The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,110

chased her. A chunky toddler sat near an end table, one pudgy fist wrapped around an electrical cord that led to a lamp. He kept yanking on the cord while he wailed, and the lamp skittered closer and closer. Maybe it would be like a cartoon, Jem thought from deep inside his bubble. In cartoons, characters were always getting lamps broken on their heads.

“Jeez,” Tean said. “Grab Ricky before he brains himself.” He waved at the toddler without waiting for a response and circled around the sectional, shouting, “Aiden, Liam, get your butts off that couch right now, and quit being mean to Lucas. I don’t care if he’s younger. Nope, get down before I swat you. Uh uh, absolutely no twin talk. You heard me. Backyard. Now. And take Lucas.”

Jem observed all of this while bending to get the toddler. He slowly loosened the pudgy fingers from around the cord, and then he picked up the kid and held him with his arms straight out.

“Look,” Jem said. “You don’t bite me, and I won’t bite you.”

The toddler’s gaze focused on Jem, and he shrieked even louder.

Tean, meanwhile, had turned his attention to the girls. “Izzy, Emma, no running in Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Where are the adults? Ok. Then go outside. Yes, right now. Yes, I brought Scipio.” The girls shrieked with excitement, reversed course, and disappeared.

The toddler was screaming even louder.

“Um, Tean?”

“Well, don’t hold him like he’s a watermelon you’re thinking about buying,” Tean said. He went to one of the doors, pushed it open, and said, “No jumping on the beds. You know that. Tyslie, help Afton get down safely. No, no, no. Turn around and help her like I told you to. Ok. Outside. Right now.”

“Tean?” Jem said a little louder.

But the doc was moving to check the next room. “Glade, put down that knife. Right now! You know you aren’t supposed to touch Grandpa’s stuff. Where did you put his fly rod? Nope, put it back where it goes. Come here, I have to pat you down.” Tean squatted, patting down an eleven-year-old and producing a stainless-steel lighter and a folding knife. “Ok, now you can go tell everyone how mean I am.”

The toddler was shrieking and kicking his pudgy legs.

“What are you doing to him?” Tean said.

“My arms are about to give out.”

“Well, why are you holding him straight out from your body? Here, give him to me.” Tean took the toddler and tucked him up against his shoulder. He whispered something in the boy’s ear, stroked his back, and the boy settled into a steady, whining cry, obviously telling Tean how he’d been mistreated. Tean just kept rubbing his back. “Haven’t you ever held a kid before?”

“No.”

“But you were in foster care. I know you took care of the other kids.”

“Never a kid that young. And all I did was make sure they had food. Sometimes clothes, I guess. It’s not like—well, it wasn’t like this.”

“Nothing’s like this,” Tean said, glancing around the now silent room. “Except maybe hell.”

Ricky gave an offended little warble.

“I know,” Tean said. “I’m sorry. Come on, you might as well meet the rest of them. Believe it or not, that was the easy part.”

Jem examined the house as they moved through it. The two doors that Tean had opened led into small rooms. One was a craft room with twin beds jammed up against the walls. The other looked like a den: an armchair, a flat-screen TV, trophy fish mounted on the walls, and various types of hunting, fishing, and camping gear in varying states of organization. They passed a bathroom and headed into the kitchen, which was galley style and barely big enough for the eat-in table that was pushed to one side. A woman was standing at the sink, drying her hands. Next to her rested a big bowl of fruit salad. An older man with lightly salted dark hair sat at the table, checking something on his phone. He was a big man, muscular, and he’d kept fit even as age advanced. He looked up and flashed a huge grin.

“Teancum,” he roared, surging out of his seat to wrap Tean in a huge hug. Tean’s whole body went stiff, and at first Jem thought maybe he was trying to save Ricky. The longer the hug went on, though, the more Tean’s discomfort magnified. If the man hugging him noticed, he didn’t give any sign of it.

“And who’s this?” the man asked, releasing Tean and grabbing