Chapter 3
As Jem eased onto the next street, he watched the rearview mirror.
The headlights followed him.
With all that light shining straight at him, he couldn’t make out much of the vehicle. Not a sedan; he was pretty sure about that. But it might have been a truck. Or an SUV. Something that rode higher, anyway. Something bigger. And dark.
The street was almost empty at this hour—a lone car traveled in the opposite direction, and otherwise, an abandoned stretch of flickering orange lights, a Taco Bell still glowing brightly and open for business, a kid pushing carts in a Harmons parking lot.
The on-ramp to I-15 was ahead. Jem needed to go north, go home, try to figure out why he’d agreed to help when he knew he was stepping on a landmine.
Instead of turning, Jem drove past the on-ramp.
He turned into a brightly lit Maverik lot and parked at the fuel island, and then he sat there, phone in one hand.
People did that all the time—stopped to fuel up and then dicked around on their phones.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the street.
About ten seconds later, a vehicle drove past. Not a truck—an SUV. He couldn’t tell the make or model. It had a license plate, but by the time he had a good angle on it, the SUV was already too far away.
Dark paint. He wouldn’t have put money on it being green, but it might have been.
Jem got out of the Subaru. He pumped gas.
Watched the street. A few more vehicles drifted past, sedans and minivans, but nothing that looked like it might have been the SUV that had followed him from BoomTawk.
That might have followed him from BoomTawk.
If he wasn’t just paranoid because Ammon put the idea in his head.
He drove home.
I-15 back to Salt Lake, and then I-80 east, exit at 1300 East, and then surface roads past the university and the hospital and into the neighborhood of older homes where he and Tean lived.
The windows of their brick bungalow threw yellow light across the wide porch.
Jem eased the Subaru into the garage. And then he sat there.
This was part of how he came home. Eight hours at BoomTawk, sometimes more.
All that noise. The fluorescent lights. Call after call, cranking himself up for each one so that he sounded cheery and personable, so whoever was on the other end wouldn’t hang up as soon as he opened his mouth.
He’d learned the hard way that if he went straight inside, his jaw still tight, his shoulders stiff, he’d snap at Tean and get annoyed with Scipio and—
Why in the fuck had he called her mom?
It didn’t mean anything; it had just popped out.
And she was his mom, right? Technically.
And he’d still been tense from his shift, been tired and hungry, his brain full of that white noise they pumped in, and he’d just wanted to get off the call, just wanted to stop talking.
That was why he’d said it, probably. Because he knew it’d get her off the phone.
He pressed fingertips against his face, like he was making sure everything was in place, and got out of the car.
Inside, the house smelled like hot potatoes and taco seasoning. Scipio was easing himself off the sofa, stretching his back legs, tail threatening to knock Tean’s book onto the floor. Tean was in the kitchen, standing next to the air fryer, which was making a whirring noise.
“Hey,” Tean said. “You’re late.”
Jem crouched to let Scipio give him kisses. The Lab pressed into him, working his head across Jem’s body, squeezing into the space under Jem’s arm, twisting around to slam Jem’s knee with one hip—all in an attempt to make as much contact as possible.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Jem said. “It’s almost eleven. I told you to eat dinner whenever you want.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Tean said.
The doc’s wild hair was always wilder at the end of the day—he’d been pushing a hand through it while he read, Jem guessed.
Behind the black-framed glasses, his eyes were red.
He was trying to sound cheery, which just told you how bad it was, because the real Tean never tried to sound cheery.
And if Jem asked what was wrong, Tean would say, Nothing, and if Jem pushed, Tean would shut down, and if Jem went along and pretended everything was okay, well, that was even worse somehow.
Tean said, “I meant—” He broke off to accept a kiss from Jem. “Hi. I meant, did something happen?”
“Just had to stop for gas.” He gave Tean another considering look. “Did Daniel call again?”
Tean’s little exhalation sounded helpless. “No. But he will.”
And to be fair, that was probably true. Tean might have managed to cut Ammon out of his life—so far, anyway—but he hadn’t been as lucky with Ammon’s son.
The boy had been calling for weeks. And so far, Tean had been putting him off more or less successfully.
For a moment, Jem wanted to link the phone calls to what Ammon had told him, but Daniel’s phone calls had started long before he’d gotten scared at Rainbow House.
At the same time, though, it was hard to dismiss the calls at this point.
“I don’t know what he wants,” Tean said into the silence.
