she asks.
Sloane comes in from the kitchen, watching us intently, counting on me to be the cure. Her eyes plead with me to not fail.
“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.
