Chapter 20 Julian
And that decides it. Whatever reservations I may still have held about holding my soon-to-be-former employers to account completely dissipate the moment that I see my daughter.
I don’t care about my job. I don’t care about being partner. I don’t care about anything except her.
The sonographer prints the picture in black and white on a strip of glossy thermal paper, the kind a receipt prints on. She hands it to Wyatt, not me. He looks at it for a long second and then he holds it out.
“Take it,” he says.
“You sure?”
“They email me everything. I’ll get a copy. Take it.”
I take it.
It is warm from the printer. I do not put it in a pocket. I carry it in my hand through the front lobby, past the receptionist who smiles at us both, past the leaflet about folic acid, out into the cold of the parking lot.
Wyatt walks beside me. He has his hands in his jacket pockets and his shoulders up and he is doing the thing he does when he is trying not to be seen, which is making himself smaller in his own coat.
The wind catches the fall of his hair across his forehead, and the smell of him moves with him, that green clean note I have been chasing in dreams for months. I have to put my hand on the roof of the car when I get to it. Just for a second. Just to hold something that is solid.
We get in the car.
I turn the engine on. The heater starts up. I do not put the car in gear. I lay the picture flat on the dashboard between us, on the small shelf above the radio where you would put change for a meter, and I look at her.
I have known about her for two hours.
I keep looking at the picture. I look at the small curve of her skull and the tiny clear line of her hand against her face, four fingers and a thumb, and my throat does something it does not usually do.
I’m aware of Wyatt watching me. “I need a minute.”
Wyatt turns his head to his window and watches a sparrow on the parking-lot fence, and I take my minute.
I take it with my eyes closed. I thought I was going to see Wyatt and that was a world of emotion on its own. I wasn’t expecting this.
Then I turn my head and I look at him.
He turns his head and he looks back.
“I need to do something,” I say. “When we get back to the ranch. I’m going to make some calls. From the kitchen, if that’s all right. I won’t be on long.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll explain. I want to. I just need to do it first.”
“Okay, Julian.”
I put the car in gear and we go to pick up the boys.
The road from Eastfield to Parish Ridge runs up through the back fields of three other ranches before it climbs the ridge.
I have driven this road twice before. Once in summer, when it was green.
Once in the dark, when it was a row of fence posts in headlights.
It is brown now. The sun is down low enough that the light is coming flat and gold across the dry grass.
Wyatt is looking at his hands.
His hand is closer to me than it was earlier. He has moved it. The back of his wrist is maybe four inches from the gearshift. I could move my hand from the shift to his wrist and it would not be a long journey.
I want to. I don’t.
“I’m going to file a sworn statement,” I say, low, so the boys in the back do not hear.
He turns his head.
“Linden has screwed you over. You already knew it but I found proof. I’m not going to let them do it. I have the documentation. All I need to do is share it with the right people.”
“What happens then?”
“They’ll sue me. Fiduciary duty, breach of data policy.
The accreditation board opens a review of my registration.
That’ll take a year. I might end up unable to practice.
I don’t know yet. But that lawyer that Donna and Roy got in should be able to make them halt the pumps until it’s all sorted out. ”
“What about your partnership?”
I shrug.
He moves his hand from his thigh to the center console and he leaves it there, palm up.
My hand comes off the shift and into his and his fingers close on mine. We drive the rest of the way like that.
Caleb has his ear buds back in. He is looking out his window. He has either not seen or has decided not to see, and I do not care which.
We pull into the yard a little past five.
We stop off at the diner to get Wyatt’s truck. Wyatt does not pull his hand back when I put the car in park. I pull my hand back, eventually, because I have to.
“I’ll see you at the ranch.”
He nods and they transfer to the truck, and I’m left alone with my world changed from when I arrived.
I follow his tail lights back to the ranch. By the time we have arrived, the light has started to go. Donna’s truck is there, parked at an angle near the porch.
I watch the truck park beside hers and the Briggs men get out of the truck and go into the house.
I park beside them, but stand in the yard a moment. The pumps are running. They are always running. It is a sound I had stopped hearing during the time I lived here. I didn’t like it then. I hate it now.
Donna is at the stove with her back to the door. There is a pot on the front burner and a plate of cornbread under a cloth on the counter. She does not turn around when the door bangs.