“Maybe we should find out.”
“He calls me and then he doesn’t say anything.”
“Maybe there’s a reason he’s calling.”
“Then why doesn’t he come out and say it?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know what to say.”
“But why does he want to talk to me? What am I supposed to tell him? It’s going to be okay? It’s not going to be okay. I’m not going to lie to him.”
As Scipio nosed into Jem’s hand, in case Jem had forgotten him, Jem made himself say neutrally, “How was therapy?”
“Fine.”
It was always fine.
“More homework?” Jem asked, and he tried to make it sound like a joke.
Tean made a noise that wasn’t an answer. Then he said, “My mom called. She and my dad are getting a divorce.”
Jem had one sneaker halfway off. He looked up. “Holy shit. What happened?”
Tean gave an unhappy laugh. “I don’t know. I hung up on her.”
“Oh. Shit.”
And Jem almost asked why. But you could only get your hand slapped so many times.
The gap only lasted a moment, anyway, because Tean said, “How’s the screech?”
The screech was what they were calling the sound that the Subaru made.
It came and went—came more often than went, lately—and to Jem, it was the sound of even more money they were going to need.
Soon. He’d tried taking the Kawasaki to work—to put fewer miles on the Subaru—but Tean had put his foot down.
The motorcycle was fine in the summer. When the roads were dry.
And when Jem wasn’t going to get frostbite. And on and on like that.
“Nothing today,” Jem said. “So, like, your parents…”
“I don’t know,” Tean said.
And it was another door slamming shut.
Jem went into their room to change.
He wanted to shower, to get the invisible film of cubicle breath and other people’s microwaved food and recycled air off him, but Tean wouldn’t eat until Jem was there, so he changed into sweats and a Utes T-shirt and went back to the kitchen.
Scipio was waiting by the door, tail wagging, so Jem had to grab socks and his coat.
“You sit down and eat,” Tean said. “I’ll play with him.”
“No, he wants me to go with him.”
“You’re tired. You worked all day.”
“You worked all day too.”
Jem let the Lab sprint out into the backyard.
Scipio wanted to play fetch first, which meant a lot of zipping back and forth, showing off for Jem, reminding him how fast Scipio could run.
But after a few plays, Scipio had to do a full investigation of the fence, making sure he caught any new smells, snuffling around one fence post in particular.
Light fanned across the porch. “I saw a possum there earlier,” Tean said.
Then dark, and the click of the door shutting, and the sound of Tean’s steps.
A moment later, he sat on the step next to Jem.
Jem’s breath had lost its color, but Tean’s steamed white.
The doc leaned against Jem, and after a moment, Jem put an arm around him.
“Bad day?” Tean asked.
Jem grunted. Then he said, “Brigitte called.”
Tean didn’t say anything. And then he said, “How’d that go?”
In spite of himself, Jem laughed. “Great.”
Tean ran his hand along Jem’s leg.
“She wants us to be a family,” Jem said.
Scipio was getting more interested in the ground around the fence post. He gave an experimental dig with one paw.
“Oh Jem,” Tean said. “Okay. How’d you feel about that?”
“Her idea of us being a family,” Jem said, “is going to ‘an intimate family dinner.’”
“Maybe she’s trying to reach out,” Tean said. “Maybe this was the only thing she could think of.”
“Because an intimate family dinner is going to fix everything. Hey Mom, don’t worry about being a fucking meth head.
No sweat that you used my name to steal every fucking penny you could, so there are ten-year-olds with better credit scores than me.
This intimate family dinner makes up for all of that. I’m so glad we’re a family again.”
Tean’s unhappiness was a spiny silence.
Across the yard, Scipio was starting to dig in earnest.
“Scipio, leave it,” Jem said. “Let’s eat.”
Dinner was tater-tot nachos. And Tean, to his credit, had followed Jem’s instructions with only minor tweaks: the tater tots were crispy from the air fryer, and the ground beef was seasoned just right.
Tean had swapped white onions for pickled onions, but honestly, the change was a good one.
The first good thing of the day was that there were no vegetables—at least, not the gross ones—in sight.
Jem sat at the breakfast bar; Tean stood on the other side, moving food around with his fork because he still seemed to think that somehow this would trick Jem into thinking he was eating.
“You have every right to be angry,” Tean said quietly.
Jem shook his head. “It’s fine. It’s whatever. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Can we talk about it a little?”