The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,17
hi. Yes, hello. Do you need to go on a walk?”
“No, he doesn’t need to go on a walk. He had a very stimulating walk this morning. A teenager made a bad throw with a frisbee, and Scipio thought he was being attacked. You should have seen the big coward. Did you have to leave that apartment?”
Jem heard how Tean stepped around the issue, picking the words carefully. He felt hot again, and he buried his face in Scipio’s fur. Ten fucking years of this. And Amelika giving him those kisses on his cheeks.
“Just, you know, time for a change. I’ve already got a great spot picked out.”
The doc’s hand slid down, feather-light on Jem’s back, always so uncertain when it came to simple things like this, always willing to try even though it made him uncomfortable. “Ok. Where?”
“I’ll show you some time.” With a mock growl, Jem gave Scipio a tiny shove, and the dog went wild, pouncing for his basket of toys and coming back with a rope for tug of war. Jem caught the other end and let Scipio yank him around while he got to his feet. “Ready to go?”
“Jem, where are you going to stay?”
“I told you: I found a new place. I really like it. We’re practically neighbors.”
Judging by how those insanely bushy eyebrows went up, Jem didn’t think Tean believed him, but all the doc did was shove the glasses higher up his nose and nod. “I was going to make us some breakfast.”
“Please God, no.”
“What?”
“I mean, you don’t have to do that.”
“I have some oatmeal from yesterday I can heat up, but I might have put too much powdered cloves in it. It was a little strong. And I have some unsweetened almond milk. I bet I could do something with that.”
“I have absolutely no doubt you could ‘do something with that.’”
Tean’s eyes brightened, but then he said, “I really shouldn’t—”
“You weigh like a hundred pounds,” Jem said, encircling Tean’s wrist with a thumb and forefinger. With a shove to get the doc started, Jem herded him toward the door. “And you’re eating the whole damn biscuit.”
Twenty minutes later, they were in Tean’s truck, parked down the block from Hannah’s house. Tean ate the biscuit and drank his coffee. His only comment was, “It just seems wrong to make it taste so good.” Jem rolled his eyes at that and didn’t bother trying to understand what he meant. He ate his own sausage biscuit, polished off both hash browns, and sipped his coffee.
It was a Saturday morning in the Salt Lake Valley, and it was a beautiful spring day. Hannah’s street, with its Craftsman-style homes and tidy yards, was mostly inhabited by respectable Mormon families. And, Jem was starting to remember from various foster homes, Mormon families loved to do chores on Saturday. Men and women and children were outside up and down the street: mowing the grass so that it looked as clean-cut as any Mormon missionary’s hair; weeding flower beds; picking snails off a rosebush; digging up a damaged irrigation pipe. Two men had stopped along a property line and were looking at Tean’s truck, talking.
“I think we might have made a mistake,” Jem said.
“Hmm?” Tean said.
“Well, Mormons are a pretty tight-knit community, right?”
“For the most part. The congregations are geographic, and in a part of the world with a dense Mormon population, that might consist of only a few blocks. These people are all likely part of the same ward.”
“And don’t they have assignments to make sure other families are ok?”
“Yes. That’s what Hannah’s dad was talking about last night; they call it ministering.”
“And what do you think the odds are that a tightly knit community would like a couple of strangers showing up on their street and just sitting there, watching them?”
Tean must have noticed the two men walking toward them now because he said, “Oh. Dang.”
“Mind if I handle this?” Jem said.
“Not at all.”
The men could have been brothers—in a place like Utah, in fact, they might have actually been brothers. Or cousins. Or whatever. They were stocky, both dressed in shorts and shirts that were obviously meant for yard work, already stained with grass and dirt. They carried themselves in a way that Jem recognized. He’d first spotted that way of moving in Decker, the juvie facility where he’d spent several years as