It feltso goodto just hold him, real and solid, in my arms. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas, and I’d been terrified of what was happening to him in jail over the last week. “You okay, Nono?” I whispered into his hair.
He let out a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he replied, and the answer explained without any more words that while he wasn’t okay, they hadn’t hurt him or assaulted him. That he was whole, just scared and tired and worried.
The guard cleared his throat, and we stepped apart, then sat down at the table, one of us on each side. I held out my hands, and Noah took them. The guard remained silent, so I figured this was acceptable. “They have me on my own most of the time,” Noah said. “I get to walk the yard every day, but they mostly have me in a cell away from the other guys.”
I let out a long breath. “That’s good, right?”
He nodded, his face tight. “Yeah, probably. Are you okay? Have you learned anything?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I’m not sure what all I can tell you,” I said, glancing over at the guard, although he didn’t move, his gaze fixed high on the wall.
“Do you have any ideas about who did it?” he whispered.
I blinked. “Father,” I replied.
Noah sucked in a breath. “Are—are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” I confirmed, my tone dark.
“Are they—going to arrest him?” he asked, and I knew the hope in his voice was because he wanted to get out—wanted this nightmare to be over.
“They’d have tofindhim,” I replied grimly.
“Oh.” Noah’s fingers tightened on mine. “Sethy…”
“Yeah?”
“They’re protecting him, aren’t they?”
He’d just voiced the thing I’d been thinking for the last thirty hours or so. That the Community was hiding our father because they’d sanctioned—for some fucked-up reason—our mother’s death. Maybe she’d been sick. Maybe they’d found out she went to Humbolt. Maybe they found out she’d reached out to Noah. Maybe it was something entirely different, although I hadn’t seen anything else in the house that might explain it.
Which reminded me that Noah hadn’t told me he’d come to meet our mother. “Nono?”
“Yeah?”
I kept my voice very low, hoping the guard was human and wouldn’t be able to hear. But I had to know. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out here to see Momma?”
His face flushed, neck first, the same way mine did. “Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it,” he whispered.
“Of course I would have!” I hissed back. “Why would you even want to?”
He sighed. “I guess I hoped that maybe…” He swallowed, eyes too bright. “Maybe I could convince her to loveme. Not her image of me, butme. And if I could do that…”
“What? Rebuild your relationship?”
He shifted in his uncomfortable prison chair. “I was always closer to her than you were, Sethy.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I know,” I replied. “But I still don’t get it. They did nothing but torment us our entire childhoods.”
“She wasn’t like Father,” Noah said. “She tried to be nice. When she could.”
“When she knew he wouldn’t find out, you mean,” I retorted.
Noah nodded, cheeks still flushed.
“She still let them,” I hissed.
Noah’s expression was pleading. “But she didn’t want to,” he insisted.
