Daniel gave a miserable nod.
“Be good,” Jem said as he gave the boy a hug.“Don’t make me drag you out of a crack house tonight.”
For some reason, that actually made Daniel look happier, and he even smiled as they separated.To Tean’s surprise, Daniel kissed Tean’s cheek.And then he squared his shoulders and opened the door.
Jem caught the storm door as Daniel moved down onto the porch, and Tean stood next to him in the doorway, watching the boy follow the path to the driveway.Ammon waited as his son approached.He didn’t say anything.And his face was unreadable.But his attention was fixed entirely on Daniel; he didn’t so much as glance at Jem and Tean.Daniel, for his part, moved with a familiar mixture of wariness and defiance—not quite standing straight, not quite looking at his dad, but with a challenge written in every line of his body.
The street was still.No cars.No kids out playing.Not even the wind.
Daniel started to go around the car, but Ammon put out a hand, and Daniel turned toward his father.His shoulders shrank as Ammon put hands on his arms, moving Daniel to stand in front of him as Ammon inspected him.The hair was alright.The clothes—if you got rid of the skirt—he probably could have gotten away with.But there was no mistaking the makeup, the glitter, the mascara.
Next to Tean, Jem’s body radiated tension.
Ammon must have meant the words for Daniel alone, because they were quiet, and on any other day, they wouldn’t have carried.“You look beautiful.”And then he drew his son into a hug.
For a moment, Daniel stood stiffly, as though uncertain of what to do.And then he leaned into his father.He pressed his face against Ammon’s blazer.Turned his head into Ammon’s neck.And he looked, for a moment, like a child again.
Tean went back into the house.He couldn’t see anything, and he bumped into Scipio, and he had to catch himself—by chance, really—on the sofa.He kept going.
Once, in the Uintas, he’d been out with a team after a bad storm, monitoring for bacterial outbreak after the floodwaters went down.He’d been on his own when he spotted the bobcat kitten.She had been tiny, the size of a stuffed animal, like she might have fit in his cupped hands.She’d climbed onto a fallen tree and was standing there—not making any noise, but staring around, obviously frightened and unsure of what to do.Kittens needed to be with their mothers.
The mother, an adult bobcat, had come out of the brush silently.Maybe a hundred yards away from Tean.She had crossed the clearing at an easy trot, not exactly rushing but not slow either, and leaped up onto the fallen tree.The mother moved around the cub sniffing, checking.And the cub pressed into her: her little face nuzzling at the mother’s flank, and then, as the mother curled up around her, rubbing against her mother’s muzzle, pressing her head to her mother’s jaw.
The tears came so hard and fast that for a moment, Tean felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside.He shuddered and pulled his glasses away and wiped his face and cried harder.Strong arms wrapped around him, and the smell of that unfamiliar soap came in on his ragged breaths.Jem didn’t say anything.He just held Tean, their bodies fitting together, as they rode the waves of the storm.
Tean got himself under control.He squeezed Jem’s arms, and Jem let him go, and as he wiped his face, he said, “I’m sorry.I don’t know why—” But that was a lie, and he couldn’t bring himself to finish it.
Jem sat him on the sofa.He disappeared and came back with a box of tissues.
Tean sat, wiping his eyes, staring off at nothing: at a window full of light, and beyond it, life.“I just want to hate him.He’s horrible.He was cruel to me.He used me.”More, but it wouldn’t come out.Finally, he said, “Why can’t I just hate him?”
It felt like a long time before Jem answered, and his voice was stiff.“He was a big part of your life.You’re always going to have feelings for him.”
“What?No.”Tean sat up a little straighter and turned to Jem.“No, that’s not what I meant.I don’t have feelings for Ammon.At all.In any sense.”
Jem nodded.But the look in his eyes was skeptical.
“I want it to be simple,” Tean said.“I want to hate him.I want him to be this monster.You should have seen me with my dad; he was trying to explain how hard Ammon had it growing up, how awful his dad was to him, and it was like—it was like I wasn’t rational anymore.That’s what we started fighting about, actually.I don’t want him to have had a hard life.I don’t want to feel sorry for him.I just want him to be this—this asshole who’s the worst human being on the planet, and that’s all I want to feel.”
Jem’s face didn’t change.
“This is where you’re allowed to say something bad about Ammon,” Tean said, trying to make his voice light.
“He’s an ass nugget,” Jem said.“He’s selfish.He’s abusive.He’s a giant turd in the middle of the sidewalk, the kind you accidentally step in, and then he’s stuck to you forever.”
“Exactly,” Tean said.
He opened and closed his hands around the tissues.They were soft, and they creased easily in the pressure of his grip.
Jem was the one who spoke next.“So, what?It’s not his fault?Someone did something bad to him, and that’s why he did what he did?”
Tean shook his head.
“So, what?”Jem asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“You want to talk to him.”
