X.
I find Jemma Milkbank through her Facebook page, where she has amassed quite a following for her gluten-free baking videos. (I watch one, provocatively titled “The best sticky buns you’ve ever had!” While I remain skeptical, I’ll concede that there’s a beautiful glisten to them.) She lives in Kansas City now. She describes herself on Facebook as being passionate about celiac research, school reform, and the Monarchs. There’s no indication she has, or has ever had, a career in journalism. I feel confident I have the right person only after I see her post about returning to Mansfield to give a talk at the library about the history of Haines Safety Systems.
I send her a message saying that I’m doing research on how small-town local newspapers have evolved in the past two decades, the Mansfield Herald is one of the papers I’m profiling, and I would love to chat with her about her experience as a reporter there during that time frame. In a P.S., I note that I’m a big fan of her recipes, in particular the sticky buns.
She responds the next day and suggests a Zoom call.
The person who shows up on my screen feels like the bad-cop version of the cheery, plumpish, maternal woman I watched stirring caramel glaze as she expounded on the sin of microwaving butter. She says, right away, “You said you were doing research. What is it for?”
I think of Norah Simmons’s photographs: Jemma #1 versus Jemma #2. “A journalism class,” I say. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.” I have a more extensive explanation prepared, if she asks, but one of Inspector Yuan’s maxims is that the more a man has to say, the more he has to hide.
“Why the Mansfield Herald?”
“I have a friend who’s originally from Mansfield. He suggested the Herald.”
“From Mansfield,” says Jemma. “And…why me?”
She’s looking at me like she thinks she already knows the answer. Is it possible? I say, “Also because of that friend. He gave me your name. He’s Matthew Espersen.”
Something strobes across her face, two different colors overlapping to create a third. Surprise, but also recognition. “Matt Espersen,” she says. “Wow. I wouldn’t have thought…”
When she doesn’t continue, I ask, “You remember him?”
“Of course.” Her voice is soft—tender, even. Jemma #3. “What did he say? About how he knows me?”
“You were the reporter who covered a car accident that he was in.”
“I was. The poor kid.” After a moment, she says, “He must be, what, almost forty now. Not a kid anymore. I hope he’s doing well.”
“Well enough.” This next part makes me feel like I’m climbing into a weasel costume and zipping it up, but I need to know if we can trust Matthew. “He’s never fully gotten over Drew’s death.”
Jemma nods: no surprise this time. “It was a horrible thing to happen. Such a horrible thing.”
I say, hoping the fallibilities of both ego and memory will make her receptive to this statement, “He asked me to tell you that he appreciated what you did for him.”
“What I did,” she says, as if she still thinks about it from time to time, and whether she should have done something else. She sits back in her chair. “It sounds like…you and Matt, you’re close?”
“We are,” I say: the way two people trying to stop a matchmaker AI conspiracy are close.
“Did he…” A slight shake of her head. “What exactly did Matt tell you? About the accident?”
It always feels a bit like trying to dance blindfolded when I let my intuition lead. “He was in love with Drew.”
She sighs; I see rather than hear it.
“And the community…disapproved.”
Jemma squints at me, and the floor I thought I’d landed on swings open. But then she says, “I can see why he thought that. People didn’t realize, though. Drew was on good terms with everybody, and Matt, of course he would want to hang out with the most popular kid in school. There was a teacher—or maybe she was some other kind of staff—it might have crossed her mind. But I doubt she would even have mentioned it to anyone. Especially with what else was going on.”
That what else: that must be what Jemma Milkbank and Sheriff Langston and Pastor Franklin and the rest of Mansfield decided they would look away from when Drew Wilkins died. Something to do with the circumstances of the accident, I’m guessing, which accounts for all the caginess there. But there’s no need for me to delve any further; I’ve gotten the confirmation I was hoping for.
On the screen, Jemma leans forward. “Could you tell Matt…” I can see her selecting and discarding words, wanting to make sure what she says is right. “Tell him I’m glad to hear from him. And I still remember Drew the same way he does.”
After Jemma and I hang up, I spin myself around in my chair and think about Matthew Espersen, eighteen years old, waking up in a hospital and learning that the boy he loves is dead. A hole the size of the universe. Maybe the only way to survive that was to refuse to see it: if Drew Wilkins didn’t exist, then he couldn’t be lost.
I shuffle through the Herald articles until I find the one with Drew’s and Matthew’s photos, reproduced from their high school yearbook. Matthew is unrecognizable to me, which has as much to do with the low quality of the resolution as how his face hasn’t yet been pared into the spare, angular features that I’ve become familiar with. I hold up the page in one hand and, with the other, I pull up on my desk monitor the meta-picture of Matthew that Becks took months ago when Pradeep Mehta showed it to us on his phone. I start to zoom in on Matthew’s face—past Pradeep’s forearm, past the frame of the phone—and then stop. I zoom back out again. The black watch strap around Pradeep’s wrist, the three silvery lines twining together that, I now know, are the Triple-Helix logo. And what did Pradeep say?
He gave me this.
That watch: it had been Matthew’s gift to Pradeep.
To help monitor my physio KPIs.
But, when Matthew and I spoke, he said he had never heard of Triple-Helix.
If Matthew had helped Pradeep set up his Triple-Helix account as well, then he would know how to access the information stored within it. Pradeep’s bike rides, for instance. He would have been able to familiarize himself with the patterns of when Pradeep rode and what routes he took. Combine that knowledge with the ability to pinpoint where Pradeep was in real time based on the location of his device, and—
“No,” I say. It sounds like a wish, the sort you make knowing there’s no way it can come true.
I realize I’m still holding the article and put it back down on the desk, next to the piece with the large photograph of the crash site: “Local Teens in Fatal Car Crash.” The longer I stare at that picture, the more it assumes a Rorschach quality. You could see whatever you wanted to see in those shapes. Car, road, trees. Accident. Suicide. Or…something else.
What if that had been Jemma’s what else? A suspicion that the car crash might not have been completely accidental, and a staunch, concerted repudiation of that suspicion. I go through the articles again, this time looking for references to the sheriff. There it is: Sheriff Paul Langston, who is Matt’s maternal uncle.
Perhaps the Espersens were a powerful family. Perhaps Matt was so young and had come so close to dying himself. Perhaps no one could bear to consider what it would mean if Drew’s death had been anything other than mischance. So the town stayed silent, and twenty years later another person Matthew Espersen is in love with dies: another empty road, another sudden, unfortunate death, too early in the morning.