Nathan

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Kota called ahead, saying he needed to park at the restaurant and take the long way around so his mother didn’t see him coming back.

It was early afternoon by that time, and Nathan absentmindedly went about cleaning up the house while waiting on Kota to show up.

He needed backup in the house tonight, just in case Danielle and Marie were going to trick him. So he prepared his dad’s room with a laptop and double checked the cameras around his own house. He set up microphones in different spots as well.

His phone rang just as he was on a ladder checking out a camera angle in the living room. He put the camera back into position in the vent and changed the app over from the camera view to answer the call on the phone.

“Pretend you’re on the phone with me for a minute?” Silas whispered.

“How’s it going?” Nathan said, happy to play along with whatever situation Silas needed him for. He hugged the top of the ladder, ready to stay up if it this was going to be short.

Silas’s voice was distant for a moment. “Sure, yeah. It’s Sang. Sorry. Have to talk to her.” Shuffling footsteps. “Sorry,” he said more directly into the phone.

It was hard to imagine big, tall Silas trying to weasel out of anything, but apparently he needed to break free from someone. “Is this school or work?”

“Personal,” Silas said. “My father wants me to go with him on another job.”

“You don’t normally back out of those.”

“In Columbia.”

“Oh,” Nathan said. The capital of South Carolina was a good drive, a couple of hours away. “It’s not that far.”

“For two weeks.”

“Oh. ... Yeah, you probably want to back out.”

“I told him I had school, and that wasn’t good enough. He’s more serious than I thought about me taking over the family business. He said I should be going to trade school if anything.”

Nathan stepped down the ladder, landing on the carpet. He glanced around the room at the set up and testing he wasn’t quite done with, but he had a few hours, he guessed, before Danielle and Marie might show up. He leaned against the ladder as he spoke. “Okay, well, do you want to come over to get away?” He paused and then smirked. “And why am I Sang? Nathan isn’t good enough for him anymore?”

“If it isn’t her, he’s less...forgiving when I say I’m busy. Only she wasn’t answering her phone. She’s over with Kota, isn’t she?”

Nathan straightened in a jolt. “What?” He paused. “Wait...well, there was a thing this morning. She kind of ran out with Kota.” He didn’t want to explain it all now. “But she could have left without her phone.”

There was a loud, booming voice in the background on Silas’s end. Silas groaned. “Yeah. I’ve got to go over to her...Look, I can’t do it. There’s too much going on here.”

“Let me know if I need to come over,” Nathan said.

There was a bit of back and forth between Silas and his father. His father was upset. Silas started out strong, but after a couple of minutes, Nathan could sense he was relenting.

And then his father said, “Someone needs to take care of your brother when I’m gone.”

“He’s in therapy,” Silas said.

“And who pays for it?” Charlie asked. “And what about when he gets out?”

“We’re already doing that,” Nathan finally said. “You can go if you’d like, but I think we need you here.” He paused as he considered what else he could say to bolster Silas’s resolve in living the life he wanted. “Listen, Sang needs you, okay? Not me. The real Sang. We had some stuff this morning. If you want to come over, I’ll tell you about it.” He smirked to the ceiling as he said the next line. “Unless I need to go over there myself. Do I have to wear a skirt for him to take me seriously? Because I’ll do it.”

Silas snorted shortly into the phone but then spoke to his father. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” Pause. “Look, we’ll talk when you get back. But I think we need to look into finding someone else to go on jobs with you.” Another pause. “I don’t know who.”

“Don’t you have cousins?” Nathan asked. “If he wants someone that bad, let’s fly them in.”

“What about the cousins?” Silas said. Pause. “Sure, sure. Look, if you call one of them in, I’ll make sure he gets here. We’ll get him a visa and everything.”

There was a bit more of this. Nathan listened, but while he did, he started back up the ladder. He fiddled with the vent cover, putting it back on.

“Okay,” Silas said after a minute. “I think that’s good. Hey, good idea about the cousins.”

“I’m here to help,” Nathan said. “You coming over?”

“In a bit,” he said. “He wants to talk about which cousins. He’s not totally happy, but helping out family works.” He paused again. “This might take a while.”

“Take your time. Family first, right?”

Silas agreed, said goodbye, and hung up.

Nathan put his phone down on the top of the ladder and then waited, looking at it.

Charlie would still want Silas to take on the family business, but Silas was going to have to eventually put his foot down and tell him he wasn’t interested.

Some family situations were a bit more delicate to handle for them.

Kota arrived through the back sliding glass door just as Nathan was working on the volume levels. Nathan looked up from the tablet he was making the adjustments on, and pulled the earbud out of his left ear. “Hey,” he said.

Kota made a face that looked like an attempt at a smile but then lost it quickly. “You’re set up?”

“Almost,” Nathan said. “What do you think Danielle and Marie are up to?”

“Nothing good,” Kota said. “It’s what I was thinking about on the drive here, trying to guess what they could want. I mean, besides thinking about what to say to my mom...”

Nathan sighed and shook his head. He was going to say this was probably a bad time to be approaching Erica with the truth, but was there ever a good time? “I feel bad for lying to her.”

“Me, too.”

Nathan lips twitched. “If we both feel bad, it was the wrong decision. I know why we did it at the time, but now...”

