CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To: Joseph Andrews
From: Alfred Norwich
Subject: Go with God
Joseph,
After the tragic loss of Richard Durham, it is even more imperative that you and your team are successful in recovering Jason. He is stronger and more capable than we have realized, and this dalliance of his has gone on quite long enough. Richard seemed to believe that there was evidence indicating Jason was heading south. We feel this is the best course for you to take in your search for him.
Yours in the pursuit of the Purpose,
Alfred
Jason and I checked into a hotel room a few miles outside of Shiloh, in another small town (which was still bigger than Shiloh), where we would spend the next several days. For the first time in days, we had a stretch of time in which we were not bothered, not threatened, and felt relatively safe. Jason and Hallam kept puzzling over the strange set of connections that we’d uncovered, but neither of them came up with many ideas.
Jason and I spent time with Hallam, but we also had ample time alone. We ate in restaurants. We went for walks in the woods. It was much warmer in Georgia than it had been up north, even though the residents of Shiloh seemed to think it was very cold. At night, we slept in the same bed and tried to work on perfecting our lovemaking technique. The second time, it was much less awkward, and much nicer. Still. There was something about it that was... disappointing. It wasn’t that having sex with Jason was bad. It was very nice. I really liked being close to him. And it felt... Well, that was the problem, really. It felt good, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it felt way better for Jason than it did for me. Of course, we didn’t really talk about it. I didn’t know how to bring it up.
Overall, it was the most pleasant time that Jason and I had been able to spend together. I felt happy. I even felt content. If it weren’t for the fact we were holding our breaths, waiting for the Sons to show up at any minute, it might have been idyllic. Might have been. But there were other things. Jason and I had baggage. Sometimes, out of nowhere, it hit me that my parents were dead. I remembered them the way they had been, before Friday night. I had thoughts sometimes, like when I saw a book in a bookstore that my father might have liked. I thought that I should pick it up for his birthday in December. Then I remembered that he was dead. I started to cry. I couldn’t believe it. It just seemed so unreal.
Then I remembered the last night I’d seen my father. I remembered him backhanding Jason in Aunt Stephanie’s dining room. Thinking about that was so hard. I couldn’t reconcile the man I’d seen in that dark room, ready to let me be raped by Toby, with the man who I’d grown up in the same house with. How had my father hidden that side of himself from me? How had I only seen the gentle, good parts of him? Sometimes it hurt too much for me to bear.
I didn’t feel like I could talk to Jason about it. Jason had been through much worse things than I had. He didn’t need to listen to me talk about how much it had hurt to lose my family. Jason had never had a family to lose. Why couldn’t I be thankful for what I’d had instead of bemoaning its loss?
Furthermore, I think we both knew that all of this was only temporary. We wouldn’t be able to stay in Shiloh with Hallam forever. We would have to leave at some point. If Hallam didn’t come up with some kind of breakthrough on the Marianne Wodden idea soon, we’d have to leave before figuring anything out, making our trip here mostly pointless.
Sometimes, lying next to Jason while he snored gently, I cried softly to myself. I didn’t want him to hear. I was happy to be with him. I was lucky to have him. Even though I’d lost everything else, I at least had Jason. He was all I had left. The most important thing to me. I didn’t want to live without him. And I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t happy with him or that I wasn’t grateful that he existed.
So I cried quietly, hoping he wouldn’t wake up and hear me. In the morning, when he woke me up with kisses, I never let on that there were times when I sobbed. And it went on like that for four days. Four days, we had. Four days before all hell broke loose.
It started when Hallam woke us up by pounding on our hotel room door early in the morning. Jason, who apparently always woke up completely alert, leaped out of bed, threw on his pants, and went to the door. I didn’t appreciate this because I wasn’t wearing any clothes, so the conversation that followed was conducted while I pulled the covers of the bed up to my chin.
Hallam swept into the room, his eyes bright. “I think I’ve got it,” he said.
“Got what?” I said. “Can’t it wait a couple of hours?” I could see that the sun was barely up. It was early. I wanted more sleep.
“Oh whatever, I’m awake,” said Jason. “Tell me what’s up.”
“Okay,” said Hallam. “I started thinking about this Michaela Weem, right? I decided she was the missing link. She was going to pull this whole thing together.”
“Yeah?” said Jason, sitting down on the bed.
“So, I decided to do some research on her. Figure out who she is. Then I figured it out. It was because of something that you said, Azazel.” He looked at me, huddled beneath the covers, and seemed to actually take us in. “You know, it occurs to me that I might be more comfortable having this conversation if the two of you were actually clothed.”
“What?” demanded Jason. “No, tell me now. You can’t just build it up like that and then stop.”
“Tell you what,” said Hallam. “You two get dressed and come meet me back in Shiloh at the rectory. I’ll tell you there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Jason.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” I said.
“Good, then,” said Hallam. He started towards the door, then stopped. “Look,” he said, “just because I’m not insisting on anything else, and just because I’m no longer a member of the Sons doesn’t mean... I just want you both to know that I don’t condone the two of you living in sin like this.”
And then he left the room, closing the door after him.
I had to work hard to keep from laughing until after he was gone. Then I burst out giggling. “Living in sin?” I guffawed.
Jason wasn’t laughing.
“Come on,” I said. “That’s funny.”
“To you it is,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Are you feeling guilty?” I couldn’t believe that.
“Of course not,” said Jason. “But the Sons are pretty... conservative. And, you know, I was never supposed to ...” He grinned. “... know the touch of woman at all. Supposedly, it would taint me.”
I crawled out from under the covers, still giggling. I straddled him. “Oh yeah? Am I tainting you now?”
He kissed me. “Definitely. I’m very, very tainted.”
He ran his hands over my shoulder blades, over the curves of my hips. He groaned. “You’re distracting me.”
“It’s all part of the tainting, baby,” I joked. “What can I say?”
“I want to know what Hallam found out,” he said. “Don’t you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Hallam is going to be there for a long time.” I arched an eyebrow suggestively.
He grinned. “Come on, Azazel. We have to go.”
“Fine,” I said, pouting. I climbed off of him and stood next to the bed, my eyes darting over the floor in search of my clothes.
“Wow,” said Jason.
I glanced at him. I realized he was staring at me.
“Stop,” I said, feeling self-conscious.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked.
I blushed. Trying to recover, I teased, “We have to find out what Hallam wants to tell us, remember?”
Jason stood up. “Yeah, well, we should probably shower first, so we look presentable.”
“I guess.”
Jason leaned close, a smile twitching at his lips. “We’ll have to do it together to save time.”