Page 121 of The Sixth Fraction

The stairwell is poorly lit and smells like old mop, but it’s clean and empty. Windows on every landing show us the building next door—Building B, which houses all the singles in Abnegation, men on one side and women on the other. It looks similar to Building A.

We’re both out of breath by the time we reach the tenth floor, and I’m carrying my jacket instead of wearing it. I consider putting it on as we walk down the hallway to the apartment; I want to show respect. But I also resent the urge to make myself more palatable to the Abnegation. So in the end, I leave it off.

Tris knocks on the door to 10E. It opens right away.

A woman stands on the other side of it. Her hair is darker than Tris’s and neatly pulled back. She’s wearing a gray sweater over a long gray skirt. But when she hugs Tris, her eyes fix on me over Tris’s shoulder, and there’s a sharpness to them that I wasn’t expecting.

Natalie Prior, obviously.

“Mom, this is—” Tris starts to say.

“I know who he is,” Natalie says gently. “Come in.”

The apartment is dimly lit. It smells like freshly baked bread. The floors are the usual creaky yellowish wood that’s so common in older buildings. In the living room there’s a ball of yarn and a half-finished scarf on the coffee table, like we interrupted Natalie while she was knitting. But she leads us into the kitchen instead.

For a few seconds she just examines me. I feel it like her eyes are burning into me. Catching on small things—the tattoo that peeks up over my shirt collar, my bare arms, my boots. Then she smiles.

“You’ve grown,” she says.

I don’t know how to respond to that. Her name was familiar to me, and her face is, too, but I have no specific memories of Natalie Prior. That’s probably because my father didn’t let me spend much time with other people in my faction. I’m not sure what he told them about me, but I think he implied I was shy, easily overwhelmed. That him keeping me apart from them was him taking good care of me.

“Would you like some tea?” she asks, looking from me to Tris.

The ritual is comforting for all of us, I think, because the offer breaks the tension, and Tris and I both sit at the kitchen table while Natalie busies herself at the stove.

“We have an hour,” she says, as she fills the kettle and puts it on the stove to heat. “My daughter says you’re trustworthy, Mr. Eaton.”

I wince a little.

“If you could just call me Four,” I say. “I’d appreciate it.”

She’s busy scooping tea leaves into a large strainer, but she pauses to look at me, her eyes thoughtful. “Of course. Four.”

The kitchen is small and warm. Tidy, everything hidden away behind white cabinet doors. Tile countertops scrubbed clean. A study in simplicity: two pots, one small and one large. Two pans hanging on hooks over the stove. Only take what you need is an Abnegation motto I carry with me without even knowing it, and so does this place. The only decoration is the simple embroidery on the wall, in gray thread, that reads, Them before I.

I return my focus to Natalie.

“I’m not sure what ‘trustworthy’ means to you,” I say. “I’m not blindly loyal to my faction, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“You’re not?” She gives me a pointed look and hooks the strainer over the lip of a glass teapot she took down from one of the cabinets, along with three glass cups without handles. “Is that why you have Dauntless flames tattooed on your skin?”

Tris opens her mouth to object, but I’m already responding.

“I have every other faction symbol beneath them,” I say. “As your daughter can attest.”

Natalie’s eyebrows pop up in surprise, and I realize, a beat too late, what I just implied. “Oh, really? And just what were the circumstances of my daughter seeing you in a state of undress?”

“Not that,” Tris says, her cheeks bright red.

I’m so stupid sometimes.

“She stumbled across me in the tattoo shop,” I say. “That’s all.”

The kettle whistles, and she takes it off the heat, then pours hot water into the teapot. I watch as wisps of red-brown tea escape the holes in the strainer, staining the water.

Natalie says, “And Evelyn? She doesn’t have your blind loyalty, either? Because whatever we discuss here, I can’t have it getting back to her.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Tris replies, before I can. “Mom, come on.”