“Of course.”
He presses his lips into a smile, and then together we get out of the Jeep. He goes one way across the lawn toward his house, and I go the other way toward mine.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN I WALK IN THEfront door of my house, I stop. I study everything, every picture on the wall, every scrape in the paint. The stairs that I’ve gone up thousands of times, even the couch we’ve had for as long as I can remember.
This is my home, but for a moment, I’m a stranger in it. I take time to adjust to the truth, and soon, the house comes back into focus.
“Honey?” my grandmother calls from the kitchen. “Is that you?”
My reaction is immediate, and I grab on to the bannister to steady myself. I close my eyes, a lifetime of memories with my grandparents playing across my mind. I wish they had been real.
I’m about to cry, but I force my eyes open, force strength into my spine. I have to face this. I have to know why they kept a little girl who wasn’t theirs.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say, unsteadily. I’m shaking as I walk toward the kitchen. The room is brightly lit, and I blink against it—my eyes dry from crying earlier.
My grandparents sit at the table and look up as I enter. Pop’s eyes narrow behind his glasses as he studies me.
“Is everything okay?” my grandmother asks, her voice dripping with worry. She tightens her sweater against herself. “When you told us to come home,” she continues, “we thought—”
My gaze drifts past her and settles on my grandfather. There’s an irrational side of me that just wants to screamWhy?and have him tell me that none of it is true. But logic wins out.
“What was in the box?” I ask Pop quietly.
My grandfather’s mouth tightens, and I don’t even need to explain about the box in their closet. He knows exactly what I mean. Next to him, my grandmother stills and looks down at her folded hands.
Pop exhales and removes his glasses, setting them on the table. It occurs to me that this is it—any lie I want to live is now over. I’m about to get smacked with reality.
My grandfather steadies his gaze on me, and his gentle blue eyes begin to tear up. “You know, don’t you?” he asks.
I sway and grab on to the back of the chair closest to me. “Most of it,” I say. “But I think it’s time I hear the whole story. And from you.”
“We were going to tell you,” Gram says, still not looking at me. “When you got older, we were going to confess everything. But it got harder and harder, especially once the epidemic hit. We didn’t want it to affect you, push you toward any behavior that might land you in The Program.” She looks up. “But you got taken anyway. And when you came back, weknewwe couldn’t tell you. We couldn’t risk hurting you.”
My gram bites on her lower lip like she’s trying not to cry, and seeing her like this hurts me. I can’t watch her in pain. I can’t bear it.
I round the table and wrap my arms around her from behind. My small gram lays the side of her head on my arm and cries softly, murmuring how sorry she is for not telling me sooner. Tears drip down my cheeks, and I look over to my grandfather. He’s watching us, his head tilted as he cries too.
“Your mother,” he says, then stops himself.“Our daughter,”he corrects, acknowledging that she wasn’t my mother at all.
I straighten, my entire body shaking, and sit across from him at the table. Losing my mother doesn’t hurt like it should; she and I were never close. Not like I am with my grandparents.
“Athena isn’t a bad person,” Pop continues. “She had problems. She needed help, but rather than get it, she ran. She self-medicated. She lost her way. We wanted to keep you—” He winces, closing his eyes. “We wanted to keepTatumwith us. She lived with us for nearly five years. We were prepared to raise her. We wanted to. But Athena took her and cut off contact. We were in the process of getting custody when the police showed up one afternoon.”
His expression weakens, and Gram—sensing it—looks at him. She puts her fist to her mouth and nods for him to continue. I’ve stopped shaking, the feeling instead is weightlessness, an out-of-body moment.
“Two police officers stood on our doorstep with Athena,” Pop says. “She didn’t speak, and the officers were the ones who told us that our granddaughter had died. Tatum was alone. Her little, lifeless body all alone in some hospital morgue—” My grandfather chokes on his words, crying openly. My grandmother moans; I feel like my heart is getting ripped out. I’ve never seen this kind of ruin. I’ve never known it.
“She had...,” he tries to say, but takes another moment to clear his throat and find his voice. “She had fallen into the swimming pool at the motel, somewhere in Phoenix. Athena had been drinking, and she didn’t notice Tatum had slipped out of the room. She heard another woman scream. The firefighters told the police you’d...” He stops again. “She’dbeen under water for at least fifteen minutes before she was pulled out. Paramedics pronounced her dead on the scene.”
“Athena wouldn’t call us,” my gram says, outstretching her arm across the table toward me. I meet her halfway and grip her hand. “She told the police to call us,” Gram says, “claiming that we were the ones who had custody. We didn’t bother explaining to the officers that day that the case hadn’t been settled yet. What was the point? Tatum was gone. We’d never get to see her sweet face again.” She closes her eyes, and I squeeze her hand.
“It wasn’t right,” Pop murmurs, and I turn to him. “But we were traumatized. This... unspeakable kind of grief. We didn’t think we could survive it. Physically or emotionally.”
“So I called Dr. McKee,” Gram says, wiping the tears off her cheeks. “He and I had worked together before; I knew he helped grief-stricken families. And I asked him to help us.” “Your grandfather tried to talk me out of it,” she says, and Pop nods.
“I told her no,” he agrees. “But when Arthur Pritchard showed up one evening, and I took one look at you—the little girl he brought with him...” He shakes his head. “You looked so much like her.”
