Fall With Me

breathing before—in this moment, she’s totally content. I’ve seen a lot of girls in my time, but watching her out there in the pasture, I think she looks like no girl I have ever seen before.
     

Chapter 10: Jill
     
    Brunch with Uncle Nate is grueling. Mom is thrilled to be out, though, and so for that, I am thankful, even though I know an excursion like this is going to leave her drained and exhausted for the next few days.
    I always thought my uncle was a more severe version of my father, and since Dad died, it’s become even more so. The lines on his face have gotten deeper, his shoulders have gotten rounder—though whether that’s from stress or working out, I couldn’t tell you—even his voice seems louder. He yanks at the collar of his black polo shirt, as though it’s choking him, even though he’s only got one of the buttons fastened.
    For the first half of the meal, we manage to stay on relatively neutral topics. School. Mom’s health. My summer job.
    “How is it going with that young man?” Mom asks.
    “Young man?” Uncle Nate says. He blots at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Is there a special man in your life?”
    I laugh. “Uh, no.”
    “A young man showed up at camp and he and Jilly weren’t seeing eye to eye on everything,” Mom says.
    “Can’t get along with everyone,” Uncle Nate says sagely. “That is an unfortunate fact of life. Even your father, bless his soul, couldn’t get along with everyone.” He takes a sip of his water, ice clinking around the glass. “Hard to believe it’s almost been a year.”
    Cue conspiracy talk in five, four, three, two, one—
    “It’d be easier to accept and move on if someone was paying for the crime. If it was acknowledged in a court of law that—”
    “Nathan. It was an accident.” Mom reaches one pale hand out and touches Uncle Nate’s thick wrist. “I was there.”
    “But we can’t expect you to remember everything clearly, especially considering all that you’ve been through. You experienced severe trauma, Annabel. You’re still experiencing it. Life as you knew it has been completely upended. Your husband was killed. You’re in a wheelchair, for god’s sake! You don’t want the person responsible to pay for this?”
    “It was an accident,” Mom says softly.
    “No, no it wasn’t. I might not have the hard evidence to take to the cops, but this all goes back to the when Mike worked for CFG. He didn’t give me all the details, but he was onto something. Something with one of those food companies, the baby formula they manufactured. Labeling it as one thing but dumping all these harmful ingredients into it. He didn’t get the chance to give me the specifics, but he was planning to report it to the proper channels.” Uncle Nate sits back and looks at us, as if rehashing his theory for the nine millionth time might jar something loose from our memories.
    “Dad didn’t talk to me about his job,” I say. Dad always had various white-collar jobs, but his real love was being outside, doing things with his hands. No, when Dad and I spent time together, we talked about nature, about astronomy, we talked about the weather and the types of clouds, we went bird-watching, clamming—we did all the things Dad couldn’t do when he was at work. “And I think we should also stop talking about it. I don’t think he’d want us sitting around speculating about it.”
    “Dammit!” Uncle Nate slams his fist on the table. The silverware jumps; the glasses rattle. The people seated closest to us stop talking and look. “Why am I the only one who is not going to rest until this has been resolved? Until this family gets the justice it deserves?”
    “Because you don’t know when to just leave something alone?” I ask, which is something Dad himself would say—though in a much fonder tone—about Uncle Nate from time to time.
    “You people just want to try to go on with what’s left of your lives while whoever did this is out there probably doing more of the same twisted shit. I can’t just sit back and not take action. It’s not in my blood.” He looks at me. “Your father and I might have very different ways of going about things, but essentially, it’s the same thing: We will not let an injustice slip through the cracks. We will not allow those who have committed crimes , for Christ’s sake, to get off scot-free.”
    “So what?” I say, annoyed that the conversation has once again turned into this.