12. Grant
TWELVE
GRANT
I have two guys I'm sponsoring right now.
Derek, twenty-six, four months off opioids, working at a lumber yard in Calwell, married with a baby due in January, afraid of himself the way people are afraid of themselves in early recovery when they know exactly what they're capable of.
And Ray, thirty-eight, eighteen months clean after a decade of meth, trying to rebuild a relationship with his kids and not yet sure whether he earned back the right to want that.
I meet each of them once a week, and I'm available by phone always.
Derek calls me at seven on a Wednesday morning, I’m at the garage, first coffee of the day, not yet fully awake, and I answer before it rings twice.
"I'm okay," he says first. The thing they learn to say, because calling means convincing the sponsor it's not an emergency before they can get to the actual reason they called. "I'm okay. I just—last night was hard."
"Tell me."
"Amy had a bad night with the pregnancy and I couldn't sleep and I was just lying there and I kept thinking—" He stops. "I kept doing math. Like how many I need to take the edge off. Like the math is still just, there. Automatic."
"You know what that math leads to."
"Yeah."
"You didn't do anything about it."
"No."
"You called me instead."
"Yeah."
"That's the right choice, Derek." I lean against the garage wall. "The math being there doesn't mean anything about who you are. It means your brain still has the old wiring. That's not character. That's just what it is."
"I know."
"How's Amy now?"
"Sleeping. Doctor said she's fine, just tired."
"Okay. You working today?"
"Yeah, yeah. Just needed to say it out loud, I guess."
"That's what this is for." I pause. "Go to a meeting tonight. Call me after."
"Okay. Yeah." A breath. "Thanks, Grant."
After he hangs up, I stand in the garage with my coffee going cold and I think about what it cost him to make that call. The specific pride you have to set down every time you admit you're struggling. The way recovery requires you to be continuously honest about the thing you most want to hide.
Jessika knows about the sponsoring. She found out through the county recovery bulletin board, the one I paste flyers on every month. She asked me about it, carefully, with the specific attorney's question style that gets at the thing behind the thing.
I can see her adjusting. Recalibrating.
She came to Briar County with a fixed story, the one she carried for years.
Ex-con. Addict. Dangerous. The man who helped ruin her brother.
And piece by piece that story is hitting the actual evidence and having to revise itself, and I can see that revision happening in her face sometimes when she thinks I'm not watching.
It's not pity. I hate pity.
It's something more honest than that.
My phone buzzes with a text. Nova, from a number she apparently saved in my phone number while I wasn't looking: CALLIE IS BEING WEIRD. DO YOU KNOW IF SHE'S DUE FOR A VET CHECK.
I stare at this for a moment.
I text back: When did you get this number?
The response comes in about six seconds: YOUR PHONE WAS ON THE TRUCK SEAT WHEN YOU WEREN'T LOOKING. ANSWER THE QUESTION.
I almost laugh.
I text: Call the vet, her last check was three months ago. She might be due. Ask your mom.
The reply: My mom has eleven things happening. You're the horse person apparently.
I send the vet's number and put my phone away.
Apparently I'm the horse person now.
That evening at the ranch, after Nova is in bed and Presley has retired, Jessika and I sit at the kitchen table with Morgan's laptop and two cups of coffee and the pile of documents we've been assembling: the incident reports from the barn, the photograph from the truck, the anonymous text, the list of dates for the various events.
"The contamination report," Jessika says.
She has a yellow legal pad that she's been using to organize everything.
The attorney at work, I think this is what she looks like when she's building a case.
"The section Morgan didn't finish. He was establishing that the contamination source was north of county parcel 74-B. On private land."
"I looked at the county parcel map this afternoon," I say. "Parcel 74-B borders three private properties to the north."
"Which three?"
"Calvert Timber, which has been inactive for years. A tract owned by Ryder Holdings, LLC. And a forty-acre parcel held by—" I stop.
Jessika looks at me.
"By Dale Holcomb."
Silence.
"County Commissioner Holcomb," she says slowly. "Whose wife came to your garage to tell you to stay away from my family."
"Yes."
"And who," she continues carefully, "would have significant interest in county-owned parcel 74-B remaining free of any official environmental investigation."
"Yes."
She writes something on the legal pad. Methodical. Her handwriting is precise and small.
"This isn't enough," she says. "Even if we can establish that the contamination source is on Holcomb's property, we need samples. Chain of custody. An independent environmental consultant."
"Morgan was building toward that."
"Morgan built toward it and then—" She stops. Taps her pen on the pad. "And then someone made sure Morgan was compromised enough that his findings wouldn't be credible, even if he tried to report them."
"And then Morgan disappeared."
"And then," she says quietly, "Morgan disappeared."
She looks at the laptop.
"The last files are dated eight months ago," she says. "If he's been hiding since then, he’s been hiding for eight months. That's—" She stops. Controls something. "That's a long time to be hiding."
"Morgan's done it before," I say carefully. "He went off-grid for six months after his first time in treatment. Came back when he was ready."
"He had family then. A reason to come back." She looks at her hands on the table. "He might not think he has that anymore. Not after, everything.”
I look at her. "He knows you love him."
"He knows I testified against the person who was protecting him." Her voice is very quiet. "He knows I was part of the reason the truth didn't come out. I think—" She stops. "I think Morgan might be staying away partly because of me. Because he doesn't know how to face what happened."
I sit with that for a moment.
"Or," I say, "he's staying away because he's genuinely scared and the medication situation is making everything harder to navigate."
She nods. "Both can be true."
"Both can be true." I pause. “Jessika, I need to tell you something. About Morgan. About something I've been sitting on for a while."
She looks at me steadily.
"About six weeks ago," I say, "I got a message. Through a guy I know who does work in three counties. Very indirect. Just, he’d seen someone he thought I might know, described Morgan pretty accurately, staying at a hunting camp up past the Whitmore County line."
She goes completely still.
"That's recent," she says.
"Six weeks ago."
"He's north of the county line."
"Maybe. People move. But yeah. That's what I had."
"And you're telling me now."
"I'm telling you now because I didn't have enough to go on then and I didn't want to send you up there without something more solid.
" I hold her gaze. "I still don't have something more solid.
But given what we found in the trailer, and what we know about Holcomb, and the fact that someone is actively trying to keep us from digging?—"
"We need to find him," she says.
"Yes."
She looks at the legal pad. At the careful, organized evidence of something very wrong.
"Okay," she says. "We find Morgan."