The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,45
holiday, maybe we’ll have a single corn flake that somebody with peanut-butter breath has breathed on.”
“Are you done?”
“For now. I’ve been saving the peanut-butter breath one for like two months, so I need time to come up with something else.”
The homes here were a mix of construction from the late 70s and early 80s: ranch and two-story frame homes, some with brick-and-siding combinations, some painted in colors—robin’s egg blue—that probably dated back to when they’d been built. The lawns were well-kept, which made sense because this was another Utah suburb, and the streets were wide and well-maintained. A family, mom and dad included, was playing tag on their front lawn on the next block. Two houses later, Tean saw a banner that said WE ARE ALL MOMS – CELEBRATING A WEEK OF MOMS! – THANK YOU MOMS FOR ALL THAT YOU DO.
“Is Mother’s Day this weekend?” Jem said.
“Don’t remind me.” When Jem glanced over, Tean shrugged and said, “My family is already hassling me.”
“Why?”
“Because they think I need to be at every family function.”
“Huh.”
“I’ll probably go.”
Jem was just looking at him. “You sound like it’s a firing squad.”
“No. It’ll be fine.” Tean braced himself against the steering wheel, elbows locked, knuckles white. “I’ll just think about hamsters the whole time.”
“Ok, I’ll bite: why?”
“Because hamsters are straightforward. Hamsters don’t spend almost forty years sucking the life out of their young. Hamster mothers just chow down on the pups when they need extra protein because they’re lactating.”
“If it’s that bad, don’t go.”
“No, it’ll really be fine.”
“Uh huh.”
“Anyway, I have to go.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“It’s Mother’s Day.”
“So?”
“Never mind.”
“I just don’t get the big deal. I thought you got along with your family.”
“I do.”
“They didn’t cut you off or anything when you came out.”
“They didn’t.”
“And they want you to be there.”
“Judging by the number of texts and reminders and calls and nudges, I guess so.”
“I mean, tell me if I’m missing something, but that sounds kind of awesome. People who want you to be there. People who care about you. People who are making sure you know you’re welcome. People who love you.”
“Yep,” Tean said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw emotions flit across Jem’s face too quickly to process. Then Jem smiled, squeezed Tean’s shoulder, and said, “If it helps, you can spend the whole time imagining party disasters. Like when that deck collapsed in the middle of a big graduation party, and people fell and got skewered on the joists, and the bodies hung there for days, Game of Thrones style, with the birds pecking out their eyes.”
“That never happened.”
“But you can imagine it.”
The maps app announced they were arriving at their destination.
“And you can add your own gory statistics about the number of people who die annually from choking on boiled hot dogs at birthday parties thrown by their grandmothers or something like that.”
Hemming, Tean parked at the curb and killed the engine. “It’s not a terrible idea,” he finally said. “I’d have to do some research.”
“And you can take me,” Jem said, “and tell everyone I’ve got brain-eating bacteria from sucking on live snails.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Sometimes I think you need a little backup,” Jem said, smiling as he unbuckled himself and hopped out of the truck.
Tean followed, shaking his head. They had stopped in front of the worst house on the block: patchy lawn, weeds growing through cracks in the driveway, paint peeling from the trim around the windows. On the front door’s jambs, someone had pasted stickers for Greenpeace, PETA, SPCA, and WWF. Many of the stickers were sun bleached and faded, but it looked like whoever had put them there preferred to just layer on new ones rather than removing any of the old. As they headed up the drive, Tean said, “This is Joy’s father’s house. His name is Leroy Erickson. I found him through Joy’s social media; it looks like he’s some kind of activist too.”
“Crazy runs in the family,” Jem said.
“In all families,” Tean said, “obviously, but who better to help Joy lie low for a while than a family member who supports the same kind of causes?”
Jem nodded and knocked. A dog immediately started barking, and Scipio answered from the truck. Shuffling steps came toward them inside the house, and a man shouted, “Roger, shut up,” and then the barking grew more distant as the steps moved away again. A few moments later, the deadbolt clicked back. When the door opened, Tean noticed that Jem had his hands