I swallow. “Are you going to tell me to stop?”
“No. I’m going to tell you to keep going.”
My jaw falls slack on a sharp exhale, and my brow furrows. “That’s…not the lecture I expected.”
“They’re dangerous, Cason.”
“That is the least shocking information you’ve ever given me.”
“I’m just saying you need to be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“You were taken once, and I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you again.”
A couple days after I wasrescued—I still have a hard time thinking of it that way no matter how many therapy sessions I attend—Malcolm apologized again and again and again for leaving me there for so long. He said his team advised him not to send the ransom, to instead go on the offensive. But it seemed to eat at him for a long time that he had listened instead of just paying the ransom like he wanted to do in the first place.
I stopped being angry with him for how much time I spent in that basement before I even left it. By the end, I didn’t care.
After?
My anger was directed elsewhere.
“I remember,” I say quietly.
“I don’t want to lose you too.”
Too. First, his wife a long time ago. Then my dad, his brother. Sometimes I forget how close they were, how much losing him hurt my uncle as much as it did me and my mom. I think he’s better at hiding things than I am.
At least I know it runs in the family.
For some reason, I repeat what Harrison said earlier today. “I have no plans of dying anytime soon.”
“Good.”
I’m still kind of reeling from the fact that Malcolm has known what I’ve been up to this entire time. Again, he hid it really fucking well. When I wonder what else he’s hiding, I realize something.
“You sound like you’re afraid of them.”
A pause.
“I respect them,” he says.
“Is that not the same thing?”
“No.” I can almost hear the smile in his voice. “It isn’t.”
I grin and look at Felix who has resumed purring like all these revelations over the past few minutes haven’t shook my very foundation.
“Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, Malc. And the surveillance. Very normal. Very healthy family dynamic.”
“You and the Institute are all I have left, Cason.”
Any other jokes I might have had die on my tongue.
We talk a few more minutes aboutactualnormal things, like how everything’s going at the Institute, how Felix is doing, the latest paper he’s had published. He asks how my mom’s been.
“I talked to her yesterday,” I tell him. “She’s good, really liking North Carolina. She joined some kind of book club.”
