So You Don't Forget

Sorensen takes the photo away in a plastic sleeve.

She studies it for a long time before she does, holding it up to the control room lights. "Who else knew about this place?"

"Everybody in Harlow Creek knows the water tower," you say. "Kids climb it every summer. There's a sign that says don't. There's always been a sign that says don't."

"And who knew about this picture?"

You look at Jax. Jax is looking at the floor.

"Nobody," you say.

Sorensen follows your eyes and doesn't push. "I'll get it printed. Paper this old, ink this new, we might get lucky." She snaps the case closed. "Ms. Ava, whoever this is, they're not a random fan. Random fans don't have your history."

After she leaves, the control room is too quiet. Pete has gone for coffee and not come back, which is Pete's way of being kind.

Jax hasn't said a word in ten minutes.

At the farmhouse, he spreads paper across your kitchen table like he's planning an invasion.

Delia has sent over every piece of fan mail from the last year, three cardboard boxes of it. Most of it is sweet. Drawings. Ticket stubs. Long letters from girls in Ohio about boys who left. A man in Texas who wants you to sing at his wife's funeral.

Then there's the stack Delia flagged in yellow.

"Travis Kimble," Jax reads. "Murfreesboro. Thirty-four. Fifty-two letters in a year."

"One a week," you say. "Every Monday. He's harmless. He sends me pressed flowers and reviews of my set lists. He told me my capo placement on 'Dogwood' was brave."

"He's been to how many shows?"

"I don't know. All of them?"

Jax sets the letter to the side. "Callan."

"Callan's a jerk. He's not a stalker. He'd have to care about someone other than himself for five consecutive minutes."

"He knows your schedule. He knew about the windshield before it was in the news."

"Everyone knew about the windshield. Somebody posted it."

"Who else has your schedule?"

You start counting on your fingers. "Delia. Darcy. The band. The label. The crew, Garrett's whole team, the bus drivers, the venue managers…" You stop. "Basically fifty people."

"Fifty-one," Jax says, "if you count me."

He writes nothing down. He doesn't have to. You watch him file it all away behind his eyes, the way he used to file away the sound of every truck that came down Ridge Road so he'd know which one was his daddy coming home drunk.

You hadn't thought about that in years. The way he'd go quiet and listen before you heard anything at all.

"Jax," you say. "The photo."

He doesn't look up. "I'm working on it."

"You know something."

"I'm working on it."

He's gone most of the afternoon.

Not gone. He's never really gone. He's in the yard, walking the fence line. He's on the porch on the phone, his back to the window, voice too low to hear. He's in his truck with the door open, staring at nothing.

Darcy comes by at five with tacos and an attitude.

"So," she says, kicking the door shut behind her and setting the bag on the counter. "The bodyguard."

"Don't."

"I'm not doing anything. I'm standing in your kitchen. I'm observing." She peeks through the blinds at the yard. "I'm observing six-foot-two of extremely serious man who keeps looking at this house like it's on fire."

"He's paid to look at the house."

"Honey. Nobody's paid enough to look at a house like that." She turns around and studies your face, and her own changes. "Oh. Oh, no."

"Darcy."

"That's him." She grabs your wrist. "That's Gravel Road. That's the water tower boy."

You never told her his name. You never told anybody his name. But Darcy has been in your band for five years and has heard you sing that song four hundred times, and she knows exactly what your face does on the bridge.

"Ironwood sent him," you say. "It's a coincidence."

Darcy looks out the window again. Jax is standing at the end of the drive with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching the road.

"Ava, babe," she says, "that is not a coincidence. That's a country song."

He comes in after dark.

Darcy's gone. The tacos are cold. You're at the kitchen table with your guitar, not playing, just holding it, because your hands need something to do.

He stands in the doorway for a long moment. Then he pulls out the chair across from you and sits, which he hasn't done once since he got here. He's always standing. Always by a door.

"I've been on the phone with Bo," he says.

Bo. His little brother, the one he practically raised in a trailer behind Mercer Garage. You haven't heard that name in ten years either.

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. He's Bo." Jax puts his hands flat on the table. His knuckles are scarred in places they didn't used to be. "I asked him if anybody had ever come by the trailer asking about my old stuff. Pictures. Letters. Anything."

"Why would anybody…"

"Because I took that picture," Jax says.

"I know you took it. I was there."

"No. Listen." He looks up, and his eyes are so dark and so tired that you stop breathing. "I took the film into Lindell's Drugstore the week before I left. I picked up the prints in…" He stops. Starts again. "After. I kept one. One. That one."

"So someone took it from you."

"No." His voice cracks on the single syllable, and it's the first crack you've heard in him since he sat down on your porch. "I mailed it to you, Sparrow. In the first letter. I wrote so you don't forget on the back so you'd know it was from me, in case you threw the envelope away before you opened it."

The kitchen clock ticks.

You stare at him. You're waiting for the rest of the sentence to make sense, and it doesn't.

"What letter?" you say.

He goes still.

"The first one," he says slowly. "Of fourteen. I sent them to your mama's house on Dogwood Lane. Every month, from basic, from Benning, from…" He stops, watching your face. Something in his expression starts to come apart. "You got them."

"Jax." Your hands have gone cold on the guitar. "I never got a single letter from you. Not one. Not ever."