Kota shrugged, the green hoodie bulking a bit around his shoulders. He sighed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

Kota avoided looking him in the eyes. “I was thinking about it on the way back. I don’t want to tell her because...I’m not sure I’m okay with this.”

Nathan lowered the tablet. “I didn’t make her do anything...”

Kota looked up sharply, slicing a hand through the air. “No, I know. I don’t mean that. I mean...” He pushed his hand to his face, covering part of it so the next words were muffled. “I’m uncomfortable when I think about you...or the others with her. I didn’t even want to leave her at Victor’s just now when I know what could possibly be happening. The others took to this so easily. Why am I still uncomfortable?”

Nathan motioned to Kota to sit on the couch. Kota did, and Nathan sat on the coffee table in front of him so he could face him. He coughed once, in a way working up the courage to just tell him outright. “It’s a wild idea. Not everyone was sure at the beginning. I didn’t know how to feel about it at first. But...a while back, Sang let me read her journal. That one that’s all coded in a Korean alphabet?”

“You read it?”

“I asked her if I could,” he said. “I kind of wanted practice being able to read it. Thought it might be useful.” He pressed his hands to the wood of the table as he leaned in a bit. “But in it, she said a lot that all she wanted was to be normal. Like a normal life.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Kota said, “given the life she had.”

“I know,” he said. “But this isn’t normal. And I can’t get over how that’s something she wanted and she’ll probably not get.” He pressed a palm over his heart. “I care about her, okay? I wouldn’t force her into something she didn’t want. But sometimes I feel like the others got an idea in their heads and she’s just doing it...because it’s what we want. Or she thinks we want it.”

Kota pressed his lips together, nodding, saying nothing. He nudged at the corner of his glasses, but it was clear he was giving it considerable thought.

After a few minutes, Nathan sat back. He looked around the room, at places where Sang used to sit on the floor near the TV when they played video games together. Then over at the hallway, as if expecting Sang would turn the corner and appear, like she used to, just out of bed and with crazy hair. He missed it.

“I agree with you,” Kota said finally, drawing back Nathan’s attention. “We need to be level headed enough to figure out if this is really what Sang would want.” He looked at Nathan, his green eyes dark. “But if she does want this, we...have to figure out if we want to do this, too.”

“Would you?” Nathan asked. “If she really did?”

Kota closed his eyes and then pressed his palms over his face, completely covering it. His glasses lifted up to his hair. “God, I don’t know. I care about her, too. But I don’t know if I can continue with it if every time I drop her off somewhere or leave her with someone else, I still carry this same feeling. I don’t want to end up always dreading it, always resenting you all for being around her when I can’t.”

“I know,” Nathan said grimly. “I felt it all week. While she’s at your house.”

Kota dropped his hands from his face and repositioned his glasses. “You had her for so long, in this house. I was pretty sure...for a while, I was so dead sure she was going to tell me one day she was dating you.”

“There were times I thought the same about the others,” Nathan said. “Like when she went overnight with North at a hotel. Or spent the night at Victor’s with him. Any time she isn’t with me...”

Kota shifted on the couch and took up the tablet Nathan had placed on the coffee table. He looked at it, making his own adjustments to the volume levels of the microphones. “I told her I’d take her to see Lily the psychologist. I know we need to encourage it. I just want to make sure we’re not...” He let out another big sigh.

“I won’t deter Sang if this is what she wants,” Nathan said. “But I want to have Lily make sure, without any of our influences, what Sang really wants. I also want to be prepared in case she does and she’s serious about it.”

“It’s a good idea. It’s all we can really do. Just...to make sure.”

Nathan agreed. “I’ll go if I can, but I don’t know what will happen here with Danielle and Marie.” He paused. “If something does that prevents me leaving, you’ll have to go alone.”

“Then I’ll go,” Kota said.

Nathan pressed his lips together tightly and nodded. “And you want to wait to talk to your mom when you actually know...”

“For now,” Kota said. “I don’t want her in the middle of it until we know for sure.” Kota leaned in this time, his voice deepening. “Because if we get involved in this, it won’t be outside people tearing us apart, telling us it’s stupid, that will get to us. It’ll be my mom. It’ll be Pam or Uncle. People we care about.”

“Your mom might not,” Nathan said. “She’s pretty...you know...easy going.”

“She’ll say Sang is sixteen, and we’re all young and will have lots of girlfriends before we get married and this is a phase,” Kota said. “I could probably tell her I was gay before telling her my girlfriend wants to date other guys at the same time. She’ll think Sang’s trying to take advantage of us somehow, I’m sure.”

Nathan struggled with the idea of Erica possibly saying exactly that. “She’s not.”

“I know she’s not,” Kota said. “But we have to be absolutely sure we’re in on this before we even start to convince anyone else.”

“And what if we can’t?” Nathan asked.

Kota fell silent. He lowered his head, focusing instead on the tablet.

Nathan didn’t expect an answer. He was asking if he’d choose between his mother or Sang. It was an unfair question.

Nathan hadn’t considered how much the others might be sacrificing when it came to family life. For him, it was easier on that front, even if he struggled with the whole idea in the first place.

How did Luke or some of the others come to the idea so easily? How did they just willingly do it?