lied about my name. My name is Jak. I told the truth when I said I didn’t know my last name.”
The agent tilted his head. “Why did you give me a false name?”
“I didn’t know if I could trust you.” I still don’t.
The man looked at him for a beat, two, but then nodded. “I understand.” Jak watched him, nodded back. “Jak then . . . can you tell me again what you remember about being left out here by your parents?”
“I . . . don’t remember anything, except being alone and having to . . . survive.”
“That’s all? Nothing more? Nothing about . . . being dropped off out here? Nothing before that?”
Jak shook his head, not looking at Harper. He hated lying in front of her. It made him feel bad inside after they’d shared truth, after she’d told him her secrets. He battled inside his own mind, not knowing what to do, trying hard to go through the reasons he should tell the truth, and the reasons he should not.
Agent Gallagher sighed and they were all quiet for a minute, something in the air that made Jak . . . unsure. The older man laced his fingers together, his hands on the table. “Jak, can I tell you why I moved here to Montana? Why I took a new job at fifty-four, instead of staying in California at a job I loved? In the house my wife and I had put so much work into? The place where we’d raised our daughter?”
Jak tried to hide his surprise. He nodded slowly. Harper seemed surprised too as she watched the agent.
Agent Gallagher let out a long, slow breath. “Our only child, Abbi, died of leukemia three years ago. She was twenty years old. She’d been battling the disease since she was seventeen and a senior in high school. We—” His voice broke off then, and Jak could hear the breakable sadness in it, like the distant snap of something in the faraway that you couldn’t name but knew had lost a piece of itself. “We buried her and we tried to find a reason to go on living.” He paused for a long time, looking down at his hands.
Jak noticed Harper had the same look of sadness on her face as Agent Gallagher’s. I understand you, her look said. She was kind. Good. It made Jak feel . . . soft toward her.
“One day my wife and I were in the grocery store and we ran into one of Abbi’s best friends, Ella. We hadn’t seen her since the funeral and . . . well, she was six months pregnant, excited to be expecting her first. We said all the right things, I suppose. Smiled. But . . . it broke us. My wife and I went home and sat there and it was”—he shook his head—“it was like losing her all over again. Losing what would have been. We lived in a tight community. We knew we’d watch—even if from a distance—all of Abbi’s friends get married, have children and it . . . it felt unbearable.”
He looked up at Jak and Harper, giving them a sad smile. “Laurie’s sister lives in Montana and is raising two boys on her own. She’d been a great support to Laurie, and Laurie had been a great support to her when she went through her divorce, but she was far away. I thought I was doing the right thing when I applied to the Montana Department of Justice. I thought . . . a new start is what we needed. Somewhere the memories aren’t crushing at every turn. Somewhere we have family. And”—he took a deep breath—“all that’s been good. But the problem is, we still look at each other and all we see is Abbi. All we see are those hospital rooms, our daughter slipping away, and then that . . . casket.”
He was quiet again and then he looked at Jak. “That’s what brought me to Montana, Jak. I’m here because I was running away, but I didn’t get far enough. I’m here because the thing I loved most in this world, my complete family, is no longer in it, and I can’t make sense of how we’ll ever be happy again. I’m lost, and I think you are too. And I’m not sure what can be done about my own situation, but I hope you’ll let me help you with yours.”
A tear slipped down Harper’s cheek, and she