“Did you paint the house?” I asked. “And tend the garden?”

“That was the military. They’ve gone to great lengths to make sure your return was smooth and positive.”

I nodded. I realized that after many months apart, our free-flowing family dynamic might need to shake off the rust, but still, something was off. It was in the clipped way he spoke, how he wasn’t joking with us or cracking a believable smile. Maybe he’d grown too used to talking to other engineers and military folks. Or something else was occupying his mind.

“Does the Tin Man need some oil?” I asked him.

“What?” he said, turning to me with steely eyes.

“You seem a little … tight,” I said, my voice growing softer with each word. I liked to joke around with my dad, but I didn’t sass him.

He kept his eyes fixed on me for a couple of uncomfortable beats, then put on a stiff smile. “It’s good to see you, son.”

“You too, Dad.” I changed tactics. “So what’s the scoop? We’re not getting much in the way of the 411.”

Mom slapped a serving fork onto the table. “Jordan, when have you ever dialed 411?”

I turned back to my dad. “How goes the cleanup?”

“There is no cleanup. Everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to work.”

“Then why did the evacuation take so long?”

“You’re familiar with how the plant operates?”

“Mmm-hmm. Nuclear fission, fueled by uranium, heats water to become steam, which drives turbines, which power electrical generators.” My dad was one of those physics guys who’d given me little choice in learning this stuff.

“Right,” he said, “and then all the steam turns back into water in those big cooling towers and gets reused while the electricity supplies us with power.”

I waited for him to say more, but instead he took a leisurely bite of pancake. “So what was the problem?” I asked as I loaded pancakes onto my own plate and slathered them in compote. “Are we all getting irradiated?”

“No,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I finally said. “So what happened here?”

“Like at Three Mile Island, there was human error: The wrong valve was opened when someone thought the pipes were empty. Before the water could be contained, one of the turbines exploded and threw radioactive material several miles, mostly on the east side of town. The reactor was damaged, and there was no way to save it, so we’ve spent the last year sealing it off like a sarcophagus. Inside the lead-lined room, there’s a deadly force that can destroy whole populations.”

“Holy shit,” I blurted out, prompting a dirty look from Mom, giggles from Charlie, and nothing from my dad. And here I’d thought we lived in an inconsequential little town. “Are you building the sarcophagus?” I asked him.

He shook his head and put down his fork. “I’m a mechanical engineer. I’m trying to get the power up and running in the remaining reactors. The military did all the concrete work on the sarcophagus.”