22. Eli
— ? —
Eli
The goat is screaming at me through the feed store window.
Not bleating. Screaming. Like I’ve personally offended him by leaving him with Mateo outside while I buy grain, like the slight inconvenience of waiting ten minutes is a war crime.
“Your goat seems upset,” says the guy behind the counter, handing me the receipt.
“He’s not my goat.”
“He’s wearing a collar that says Elliot.”
“I’m aware.” I sign my name and pocket the receipt. “She named him after me. Because he’s stubborn.”
“Huh.” The guy looks out the window at the truck, where the goat, my namesake, my cross to bear, is now trying to eat Mateo’s shirt. “Seems about right.”
My phone rings. I check the screen: Grayson.
“I gotta take this.” I step outside, away from the grain displays and the checkout line and the goat still losing his mind in the parking lot. “Gray. What’s up?”
“The label’s back.” His voice is that particular kind of excited that usually means money is involved. “The fall stadium run. They’re putting it back on the table.”
“They pulled it six weeks ago.”
“And now they’ve unpulled it. Nine figures in projected ticket sales, El. Gross, before costs, but your guarantee would still be the biggest yet. A new twenty-city package beyond the thirteen dates we canceled, all the momentum from the public accountability stuff-”
“I’m not doing the tour.”
Silence. Then: “Eli. Come on. This is the biggest offer you’ve ever-”
“I said no.”
“At least think about it. Talk to Az. The money alone would-”
“Grayson.” I watch Mateo rescue his shirt from the goat.
“I’m standing in a feed store parking lot in Ojai with a goat named after me screaming his head off because I left him with Mateo for ten minutes.
My wife is thirty-one weeks pregnant and someone broke into her house last week.
I’m not going on a twenty-city tour. I’m not leaving. No.”
“The label needs an answer today.”
“They have one.”
I hang up before he can argue. Lock the screen. Walk over to Mateo, who is holding the goat on a lead beside the truck, and the goat immediately shuts up and looks at me like butter wouldn’t melt.
“You’re a nightmare,” I tell him.
He bleats. Sweetly.
I’m loading the grain into the truck bed when my phone buzzes again. It’s a number I don’t recognize, and I almost don’t answer.
Almost.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Jackson? This is Katherine Cho, representing Brynn Hollister.”
I go very still. “What does she want?”
“I’m calling to inform you that Ms. Hollister is withdrawing her paternity claim. The results of the DNA test have been confirmed, and you are excluded as the biological father. Ms. Hollister acknowledges that her previous statements were inaccurate and-”
“Fine.” I don’t need the legal language, don’t need the apology that isn’t coming. “Is that it?”
“That’s the official communication, yes. I believe Ms. Hollister may reach out separately, but I’m not involved in that conversation. Have a good day, Mr. Jackson.”
She hangs up.
For a long moment I just stand there in the feed store parking lot, grain dust on my boots, Mateo waiting with the goat beside the truck.
The test proved what I knew. What I always knew.
But hearing it confirmed, having the legal documentation that says this lie is officially dead, a coil in my chest loosens that I didn’t realize was wound so tight.
And then my phone rings again.
New number. Same area code.
I shouldn’t answer. I know I shouldn’t answer. But some part of me is still stupid enough to think maybe this time…
“El.”
Brynn’s voice is wrong. Thick and raw and shattered in a way I’ve never heard from her, not in all the years I have known her.
“Brynn. I don’t think we should be-”
“I lost the baby.”
The words hit me like a truck. I stop breathing for a second, maybe two, and then I’m leaning against the side of my truck with my hand over my face trying to process what she just said.
“What?”
“Last week. After the test samples were taken. The baby. Gone.” She laughs, but it’s the ugliest sound I’ve ever heard. “Isn’t that perfect? Isn’t that just perfect? I finally had something that was mine, something real, and now it’s dead because of you.”
“Brynn, I didn’t-”
“You fired me. You cut me off. You told everyone I was a liar and you left me with nothing, and you expect me to believe none of that mattered?” Her voice breaks. “You don’t care, do you? You got what you wanted. You and your precious wife.”
“I’m sorry you lost the baby.” And I mean it, somewhere underneath the anger and the exhaustion. “That’s… I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I didn’t cause it. And you lying about who the father was, trying to destroy my marriage, that’s not something I made you do.”
