Page 51 of Small Sacrifices

"Well, journalists protect their sources," Marisol says when they've explained the problem they've encountered. "Maybe we can go through a journalist."

"Absolutely not." Everett shakes his head vigorously.

"Even if that journalist gave us their word and showed us what they'd written, journalists have editors.

Someone could change something before it goes to print.

And then, if we want to complain, we'll have to go public, anyway.

And we don't know that this person wouldn't run directly to my father.

I can't risk him cutting off contact between me and Max. "

"Max does complicate things." Marisol's tone of voice is so nonchalant that Reid wants to kick her. But they're all sitting at his kitchen table, and his kitchen table is tiny. He'd just end up kicking Everett instead.

Everett narrows his eyes as if considering a more physical solution, but he stays silent. Desperate not to overstep, Reid asks, "Can you think of any way around that?"

Marisol grimaces. "The only immediate solution would be evidence of physical abuse. Even then, there's a risk he could talk his way out of it."

"And if I can get him on tape confessing to it?" Everett interjects.

Reid's blood runs cold. Marisol, previously so blasé, looks taken aback. "I'm sorry?"

Everett shrugs. "He likes to brag, especially to me, to show how much power he has over me."

Reid is deeply unsettled. Everett is so cavalier about it. God, he already feels sick. He tries to make eye contact with Everett, but his face is unreadable.

Marisol speaks carefully now. "It would need to be definitive. He'd need to explicitly say what he's done. And you couldn't be too aggressive; otherwise, he might claim you were threatening him, and he was just playing along."

Reid senses a gap in this plan. What if Everett confronts his father and gets hurt again? It feels wrong to gloss over the fact that Everett has already been hurt. Reid notices the tight clench of Everett's jaw and the way his lips twitch with disgust. Clearly, this is a painful topic for him.

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Everett says, his voice cold. "It never takes much."

Reid's stomach sinks. If it's that bad, why is Everett risking that kind of confrontation over him? He's not worth getting hit. And he's especially not worth Everett losing his sibling.

Across the table, Reid sees Marisol's nostrils flare. "Can I just—" she interrupts herself, hesitating. Whatever she wants to ask about, she looks conflicted. "If this is too much, you can tell me to fuck off. But does this have anything to do with your sexuality?"

"What else would it be about?" Everett asks.

Somewhere in there is a point about there never being a good reason for abuse.

But that's not what Everett is saying, Reid thinks.

It's an alarming sign that he’s so used to the thought of his father hating him for being queer that he seems to have temporarily forgotten that the man has been championing anti-discrimination legislation for years.

Reid wonders how the governor makes those two things fit together in his head.

"Well," Marisol says delicately, "I'm not a lawyer. But..."

"Just spit it out." Everett's voice is sharp, and his shoulders heave with a deep breath. An alarm goes off somewhere in Reid's head. They should stop talking about this sometime soon. If Everett is getting angry, then it's probably too much for him.

"Couldn't it be a hate crime? If he hurts you and explicitly says that's the reason?"

The words make an ice-cold wave descend over Reid. Hate crime. That hadn't even occurred to him. He'd been so preoccupied with the fact that someone was hurting Everett at all that he'd missed the bigger picture.

God, he's been so protected, hasn't he? Yes, maybe his parents aren't the most understanding. Yes, this world was not built with people like him in mind. But aside from schoolyard bullies, no one has ever tried to hit him. He's never been physically targeted for something he can't help.

It hurts to watch Everett freeze and then hunch in on himself like a puppet with its strings cut. At first, he shakes his head. But then he squeezes his eyes shut.

"Maybe," he says. "I don't know."

He's breathing hard, like he's trying to maintain control. Reid doesn't know how tenuous that control is, but he doesn't have any desire to test it. They need to change the topic to give Everett the opportunity to regulate himself. Clearly, he won't ask them to do that.

"As important as it is to talk about this, I feel like we're getting distracted from our original subject." At first, Reid is worried that he might sound dismissive. But as he speaks, he can see Everett relax marginally. "Marisol? Do you still think we can't trust the lieutenant governor?"

He's told Marisol about the encounter he had with Coleman just after she'd been fired. Not that she looked convinced Coleman was on her side. Even as she listened, her expression had still been pinched.

Before Marisol answers, she cuts a look at Everett. But he's just sitting there, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

"I don't know," she says. "But we might have to. If we want an ally in the administration, she'd be the most powerful one. I don't even know who else we could talk to."

"I don't know about the Agrifarm thing. She didn't react to that when I mentioned it. But she's definitely on your side about Mr. Wright. That's a good sign, right?"

Marisol sighs and rubs her eyebrows. "Maybe. Right, here's what we'll do. Everett, you look for that laptop and see if you can find the email with the attachment. I'll go talk to Ms. Coleman about what Mr. Wright did and see how she reacts."

"And me?" Reid asks when she just trails off. It gets him a grimace.

"Honestly, I don't know. It’s a bit inconvenient you quit, it would have been nice to have an inside man. Just... maybe you can write down everything you remember. You handed in your notes, right?"

Reid nods.

"Well, then take new notes. We need all the details we can get."

For once, everything goes smoothly. In the evening, Everett brings over the old laptop and shows them where they can find the email and the attachments. Just to be sure, Reid makes a copy of the entire hard drive.

Then, he just stares at the two assessments side by side.

They're almost identical. Only a few numbers are different, as well as the conclusion.

"This land is safe for residential use," sure.

But these little differences have caused a lot of pain.

They're the reason that a six-year-old is dead. It hurts to look at them.

Everett hugs him from behind as he reads, and he welcomes it when Reid finally leans back against him. They're still cuddling when Marisol's text arrives.

Okay, I trust her. Can we meet with her tomorrow? All of us together, I mean?

They agree to meet at four p.m. Everett reserves one of the study rooms in his university library so that they have some privacy in a neutral location. Maybe they're being paranoid, but better safe than sorry.