“Boys. Wash up. Food in five minutes.”
Matthew goes for the stairs. Caleb hangs his jacket. He does not go up. He stands in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall and watches us.
Donna puts the wooden spoon down on the rest. She turns.
She looks at Wyatt first and her face softens. Then she looks at me, and the soft thing is gone.
“You.”
She looks at Wyatt. “What is he doing here?”
“We’ve had a talk.”
“Is he staying?”
Wyatt looks at me. I look at him.
“That’s not decided yet.”
“Mm.” She picks the spoon up again. She turns back to the stove. “Then sit down before it gets cold. Caleb, set the table. Matthew, I said wash. Wyatt, you sit. Julian, you can pour the water.”
I pour the water.
We eat. The food is stew, beef and potatoes and carrots, and the cornbread is fresh from the oven.
Wyatt eats. He does not say much. He is sitting at the head of the table and his ankle is against my ankle under the boards. I do not know if he has put it there on purpose but I don’t move.
When the plates are cleared I push my chair back.
“I need to make a phone call. From the kitchen, if that’s okay. Won’t be long.”
Donna looks at me.
“Bureau?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“My brother first. Then the firm. Then a lawyer. In that order.”
She watches me a beat longer, then she nods. “Boys, I think you can go help Wyatt with the cattle. And I’ll come join you.”
They all file out, giving me space.
For a moment, I consider cleaning up the table but I’ll do that after. This is more important. I collect my laptop from the car.
I paid for the year. I open the file with the affidavit draft I have been writing.
I open the appendix. I open the published summary.
I attach all three to a draft email addressed to the volunteer lawyer for the Parish Ridge holdouts, whose name I got from the county zoning board’s public docket last Wednesday.
Then I dial Eli.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Tell me you’re doing it.”
“I’m doing it.”
“Where are you?”
“Wyatt’s house. He’s pregnant, Eli.”
The line on his end goes dead silent.
“Four months. It’s a girl. We saw her this afternoon. I have a picture of her on the fridge.”
“Julian, oh my God.”
“I know.”
“How are you feeling?
“I have no idea. It’s been a lot.”
We talk a few more moments then I hang up on him and I dial Richard Pace’s direct line.
He picks up. He is in the office still. I knew he would be. Pace never leaves the office before seven p.m.
“Pace.”
“Richard. It’s Julian.”
A pause.
“Where are you? The waterfront meeting was at four.”
“Parish Ridge.”
The pause is longer this time. “What are you doing there?”
“The hydrogeology appendix has been redacted in the public summary in a way I am not prepared to stand behind. I’ve taken it to them. I’m sorry. I don’t believe I had any real choice here. Let me know if you still want me to come to work tomorrow.”
“Julian. Stop. Take a breath. Whatever you think you’ve found —”
“I haven’t found anything, Richard. It’s all in the file. I’m just saying it out loud.”
“Don’t be stupid, Julian. Not over this. If you’re concerned, come in and talk to me.”
“Goodbye, Richard.”
I hang up.
I stand at the kitchen table with my hand still on the receiver.
I sit down at the laptop. I send the email with attachments to the lawyer, then a second to the county zoning board, and the third, which goes to Pace, with the affidavit and the appendix and the summary attached, and the words please consider this notice given in the body.
Then I close the laptop.
The phone rings.
I look at it. The caller ID says it is the firm’s main switchboard.
I let it ring out. Five seconds later it rings again.
I let it ring out. Five seconds later my mobile, which is on the table next to the laptop and which has at some point in the evening started picking up the satellite Wi-Fi, lights up with a Teams notification.
Pace, R. — You better fucking not.
I look at it. I do not reply.
I push the chair back and I stand. My knees are not entirely steady, which I notice with mild interest. I have just lost the partnership.
When I look up, I see Donna standing in the doorway. “Wyatt told me what you’re doing. Is it done?”
“Yeah.”
She looks at me a long time. Her face has not softened. She turns back to the stove. She wipes the counter. She folds the cloth and hangs it on the rail and takes her cardigan off the back of the chair where she had hung it earlier.
“I’m going home,” she says. “Tell Wyatt I want the casserole dish back.”
“Sure.”