“She threatened me. At the farm. She told me to stay away from you, from the baby-”
“She told you to leave her property because you showed up uninvited and tried to slap her while she was pregnant.” The memory of that day makes my blood run cold. “You did that. Not me, not Az. You.”
“I loved you.” Brynn’s crying now, ugly gasping sobs.
“I’ve loved you since we were kids. I told you when we were nineteen, and you never saw it.
You never wanted to see it. And I waited, El.
I waited so long, and then you married her, and I thought if I just stayed close, if I was useful enough, maybe you’d finally-”
“I know you loved me.” I close my eyes. “You told me, back then. And I told you I didn’t feel that way. I believed you when you said you’d get over it. Later I ignored what was happening because I didn’t want to deal with losing the friendship. That was wrong.”
“Then why can’t you-”
“Because I love my wife. Because I’ve loved her since the morning after we met, when she found me pacing outside her door rehearsing how to ask to see her again.
Because she’s carrying my daughter and she’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I almost lost her because I didn’t protect her the way I should have.
From you, from my own bullshit, from all of it. ”
Silence on the line. Just Brynn’s ragged breathing and the distant sound of traffic wherever she is.
“You should’ve let me keep the seat, El.” Her voice is different now. Cold. Empty. “That front row at your concert, smiling for the cameras. That was where I belonged. And you took it all away.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you took everything from me. My job, my reputation, my baby.” She laughs again, that terrible broken sound.
“So I’m going to take everything from you.
The career, the wife, the perfect little family you’re building.
I know people, El. I know where the bodies are buried. And I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
She hangs up.
I can’t move. The threat lands cold in my chest, settles there like ice.
I’m going to take everything from you.
I get in the truck. Start the engine. Mateo settles the goat securely for the ride and gets in beside me. I drive.
Az is in the kitchen when I get back, standing at the counter cutting strawberries for some kind of dessert she’s been working on. She looks up when I come in, and whatever’s on my face makes her set down the knife.
“What happened?”
I tell her everything.
I start with Grayson and the renewed tour offer.
The projected gross, the guarantee, my no.
“I want to stay here,” I tell her. “That isn’t something you owe me for.
” She says we can discuss future dates when we know what life with June looks like.
Then I tell her about the paternity results and Brynn’s call, the loss, the blame, the threat.
I don’t soften it or edit out the ugly parts.
When I finish, Az is gripping the edge of the counter hard enough that her knuckles are white.
“She lost the baby,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.”
“And she blames us.”
“She blames us. That doesn’t make it true.” I scrub my hand over my face. “I’m sorry she’s hurting. But she was lying and threatening you before this happened. And now she’s threatened us again.”
Az is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is steady, but there’s a rawness underneath.
“Cody’s still out there.”
“I know.”
“He funded that rental car. He’s connected to this somehow. And now Brynn-” She shakes her head. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For something else to break. My mother, the windows, the fence, and now this-”
“Hey.” I cross the kitchen and take her hands, pulling them away from the counter. “Look at me.”
She looks. Green eyes, worried, tired. Still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“I’m going to call the sheriff. Ask them to put a car at the gate.
Someone watching the road, checking who comes and goes.
” I squeeze her hands. “And I’m telling you.
Right now. No hiding it. No keeping it to myself because I think I’m protecting you.
That’s what I should’ve done from the start, and I didn’t, and I’m not making that mistake again. ”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” She almost smiles. “You told me. That’s… that’s what I needed. To know what’s coming. Even if it’s bad.”
“It might be bad.”
“I know.” She leans forward, rests her forehead against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, around both of them, and hold on. “But at least we know.”
I call the sheriff from the porch while Az goes back to her strawberries.
Explain the situation, the harassment, the threats, the vandalism we reported.
Ask about increased patrols, someone keeping an eye on the property.
The deputy I talk to is sympathetic but honest: they’re a small department, they can’t guarantee around-the-clock coverage, but they’ll add the farm to their regular route.
A cruiser past the gate a few times a day. It’s something.
When I come back inside, Az is sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea.
“They’ll send a car by when they can,” I tell her. “Few times a day. Not a guard, but-”
“But better than nothing.”
“Yeah.” I sit down across from her.
“Thank you for telling me. All of it.”
“Always.”