True Intent

by Michael Stagg

  “What about you, Liselle?” said Olivia. “What are you going to do?”

  “I could probably get my job back at the Forestry Service but I don't know that I want to stay in the St. Louis area now.”

  “The Phillips family have you worried?”

  Liselle took a sip of beer and nodded. “Living in the same area as a family of billionaires that hates you doesn't seem like the smartest idea. I’m thinking that I’ll get the last of the ash borer program set up, make sure it's in good hands, and then move.”

  “Where do you think you’ll go?” I said.

  “I’m not sure. Out west maybe. There are a lot of forests that need looking after out there.”

  I smiled. “You can take the hummingbird tour—flit from forest to forest ‘til you find one you like.”

  Her smile broadened. “I might at that.”

  That led us to an in-depth discussion of forests and ash borers and replanting and the most amazing waterfalls each of us had seen before Olivia asked, “So when do you leave here?”

  “Sunday,” Liselle said. “I didn't want to make arrangements to leave until, well, until I knew that I could make arrangements to leave. There are also a couple of things I want to finish up related to my research before I go. I don't have any restrictions anymore, right?”

  Olivia shook her head. “You're free as a bird.”

  Liselle smiled. “That is free.” She took another drink and said, “Do you think I could check in on James before I go? I’d like to know how his leg’s doing?”

  “It's pretty good, but sure. If you're not leaving till Sunday, we could stop over at my parents for lunch and say hello.”

  “That would be great.”

  “What research do you need to finish up?” said Olivia.

  “I’ve been piggybacking some of my research off the things that Sarah did here and I want to make one more check of a couple of her sites. I’m thinking about expanding on one of her papers.”

  “I see,” said Olivia and ordered another round.

  The conversation devolved from there. The full weight of the trial was lifting from my shoulders and, as heavy as that weight was for me as the attorney, it was even heavier for Liselle as the accused. Soon, we were all laughing and drinking and enjoying the sound of the stream and the sharp, angled light of sunset.

  Eventually, we ended with a cup of coffee for me, a glass of seltzer for Olivia, and a glass of red wine for Liselle.

  No one mentioned it.

  As the three of us left the restaurant, Liselle took a detour to the ladies’ room. As I waited by the door, Olivia came right up next to me and whispered, “The same passion doesn’t make someone the same person.”

  I started. “What?”

  Olivia kept right on walking to the parking lot. “Night,” she said and waved without looking back.

  I watched her go until Liselle returned and the two of us piled into the Jeep and I drove her home.

  When we arrived at Liselle’s townhouse, all of the lights were out and it was dark inside. She sighed. “Only a few more nights in this place.”

  “You have to be glad to go.”

  “I will not miss very much in Carrefour.” She smiled and it was genuine and bright. “Well, maybe a few things. Can you guess?”

  “Hmm. The Railcar?”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “The Grove?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s plenty to miss.”

  “And my lawyer.”

  I shrugged. “There are plenty of those out west that are better than what you can find in Carrefour.”

  “I very much doubt that, Nate Shepherd.”

  I know there was a streetlight and I know there was moonlight but there was no way I should have been able to see how light green her eyes were as she leaned forward. But I could.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I smiled, then turned away and got out of the car. I came around to her side and opened the door. She smiled and got out and didn't appear to notice that the door stayed between us. As she walked up the brick path toward the porch, I shut the car door and went back around to the driver side. When the car door snicked open, she turned around, scowled, and tilted her head. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Oh.”

  “Call me tomorrow and we'll set something up for Sunday so you can see James before you go.”

  The confusion on her face lasted only for a second, then it went cool and she smiled. “Okay. I'll call you then.”

  “Great,” I said and climbed in the Jeep. I paused at the end of the street to make sure that she got in the house and pulled away once an interior light turned on.

  All of the trial materials were still in the back of my car. I decided it was too late to take them back to the office and headed for home. I drove into my neighborhood, turned onto my street, and pulled into my driveway. The driveway was empty and the house was dark. I'd forgotten to turn the porch light on.

  I unlocked the door, went in, and turned on the lights in a few of the downstairs rooms. Then I grabbed a beer, turned on the TV, and flipped around a little bit to decide on a movie.

  I fell asleep before I could order one.

  48

  I slept in the next day and I enjoyed it. And then when I woke up, I laid in bed and stared out the window and I enjoyed that too.

  Eventually I got moving and, a little after noon, went for a run. When I came back, I saw I had missed a call. Liselle.

  No, I don't take my phone with me when I run. It defeats the purpose.

  I called her back.

  “Hey, Nate,” she said. “Did you miss me?”

  “How could I not? What are you up to today?”

  “Enjoying tramping around in the woods. I don't know if I’ve ever been inside for such a long stretch.”

  “It looks like a perfect day for it.”

  “It is. Hey, do you think we could see James tomorrow? I’ve had to move up my travel plans.”