She picks up her bag. At the mudroom door she stops with her hand on the frame. She does not turn round.
“Don’t make me regret leaving him with you, Julian Duffield.”
“You won’t.”
The screen door bangs, then I hear her truck start up. The headlights come on, sweep across the kitchen window, and go.
I sit at the kitchen table listening to the sounds of the ranch. Wyatt is out there with the boys and the cattle. I can hear the lowing of the animals as they are moved toward the barn. The birds are done for the day but I know that the morning chorus will wake me early.
After about an hour, Wyatt comes in. He pulls a chair out from the table and he sits across from me.
I have spent months thinking about what I would say if I ever sat across this table from him again. I had a speech. I had several speeches. I have just done the bravest thing I have done in my professional life and the speeches have all left me and what is left is the truth.
“I am going to ask you something,” I say.
“And I want you to know, before I ask it, that the answer doesn’t change what I just did.
I would have done it either way. I had the file on my laptop two weeks ago and I knew then.
I was working up to it. The scan today decided the timing.
So whatever you say to what I’m about to ask you, I am not pulling that email back. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
He goes very still.
“I’m going to say it again, because I don’t want there to be any confusion.
I love you, Wyatt. I have for a while. I think I have since the town hall, where you sat next to me about to go into heat and held the wheel of the truck like you were trying to bend it.
I just didn’t have the word for it then.
I have had months to find the word, and the word is love, and I am not going to sit in your kitchen and say anything else. ”
“Julian.”
“I want to be in this child’s life. I told you that this morning.
I’m telling you again. But I want to be in yours too.
I want to live where you live. I want to wake up in the morning where you wake up.
I want to know what your day looks like.
I want to be the one you tell about your day.
I want all of it. I have already lost too much time with you, and I am not doing that again.
I have been miserable, Wyatt. I have been miserable in a way I did not know was possible for me, and I do not want to find out what worse than that looks like. So I am asking.”
He has not moved. His eyes have gone wet.
“I can’t talk,” he says.
“It’s okay.”
“I want to. I can’t get the words out.”
“It’s okay, Wyatt. Take your time.”
“I —”
He stops. He puts his other hand to his mouth. His eyes close. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, four counts.
“I love you too,” he says.
It comes out flat and quiet and not at all the way I had imagined but it is the most beautiful sentence anyone has ever said to me.
This time, it’s me who can’t talk.
I stand up and go round the table. He stands up before I get to him.
We meet halfway. His hands come up to my face and mine come up to his, and I get my forehead against his and I close my eyes, and we stand like that.
I can feel his breath against my mouth. I can feel his pulse under the heel of my hand at his jaw.
He kisses me. He is shaking. We are both shaking.
I put my forehead back against his.
“Wyatt.”
“Yeah.”
“There is a thing I need you to do for me. Tomorrow. The next few days.”
“Mm.”
“Linden’s lawyers are going to come back inside the week.
Possibly inside forty-eight hours. The affidavit will land in the morning.
They will know by lunchtime. Their first move will be a settlement offer to anyone they think might have legal standing, and you have legal standing because your well went dry.
The first offer they make you will look generous and will be a quarter of what they will eventually pay.
Don’t take it. Don’t take the second one either. ”
“Julian, I can’t take a chance on this. If I get an offer that will bail me out, I’ll have to take it.”
“I know. I know what it sounds like. Promise me. Don’t take the first. Don’t take the second. Wait for the third. We get a lawyer to look at the third before you sign anything.”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
He almost smiles. It crosses his mouth and goes again.
“Donna says the realtor has an offer already,” he says. “It’s a low one but it’s an offer.”
“Don’t take that one either.”
He almost laughs.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
We stand there in the kitchen with our foreheads together. I don’t want to move. I am terrified that if I move he will move, and if he moves the moment ends.
“Bed,” he says, finally. He holds out his hand and I take it.
We go up the stairs together, past the door of his mother’s room which is not where I am sleeping tonight, past Matthew’s door which is shut with a strip of light still showing under it. Wyatt’s door is open. He pulls me through it and shuts it behind us.
I have not slept in this room since August.
I sleep in it now, with my arm over the small almost-curve of his belly and my face in the back of his neck, and I do not let go of him once.