The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,124

make any sense, but I was already so conflicted about it. That’s why I threw it back at her. We talked some more outside of the restaurant. She put her purse and the money in the car and said she wanted to ride with me to the clinic and then she’d drive me home in my own car. I asked her how she was going to get back home, and she said she had other things to do in Salt Lake, and a friend would give her a ride.”

“What friend?”

“Someone named Becca. I—” Hannah hesitated. “I got the impression they were more than friends, maybe.”

“And?”

“And she drove me to the clinic, and after, she drove me home. It was early evening, but Caleb wasn’t there. I got in bed and went to sleep. When Caleb woke me up, I told him I was sick and just needed to rest. I’d left my phone at the house all day, so no one could prove I’d been anywhere else.”

“Hannah, that’s the same day Joy was killed. Do you know where she was going? What was she going to do in the valley after she took you home?”

Tucking her hair behind her ears, Hannah nodded slowly. “But I can’t say anything, Tean. If I say where she was going, then I have to explain the rest of it: why she left her car there, why she drove me home, what she told me. I was under medication, so they might not even believe me.”

“But you’d at least have an alibi. The clinic will have records.”

“You don’t understand. My parents. Caleb. Church is everything to them. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have a secret that will change how they look at you forever, that will make them think you’re—you’re a monster?”

Tean just waited.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that. But you understand, right?”

“Yes.” There was no clock to mark the passing seconds, but Tean’s heart thumped out the moments. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I’m not going to tell you it was easy or that it turned out all right. For me, though, it’s better than the alternative. I couldn’t live with the alternative. You’ve got to decide if you can.”

Crying again, Hannah nodded.

They talked in fits and starts until the end of the visit, when the CO instructed Tean to step away from the glass and make his way to the door.

He met Hannah’s gaze and tried once more. “Where was Joy going that night, Hannah?”

Hannah wiped her face and said, “Her father’s.”

33

Jem lay on the couch in Tinajas’s living room. It was an old couch. It had a loose weave on the upholstery. A couple of times that morning he’d staggered into the bathroom to pee and seen the waffle print on his cheek. One of Tinajas’s kids—he was pretty sure it was Guillo—was jumping up and down on his back, screaming, “Uncle Jem, Uncle Jem, Uncle Jem!”

In the other room, Tinajas was talking angrily into the phone. She peered through the opening to the kitchen long enough to snap, “Guillo, get off him. He’s sick.”

“Uncle Jem,” Guillo said as he bounced to a stop. “Are you sick?”

Jem made a tiny groan as an answer.

“He’s sick,” Guillo screamed with excitement, running off to inform the rest of the house. “Uncle Jem is sick!”

In the other room, Tinajas was trying to be quiet. Quiet wasn’t exactly one of her skills, though. “I don’t care what you’re doing. Get over here and get this dumb white boy off my couch. Right now!”

Jem felt a little sorry for whoever was on the other end of the line. He wondered if there was a specialized service that extracted dumb white boys from couches. Maybe they were like TaskRabbit. Maybe they were called White Boy No More. It sounded like a pretty good idea, actually, and if Jem weren’t currently in the process of dying, he would have put some more effort into figuring out how it might work.

After the fight with Tean, Jem had made it to Chaquille’s. Chaquille had taken one look at him and closed the door, and no matter how long or how hard Jem had knocked, Chaquille wouldn’t let him inside. Then Jem had gone to Petrano’s, a dive bar where he’d gotten drunk and tried to read about crypsis and weird animals until he was willing to do something reckless, and then he’d scored oxy and taken it all at once. He’d woken up