Part 6
Upstairs Tobin points out the room Naphalie shares with Ashe. As he leads me past the closed door, his hand once again in mine, he tells me that without her, the farm would have been gone long ago.
“Right after the culling,” he says, leading me down the hall, “I didn’t do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and cry. God, I missed you, Joah. I missed you so much. At first I wanted to storm the facility and demand you back, but Ashe talked me out of it. He said you’d never remember me anyway, that you wouldn’t want to come back, and that thought alone killed anything in me that wanted to find you again.” His voice grows quiet in the unlit hall, and when we stop in front of a second closed door, he whispers, “I didn’t want to believe you didn’t remember me.”
I rub my
