34
When Jem left the room, he didn’t know where he was going.He walked for a while—down hallways that stretched out forever under artificial lights, past shops where people browsed and talked like everything was normal and the smell of cinnamon and pine hung in the air, along rows of windows that glowed with the glare off the snow.
Too bright.
Too loud.
Too many people.
As he walked, though, part of him was back in the room.You don’t know what you’re talking about.You don’t know anything about her.Or about me, about that part of my life.We don’t talk about it because it doesn’t matter.
And part of him was back in the chalet.Watching her face as Tean said,He’s your son.Seeing the truth of it surface in the instant of panic before she managed to put on the mask again.
He’s your son.
He couldn’t be.
But he was, obviously.Tean wasn’t wrong about that kind of thing.
Stephen was his brother.Which was seriously fucked up.He had a brother.Older?Younger?Jem guessed younger.He didn’t remember anything about a brother, although he’d been so young before his mom had left—before they’d taken him away, he corrected mentally—that if she’d had another child somewhere, he might not have known about it, might not have understood.But he thought, most likely, Stephen was younger.
He had a brother.God, he thought with something like a laugh rising in him, two of us might make Tean start drinking.
Now that Tean had pointed out the relationship, Jem could see it—some of it, anyway.They had similar builds, similar hair, similar eyes.If Stephen grew a beard, got a better haircut, and wore some slouchy retro gear, the likeness would be unmistakable.Hell, they even had the same MOs—they’d both lifted a key from the housekeeping staff.
Who was he?Where had he been for Jem’s whole life?Had he grown up with Brigitte, or had he been in care?Did he have the same dad as Jem?Or as Maeve and Milo?
What were he and Brigitte doing together?
And sneaking in behind that thought, another: That’s why she never came back for me.
It was like a snakebite, and the suddenness of the pain startled Jem out of his thoughts.He stood in a large area at the rear of the lodge—more of those massive windows looked out on an observation deck, which gave a view of the lodge’s heated pool and, beyond that, the mountains.Trees and stone made blue and gray marks on the fresh snow, and their shadows had the feathered edges of brushstrokes.
Catty-corner to the observation deck, inside the lodge, a theater marquee said KOLEN LODGE CINEMA.Framed movie posters lined the walls—holiday classics, all of them:Christmas Story,Elf, Home Alone.Over the poster forIt’s a Wonderful Life, a banner said NOW PLAYING, but on the box office window, a hand-written sign announced THEATER CLOSED BECAUSE NO POWER.
Voices came from a nearby hallway—women talking over each other, one of them with a honking laugh, another one screaming, “Stop!Stop!Ilikeleopard-print!”
Jem moved before he’d even made the decision.He loided the lock on the cinema door—it wasn’t real security, just something to keep people from wandering in—and eased it shut behind him.On the other side, the lobby was silent except for the hum of the HVAC.Dark, too, aside from a pair of emergency lights.He helped himself to a box of peanut M&M’s from the concessions stand, along with a Coke from the refrigerated case, and made his way into the theater.
It was even darker; the emergency lights here were only on the stairs and walkways, and he stood for a minute near the exit, waiting for his eyes to adjust.Then he climbed the steps until he was about halfway up.He made his way down the row and picked the middle seat, which was obviously the best seat in the house.He dropped into the chair—it was one of the recliner kind, and the power buttons didn’t work, probably because everything was running on the generator.He kicked his feet up, set the Coke in the drink holder, and started opening the box of M&M’s.When he and Tean went to the movies, they didn’t buy concessions; they were too expensive.But sometimes—if Jem pled his case—Tean would stop at CVS, and Jem could smuggle in a few of the theater-sized boxes of candy.But not until after Tean had explained that theaters made most of their money off concessions, and they were undermining a local business, and if they kept it up, the theater would close, and the neighborhood would go bad with all sorts of unsavory types moving in.One time, after Jem had made Tean watchMad Max, there’d been something about a biker gang.
Jem stopped opening the M&M’s.Then he put them aside.
The fight with Tean.
God, that stupid, awful fight with Tean.
Why hadn’t Jem just listened to him?Why hadn’t he said,Okay, I need a minute to process this, can we talk about it in a few minutes?That was the kind of thing responsible people said.That was the kind of thing adults said.What adultsdidn’tdo—in Jem’s limited experience—was run into the bedroom, and then hide in the bathroom, and then say the shittiest thing they could think of because they knew it would hurt someone.
Jem groaned.He couldn’t help himself.He slid down in his seat.He pressed his knuckles against his eyes until he saw colors in the dark.
What—seriously, in the fuck—was wrong with him?
Tean had always been there for him.Tean was the only person in Jem’s entire life who hadn’t let him down.Sure, there’d been arguments.There’d been a couple of really bad ones, as a matter of fact.But those were the exception.Tean was so patient.He was so smart.He was so kind.He wanted to make everything in Jem’s life better—starting, Jem thought with a rush of tears and a weird laugh that caught him by surprise, with Jem’s cholesterol.All the things that would have sent another guy running, the games Jem liked to run, or the fact that Jem couldn’t get a good job, or all the embarrassing shit in his past like Decker, hell, the fact that Jem was almost thirty years old and could barely read, none of those things bothered Tean.He didn’t ignore them.He didn’t pretend they weren’t there.He was just so…Tean about them.They were part of Jem.And he loved Jem.And if they were a problem, he wanted to work on them together.
At least, until recently.Until he’d started seeing Hudson.Until things had gotten weird.
But that wasn’t fair to Tean.Jemwantedhim to talk to someone.JemwantedTean to get help, if that was what Tean wanted.They’d made Jem talk to shrinks.In care, sometimes.In Decker.In one home, they’d made a girl talk to one every week.Jem couldn’t remember her name now, but he remembered that she’d come home and you couldn’t tell what she was going to do.She might cry.Sometimes she’d break things.One time, she put the dog in the tub and tried to burn it with the hot water.Jem had gotten him out, but his arm had been bright red from wrist to elbow.That was before Antony.
