5. Jessika
FIVE
JESSIKA
The dinner is stranger than I expected.
Stranger and easier, which is its own particular kind of complication.
My father comes down when he hears the truck and stops in the kitchen doorway when he sees Grant at the table.
Something passes between them, some long, complicated thing, and then my father says: "Grant," very quietly.
Grant nods. And that's apparently fourteen years of accumulated history processed and set aside in the span of two seconds, because they both turn to the matter of dinner like it's a normal evening.
Nova arrives from her room, sees Grant, and immediately becomes very casual about it. She pours herself a glass of water and finds a seat at the counter and begins doing homework that she may or may not have actually needed to do.
We eat chili that I made this morning and cornbread from a box mix that I'm not going to apologize for, and my father and Grant talk about the south fence line and the conditions of the back pasture and the water table situation in a drought year, and it is almost like Grant has always been here.
That's the part that unsettles me most.
After dinner, my father takes his medication and retreats to the living room with the TV low, and Nova drifts upstairs in that way teenagers do, technically leaving, plausibly still within earshot, and Grant and I sit at the kitchen table with coffee and the photograph between us.
“When Morgan called me," he says. "About eight months before he went off-grid. He said he found something while he was doing environmental surveys for the county."
"He was doing survey work?"
"Freelance. Environmental consulting." Grant wraps his hands around his mug. "He said there was, an anomaly. On some county-owned land out past the Harker property. He didn't say what kind. He said he needed to do some more research before he put anything official."
"What kind of anomaly?"
"He mentioned drainage. Surface contamination. Said it looked like someone had been using the land for something they shouldn't, and covering it up."
I process this. "Illegal dumping?"
"Maybe. Or something that generates significant runoff and doesn't want official attention." He pauses. "Morgan was also, he’d been using again. I think. He wasn't specific but I could tell. He sounded elevated."
My chest tightens. "He'd been clean for years."
"I know."
"You knew he was using again and you didn't—" I stop. "Sorry. That's not fair. He was an adult. You weren't his keeper."
"No." A beat. "But I felt like one sometimes."
The way he says it, flat, factual, without performance, tells me more than a longer explanation would.
"Grant." I wrap my hands around my mug. "I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth."
He waits.
"The night that Morgan went to the emergency room. The overdose." I watch his face carefully. "You were there."
"Yes."
"You called the ambulance."
"Yes."
"The police found heroin at the scene and they found your name in Morgan's phone and they picked you up and you were—" I stop. "You had heroin on you."
"I did." His voice doesn't change. "My own. Morgan's I flushed before the ambulance got there."
I stare at him. "You?—"
"Flushed it. Yes."
"Why?"
A pause. "Because Morgan had outstanding charges. Another possession conviction would have meant mandatory sentencing. He was trying to get clean. I wasn't."
"And you went to prison for possession."
"Yes."
"And I testified to seeing you with Morgan at the hospital and—" I stop. The particular kind of cold that comes with understanding something too late.
"You told the truth," Grant says. "I was there. I had heroin. All of that was accurate."
"I told them you were the one who got Morgan started again. I said Morgan told me?—"
"Morgan told you what he believed at the time." Grant's voice is absolutely level. "Morgan was not, his memory of events wasn't always reliable. Especially when he was using."
I look at him across the table.
"It wasn't you," I say. Quiet. "Who got him back on it."
He doesn't answer.
"Who was it?"
A long pause.
"Someone who wanted something from him," Grant says. "Someone who had figured out that compromised people are easier to manage." He looks at his coffee. "I didn't find out who until later. After prison. By then, Morgan was off-grid and the trail was cold."
Outside, the county night is dark and still. Down the hall, the TV murmurs. Upstairs, I can just barely hear Nova's music.
"I testified against you," I say. "And you were protecting my brother."
"You didn't know."
"Grant—"
"You didn't know." Repeated. Flat. Without anger, which is somehow worse than if there were anger. "You testified to what you believed. That's not the same thing."
I look at him. At the years in his face. At the evidence of the life those years contained.
"I'm sorry," I say.
Something moves across his expression. Something old and complex and not entirely comfortable. He nods once, short, and doesn't say anything, and I understand that he has been living with this for a very long time and the apology, while real, doesn't change much of that.
"Tomorrow," he says, "I think we should go out to Morgan's old trailer."
"He still has it?"
"It's on county land, technically. But nobody's moved it." He meets my eyes. "I think there might be something there that tells us where he went."
I hold his gaze. "Why do you think he might still be alive?"
A pause.
"Because Morgan's smart when he's not using," Grant says. "And because whatever he found, it was big enough that someone came after him, and if they found him, this would already be over."
I think about the burn marks on the barn.
HE SHOULD'VE STAYED GONE.
"Okay," I say. "Tomorrow."
Grant stands. Carries his mug to the sink. Rinses it the way someone does who is accustomed to other people's kitchens, automatic, unassuming, the unconscious courtesy of someone who is used to not quite belonging.
At the kitchen door, he pauses.
"Lock your windows tonight," he says. "All of them."
"Okay."
"And tell your father I'll be by Saturday about that south fence line."
"Okay."
He leaves.
I sit at the table for a while after his truck disappears down the drive, with the photograph between my hands and the cold coffee and the particular realization settling in.
The story I've been telling myself about what happened years ago is missing most of its pieces.
And the only person who has them is a man I helped put in prison.