Chapter 31
Tean was awake between one second and the next.
The room was still dark. The house was quiet. Jem was sprawled out next to him, still breathing slow and deep.
The dream had been the same: the river, the cabin, the gun.
The clock said quarter to four.
So, maybe not everything had changed. Not everything was fixed. Not after one night, anyway.
“Jem,” he whispered. “Jem.”
The blond man stirred.
“I’m going out to the living room,” Tean whispered.
Jem made a noise of assent.
Maybe Tean could have left it there, but he said, “That’s all. I’m not leaving the house.”
A sleepy “’kay” came back to him before those smooth, deep breaths returned.
Tean cleaned up quietly in the bathroom.
He dressed in a pajama set Jem had gotten him—it was plaid flannel, too warm to wear to bed but perfect for being up, in the dark, on a cold night.
Slippers, too. Those had been a present from Scipio, and they looked like little Dachshunds.
He shut the bedroom door carefully and made his way down the hall by the light of his phone.
He stretched out on the sofa. He pulled a throw over his legs. In the dark, he didn’t have to close his eyes; he could see it like he was dreaming it again. That bottomland cabin. The smell of the tamarisk and the water. And the dead man.
You did what you had to do. That was all anyone could do.
He pulled out his phone. There wasn’t really anything to look at.
There wasn’t anything to do. Maybe he could find one of those games that Jem played sometimes.
They always had crystals or candy or something like that.
A walk was out of the question. He should read, but he’d left his books on the nightstand.
And he wasn’t going to sleep because he was too awake.
Awake was the right word. How had he said it to Jem? Like he’d been sleepwalking. Yes, that was right. Like the last year had been nothing but sleepwalking, and he had only vague memories of it, of moving through space and time in a fog. And now he was awake.
I’d ask you.
That was what Jem had said. He wished he could ask Tean for the answers. For how to help Tean. Which was amusing in an ironic sort of way because Tean couldn’t help himself. But Tean played with the phone in his hand, tracing its edges, his thumb moving across the darkened screen.
He had done it before. When he didn’t know how to live, when he didn’t know how to keep going, he had done this. Once before in his life, he’d lost all his answers. And he hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t let it destroy him.
Why was it so different now?
Because of the guilt. And the shame. Yes.
But in the darkened room, with nothing but the quiet emptiness of the street for company, clear-eyed for the first time in months, Tean could admit, to himself, that part of it was…
what? A selfishness? An indulgence? He knew Jem would say he was being too hard on himself.
But there had always been a part of him that had relished having the moral high ground.
First, because of religion. And then when he’d thought of himself as an existentialist—and, yes, a bit of an absurdist. And, if he were being kind to himself, he could acknowledge that he’d always hated hurting, always hated killing.
His grandfather’s hunting. His father’s fishing.
The violence and cruelty he saw every day in his work.
But that had been a moral luxury too—one that he’d prided himself on.
And then he’d come face to face with reality. Again. Under the right circumstances, he was a killer. Just like everyone else.
Yes, it had been to protect Jem. And yes, he’d do it again.
For anyone else, he would have understood the exception.
He would have articulated all the reasons that they’d made the right choice—all the philosophical explanations, the fundamental premise that in order for human beings to realize their full potential, to create meaning in a meaningless universe, they had to be allowed to live first, and that entailed the right to defend themselves, to defend others.
Why couldn’t he do that for himself?
He wasn’t sure. But he thought it was time to find out.
For one last moment, he hesitated, holding on to the anger, the bitterness, the resentment that this, too, had been taken from him. But he had done what he had done. No one had forced him to pick up that gun. No one had made him use it. And now, he could either live with it. Or not.
He unlocked his phone and started to search.
Later, when his phone buzzed with an incoming message from Hannah, it startled him out of what felt like a fugue state, and the gray light of morning caught him by surprise.
Hannah had sent him a picture that was too small to make out in the notification, so Tean thumbed the message to dismiss it, but another came through on its heels.
Can you believe this idiot?
That one he couldn’t pass up.
He expected something from Ed—a memo, a new division-wide initiative, some sort of bureaucratic maneuvering.
Instead, he saw a picture of Joe Neff. Neff was decked out in hunting gear—camouflage from head to toe, with the orange safety vest hanging open in front.
On the ground next to him, turned away from the camera, was a furry gray body.
The image was a screenshot from Instagram, and below it, Hannah had included the caption. Want to know where a wolf is? Ask a rancher.
Tean zoomed in on the picture—a feature he’d discovered following Jem’s memorable words, Is that his junk? Then a grin broke out across his face.
He thought about what to text back and settled on That’s a nice-looking coyote he got.
Hannah sent back SMH, which Jem had explained meant shaking my head.
The sound of bare soles on floorboards came from the hallway, and then Jem said, “You look happy.”
“He got a coyote,” Tean said and turned the phone to show Jem.
Jem was still rather dramatically rubbing his eyes as he came across the room, but he took one look at the image and said, “You know this guy has, like, clinical micropenis syndrome, right?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a real diagnosis. Or a real syndrome.”
But Jem ran fingers through Tean’s hair and gave his head a little shake. “He didn’t get your wolf, huh?”
“Not yet. Apparently because he’s even stupider than I thought.”
“Or he’s trying to save face after making such a big deal out of it. God, I bet his teeny wienie shot right back up inside him when he realized he got a coyote by mistake.”
“That’s not how penises— You know what? I’m in such a good mood, I’m going to let it go.”
Jem gave his hair another tug. He looked him in the eye. He seemed to be searching for something before he finally asked, “How’re you doing?”
“Okay,” Tean said. And when Jem did a scrunchy thing with his eyes, Tean said, “Better. I promise. It’s going to take time, but I feel like— I don’t know, Jem. Like I’m on the right track, at least.”
“Okay,” Jem echoed.
“Okay.”
And then Jem kissed him. He leveled another of those assessing looks and said, “Since we’re no longer employed, and you are apparently an expert on penises now, why don’t you come back to bed?”
“Technically, I’m on leave. Not unemployed.”
“I’ll do that thing you like with my tongue.”
“Paid, uh, leave.”
Jem stretched, arms behind his head. Biceps swelled.
The strong lines of his chest expanded. He didn’t have a gym body.
He looked like he had a body that had gotten strong through manual labor—great shoulders, fantastic arms, powerful legs.
Which was ironic, considering this was the same man who once called mowing the grass a war crime.
“Actually, I was thinking today would be a perfect chance to catch up on those YouTube videos of church demolitions—oh my gosh.”
Jem forgot the pose. “What? What happened? Oh God, you didn’t have a spontaneous attack of clinical micropenis, did you?”
Tean spared him a scowl as he got up from the sofa. “Get dressed,” he said as he hurried into the bedroom. “We’ve got to get going.”
“We do? Where?”
“Back to that campground. We need to talk to Zeb. Or Kai. Any of them.”
Jem trailed after him to the bedroom. “Uh, why?”
Tean pulled out one of his DWR work shirts. “Because Neff was right. When you want to find a wolf, you ask a rancher.”
“What does that mean?” Jem asked as he plucked the shirt from Tean’s hand. In its place, he offered a corduroy shacket. “And the tee with the otter. The police already talked to them.”
“But the police are asking the wrong questions.”