The Chosen (A Talents novel)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

A full-body wave of goose bumps shook me from head to toe. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t thought of it myself, but still.

Jack?

At my preschool?

With Mr. Judan?

“Jack? You think?” I wheeled around and brought my glass with me into the living room. I took a drink as I entered, to emphasize how unconcerned I was about this whole conversation.

“You don’t? Look at that hair.” She tapped the photo with one thick, yellowed fingernail. “Hard to tell. Such a shame he’s gone. I always liked that boy.”

Right. I wondered if she would feel that way if she had seen him trying to strangle me. Or trying to crush Anna against the deck of a boat.

Then again, I wondered how she would feel about me, if she knew I had killed him.

I swallowed the nausea that followed that thought. Getting through my days since the earthquake required incredible willpower. I had to consciously block all thoughts of what I had done, and the awful ramifications of the way I’d dropped Jack into the cold waters of the Puget Sound, or I’d go insane. Just like I had so many times before, I buried any memory of that day, focusing entirely on the mystery in front of me.

“What was that preschool like?” Still maintaining my air of nonchalance, I grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and sat on the rug in front of the couch, trying to avoid Joan’s glower.

“It wasn’t anything special, as far as I knew,” Grandma said. “Your mother set up the whole thing. I think it was in someone’s basement. I was working in the church office back then, so I wasn’t home during the day.”

I paused. Apparently Grandma didn’t think the school had anything to do with Delcroix. Could it have been a secret?

“I thought we were just visiting you that summer,” I said. “I didn’t know we were living here or I was going to school.”

“You stayed for about a month. Your father was traveling a lot and your mother needed a little break during the day. Not that you were a problem,” Grandma added hastily. “She just wanted to have a few hours to herself. To do some errands.”

“Oh.” I sat still, processing the information. “Did you ever visit the school?”

Grandma shook her head. “I don’t think your mother wanted me to. She was very independent. Wanted to do it all on her own. I kept telling her to let me help out more, but she wouldn’t hear of it.” Grandma peered closer at the picture, and I realized her eyes were getting watery.

Crap. Here came the waterworks. This was exactly why I hated talking about my mother.

I grabbed a box of tissues from the coffee table and handed it to her. She took it without acknowledgment and lifted her glasses to dab at the corner of one eye.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, her voice quavery.

I motioned toward the ladder with a sideways movement of my head. “In the attic.”

The opening to the crawlspace was in the ceiling of the hallway between our bedrooms and was visible from the living room. Actually, pretty much every part of our house that wasn’t closed off by a door was visible from the living room. It was that kind of house.

“If you find any more like that, would you bring them to me?”

I nodded, relieved that she hadn’t pressed any further about the picture’s origin. Lying to Grandma was something I’d never been able to do very well. Keeping The Program a secret nearly killed me. I don’t know how many times I turned myself in circles, trying to find ways to twist my words so I didn’t have to lie outright.