  “I’ll check with Izzy and Mark, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Good. I’ve made my travel arrangements for tomorrow night so I thought maybe we could meet at the Grove and then head over to see James before I go.”

  “Sounds good. What's at the Grove?”

  “I want to show you something. What time should we meet?”

  “How about one?”

  “Perfect. I'll see you then.” She paused. “Unless you want to get together tonight?”

  “I'm sorry, Liselle. I'd love to but I can't tonight.”

  “I don't know if I believe you, Nate Shepherd.”

  “I really can’t. One o'clock tomorrow sounds good though.”

  “Huh. Okay. I'll see you then.”

  “’Bye.” I regretted not going to see her but I would regret losing my law license even more. I think. No, yes, I definitely would.

  I showered and did a couple of things that needed doing around the house and then decided I needed to restock from the grocery store. One thing about living alone now is that things got pretty bare when I was in trial and didn't have time to take care of it. I stopped at the office on the way to the store to drop off all of the trial materials that I'd left in the car the day before. Without Danny, it took three trips to bring it all in, but to make up for it, I left half the stuff on his desk for him to deal with so that he would know that he’s a valuable part of the trial team. I took a quick look through my mail, made sure there weren't any emergencies lurking in it, and started to leave when I saw the tablet and brown file in the spare office where we’d set Liselle up during trial. I knew she’d want her work to take home with her so I went over to gather it up.

  I didn't intend to look at it but the name “Sarah Shepherd” caught my eye and I saw a topographical map with dates and circles moving outward from Detroit. It was a map of the progression of the emerald ash borer from where it had started in Detroit. The port where it was believed to have
arrived was marked with a green dot and dated rings moved outward from there, including the ring that encompassed Carrefour and the Grove. The date on that ring matched the time Sarah had gotten involved. The map ended at northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana but I knew the borer had just kept going, to Missouri and beyond.

  I was curious if there was any other work from Sarah in the pile but I didn't see anything. Instead, it mostly just looked like shipping manifests from the late 1990s and early 2000s. I gathered them into the folder, closed it, and took it back to my car.

  I stopped at the grocery store and I was in aisle number twenty-three, right between the soups and the macaroni and cheese, when it hit me. The shipping manifests.

  I hurried through the rest of the trip and pushed my rattling cart back to the Jeep. I left the groceries right there by the side of the car and pulled the file out of the backseat. I looked again to see if I was remembering what I’d seen correctly. I was. I threw the file back onto the seat and loaded the groceries. I hustled home, left the groceries in the Jeep, and hopped online to the Missouri Secretary of State's office to check its corporate filings.

  An hour later, I went back to my car and brought in the groceries. My ice cream had melted.

  There's an old rule in cross-examination that you never ask a witness a question that you don't know the answer to. There's a similar but slightly different rule for clients—don't ask a question that you don't want to know the answer to.

  I picked Liselle up a little before one o'clock the next day because I’d promised that I would. I was quiet as we drove out to the Grove and when Liselle asked if something was wrong, I said I was still tired from the trial. We parked the car and walked up the path toward the center of the Grove, past the white pines and the sugar maples and through the black cherries that were just dropping the last of their blossoms.

  When we came to the ash trees, still barren and stark like a field of burnt bones, Liselle took my hand and pulled me off the path. I let her. We’d gone about twenty-five yards into the dead trees when she said, “Look.”

  I looked. “I'm sorry, what?”

  “Here,” she said and pointed. I saw a tiny sapling, no more than two feet high, planted between two dead ash trees.

  “What is it?”

  “An accolade elm.” Liselle was beaming. “We planted fifty of them yesterday. I wanted to show you.”

  I looked around and saw that there were indeed saplings planted at regular intervals between the dead ash trees. Liselle’s enthusiasm was apparent as she led me from one to another and said, “During all this time up here, I was able to get a grant from the Forestry Foundation. They're going to pay for planting five hundred saplings in the Groves over the next five years, which should go a long way towards revitalizing this section. They've done studies and found that the accolade elms thrive in the same soil as ash trees and they turn bright yellow in fall. As the dead ash trees come down, these can grow up to take their place. It'll take some time of course but all good things do—”

  I broke the rule.

  “I learned about Five Gen Shipping today,” I said.

  Liselle didn't look away from the sapling. “There’s still a risk of fire, of course.”

  I continued. “Five Gen is a Chinese shipping company that runs container ships from China to US ports.”

  Liselle looked around. “Especially from lightning.”

  “Including Detroit.”

  “There’s no way to avoid fire with all of this deadwood.”

  “It was the company that shipped the containers that had the emerald ash borers in them.”

  “But fire is a natural process too.”

  “Five Gen appears to be a Chinese company.”

  “Fire is a cleaner. Nature’s cleaner.”

  “It’s not though. The company is a shell.”

  “The flames destroy the diseased, the rotten, the corrupt.”

  “It’s a shell for the Doprava Company.”

  She looked at me then. “So that what’s good has room to grow.”

