3. Jessika #2
"And then Grant just put himself between me and the guy, and said 'Let's go,' and I went. And then there was a fight, I think, I didn't see it, he walked me ahead and told me to keep going?—"
"He told you not to look."
"Yeah. And then he walked me to his truck and drove me to the station and sat with me while we waited for you." She pauses. "He didn't make it into a big thing. He didn't ask me a million questions or make me feel stupid. He just—" She trails off.
"What?" I ask softly.
"He just sat there," she says. "Like it was normal. Like he had nowhere else to be."
She says it like it's nothing. Like it's just a detail about the evening.
But I hear what's underneath it, the thirteen-year-old who has spent the last year watching adults leave, rearrange, prioritize everything except her.
Her father moving to Denver and starting over.
Me pulling us out of Atlanta. The life she knew dismantled and rebuilt in a shape she didn't choose.
Someone just sat there. Like he had nowhere else to be.
I pull up to the school and Nova gets out and then looks back in through the open door.
"He's not what people say he is," she says. Her voice is very certain, the particular certainty of someone who trusts their own instincts more than they trust received information. "I could tell."
I don't answer that.
She closes the door.
I sit in the school parking lot for a moment, watching her walk through the front entrance, watching how she keeps her head down and her shoulders slightly up, ready for impact, always ready, and I think about being thirteen in this county. About the particular ways this place could be unkind.
Then I drive to Calwell and find out the feed contract has been delinquent for sixty days, and the ranch owes eleven thousand dollars it doesn't have, and the woman at the agricultural co-op is very sorry but there are only so many extensions she can offer.
Eleven thousand dollars.
That's before the fence repairs. Before the new water heater the plumber said we need before February. Before my father's next specialist appointment.
I drive home on the back roads because I need twenty minutes that are just mine.
And when I turn down the long drive toward the farmhouse, I see Grant's truck parked at the north fence line, and Grant Vance himself replacing damaged fence posts with the efficient, practiced motion of someone who has done this particular work before.
He's not looking at the house. He's not performing for anyone.
He's just working, in the cool midday light, his jacket open and his breath coming in slow steam, and the fence line that had three broken posts when I left this morning has been cleared and re-dug and repaired for a span of about forty feet.
I sit in my truck and watch him for a moment.
He doesn't look up.
I get out and cross the grass toward him, and he straightens when I'm close enough, setting the post driver down on the ground. He's wearing work gloves over the torn-up right hand, I notice. He's taken care of it.
"You didn't have to do that," I say.
"I was driving by." He says it completely flat, like he hasn't considered that it might require explanation. "Saw the posts."
"Grant."
He meets my eyes.
"You don't owe us anything."
Something moves across his face, quick, controlled, contained back almost immediately. "I know that."
"So why?—"
"Because the fence needed fixing," he says. Like it's the simplest thing in the world. Like the reason and the action are identical and anything further would just be noise.
I look at the repaired section. The posts are seated straight and solid, the tension on the wire correct. This isn't a quick patch, this is done right.
"I found something on the barn this morning," I say. "Vandalism. Do you know anything about it?"
He goes still. The particular stillness I noticed last night, complete, deliberate, something that makes the air feel different.
"What kind of vandalism?"
"A warning. Burned into the north wall."
"What did it say?"
HE SHOULD’VE STAYED GONE
He's quiet for a long moment. His jaw tightens fractionally.
"You think it's directed at you," I say.
"Do you?”
“I’m not sure, but I thought it was when I read it.”
“I don’t know. There are a lot of people that don’t like me, so maybe.”
“Everything seems to be happening since Morgan left. Have you talked to your dad about Morgan?”
I look at him. "I don't know. My father won't talk about Morgan. Something's wrong with the situation here and everyone seems to know what it is except me." I pause. “Have you heard from Morgan,
Has he contacted you before he disappeared."
Grant looks away. Toward the tree line. His expression is the careful blankness of someone deciding how much to say.
"He did," he says finally.
"When?"
"About eight months before he stopped being in contact."
"What did he say?"
Grant picks up his post driver and sets it in the truck bed and takes his time about it, and when he turns back his voice is level and measured.
"He said he found something out. About some people in the county. He said he needed some time to figure out what to do with what he knew."
"What did he found out?"
"He didn't tell me." He pauses. "Morgan was careful. He'd always been careful about specifics when he wasn't sure who was listening."
Something cold settles in my stomach. "You think someone had reason to make him disappear."
Grant doesn't answer.
Which is, I realize, an answer.
"Grant." My voice comes out quieter than I intend. "What are you not telling me?"
He looks at me for a long moment. Those whiskey-brown eyes, complicated and old, carrying something I can't read.
"Nothing you're ready to hear yet," he says.
I want to push. I want to stand here in the cold and demand everything, the whole story, the version of events that makes the incomplete truth I've been carrying for years finally add up to something that makes sense.
But something in his face, not caution, exactly. More like the careful patience of someone who has learned, expensively, to choose their moments, stops me.
"Stay for dinner," I say instead.
He blinks. That surprises him. I can see it, that small rearrangement of whatever he was prepared for.
"I don't?—"
"My father will be there. Nova." I hold his gaze. "I need to understand what's going on in this county and you're the only person who seems to have pieces of it. And you just fixed forty feet of fence on an empty stomach."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile.
"Another time," he says.
"Why?"
"Because Nova just got through something hard and the last thing she needs is to come home to a complicated dinner conversation."
I stare at him. That is, I realize, exactly right. That is precisely the correct instinct about what Nova needs right now.
"Tomorrow," I say.
He picks up his tools. "We'll see."
He drives away without looking back.
I stand at the fence line and watch his truck disappear around the tree line and try to figure out what I'm doing.
What I'm actually doing. Because the reasonable, self-preserving, attorney-trained part of me has a very clear list of reasons why Grant Vance should remain at a safe distance from me and mine.
And then there's the other part of me.
The part that watched him fix forty feet of fence line in the cold because it needed doing.
The part that heard Nova say he just sat there, like he had nowhere else to be.
That part is going to cause me problems.
I can already feel it.