  I locked in on eyes that were the lightest green I had ever seen; eyes that I now knew saw the world much differently than me. “Doprava is the one who shipped the containers with the ash borers here,” I said. “Richard Phillips was the one who set up the shipping company. Stephen even mentioned it at the trial, that Richard had figured out a way to cut their costs and ship products direct from China.”

  Liselle reached out and touched the tiny sapling she’d planted the day before. “I told you that Richard was an inspiration, that instead of struggling against a problem, he’d find a way to work with it.” She stroked a leaf of the sapling with her thumb. “There’s nothing more powerful than nature’s lifecycle. You can see it clearly in the woods, you can hear its heartbeat in the forest. We ignore the world around us and then use our science to try to make nature match the beat that we want, to force it into an artificial rhythm. But nature’s rhythms, it’s innate beat, is too powerful. It resists our efforts to shape it and always brings us back to the unavoidable cycle. Sometimes we just have to get out of the way and let it happen. Like with these elms.” She stroked the tiny sapling one more time then stood and put one hand on the trunk of an eighty-foot-tall, barren ash tree. “And these ash trees.”

  I didn't say anything.

  Liselle waved a hand at the row of saplings. “I'm so happy, I really didn't think we’d get the grant and be able to plant before I left.” She stepped closer and took my hands in hers before she raised her face to mine with a joyful smile, and said, “I’m so happy, I could dance.”

  In that moment, I understood why Richard Phillips found that invitation to be irresistible. But he didn’t know what I knew.

  I stepped back and pulled free of her hands. “Let’s go, Liselle,” I said and walked back towards the path.

  She came up beside me. “Are we going to see James then?”

  I looked at her. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

  She stopped and now there was anger in her face. “I thought you'd appreciate what I did.”

  I think she meant the trees.

  “I do.”

  “It's what your wife would've wanted!”

  I looked at the rows of saplings. “That's true.”

  “She would’ve done the same thing!”

  I stared at her. “With the saplings,” I said. I turned back to the path. “Come on. I'll take you home.”

  “Don't bother.” She pulled out her phone and her thumbs flurried to send a text.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a ride.”

  “In the woods? I'll take you home.”

  “I'd rather spend time with someone who appreciates what I'm doing.”

  We walked back toward the parking lot. We didn't say anything. At one point, Liselle's phone buzzed and she texted back.

  It took twenty minutes or so to get back to the parking lot and by the time we got there, a Ford truck was pulling into the lot.

  I didn't see an Uber or Lyft sticker. “Do you know this person?””

  “It’s how I’m getting home.”

  “I thought you were flying?”

  “You thought I was flying. I never said I was flying.”

  The truck pulled in and I saw a man with reddish-brown hair and a bushy brown beard. He seemed of an age with Liselle.

  As the truck stopped, Liselle held out her hand. “Thank you for everything you've done. I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”

  I took her hand and shook it. “You're welcome.”

  “Send me pictures as the trees grow.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She waved to the man in the truck and he got out and approached us. He was good size, about the same as me, and smiled as he approached. “I want you to meet the man who helped me plant all of those saplings yesterday,” said Liselle.

  The man came up and shook my hand, pumping it with smiling exuberance. “You did a great job, man. Great wor
k on the trial.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Nate Shepherd,” Liselle said. “This is Jeremy Raines. An old friend of mine.”

  I kept my face straight. “Nice to meet you.”

  Liselle smiled even sweeter as she turned to Jeremy. “We're going to get going a little early, Jeremy. Nate has a family gathering to get to.”

  “Awesome. We’ll make it home by dark. Nice to meet you, Nate.”

  “You too, Jeremy.”

  Liselle went to my car, grabbed her folder and tablet, and put them in Jeremy’s truck. As she did, she said, “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached over into the truck bed and pulled out a sapling. She came back and handed it to me. “I thought you could plant this one in your yard. To remind you of Sarah's work. And mine.”

  When I took the sapling, Liselle gave me that same sweet smile, a smile that was probably the last thing that Richard Phillips ever saw, then put her hands over mine and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks again, Nate.” She looked me in the eyes. “I never would’ve made it without you.”

  Then she climbed into the truck and the two of them drove away.

  I held the sapling, bearing the unexpected weight of it, feeling the grit of its dirt coating my hands. I stood that way for some time. Then I climbed into the Jeep, put the sapling on the passenger seat, and headed to Mark and Izzy’s house.

  I was anxious to see how James was doing.

  EPILOGUE

  Little James was doing just fine.

  He was still not allowed to run and he was a little unsteady as he came out of his house but he looked great. He gave me a hug and he asked me if the hawk lady was coming and I said no. He looked disappointed but the look was fleeting because kids bounce back fast.

  Izzy followed him out. She gave me a hug and asked if the hot woodland biologist was coming. I said no and Izzy looked disappointed, but then conceded that since the hot woodland biologist was accused of murder, it was probably for the best.