Considering Gallagher doesn’t have a cell phone, not to mention the spotty Wi-Fi, it’s a miracle the complaint ever made it past town lines.

When I first saw the post, I immediately recalled the minutes from the most recent town hall meeting to read Gallagher’s complaint in detail. It wasn’t just Gallagher: a few other families stood up with him and expressed concern about the water. Poring over the minutes, I felt like Alice down her rabbit hole: I tumbled suddenly into old complaints, buried reports from dozens of Barrens residents, all these old issues and complaints neatly spiraled up and bound to Gallagher’s rage. I made four pages of handwritten notes just by reviewing the minutes.

And for the first time in a decade, for the first time in my whole life, maybe, I felt as if the whole world had settled down. I felt as if everything had quieted to whisper the small promise of an answer.

I put Gallagher in contact with the Indiana chapter of CEAW. There are procedures, protocols, paths meant to take us out of the entanglement of our fears and suspicions. But the Indiana team, still dealing with a tie-up in state legislation about a clean energy bill that should have been passed two years ago, leaned on us for support.

So here I am.

I pull into the grass alongside a newly painted barn, identifiable as our headquarters only by Joseph Carter’s beat-up Camaro with the ubiquitous COEXIST bumper sticker. There are a few other cars I recognize and some I don’t—Estelle Barry, one of the senior partners, told us we’d be getting some interns from Loyola.

I stuff the empty water bottle into two old gas station coffee cups and toss them on the floor of the passenger seat.

“Williams. You’re late,” Joe greets me as I enter the giant, airy barn, where the team has set up folding tables, filing cabinets, and a mess of computers cabled to a single power strip. The floor is a tangle of wires and dirt, warped floorboards, and cheap by-the-foot carpet.

“It’s 9:02, dude.”

Joe and I were hired at the same time in the Illinois office. He’s pretty much my best friend, though I’d chew off my hand before I ever admitted that to his face. We were greenies together. We’ve spent countless nights eating Chinese takeout under the glow of shitty fluorescents, hollow-eyed with exhaustion. We celebrated our first three Christmases as lawyers together. I always had a feeling that, like me, Joe wasn’t close to his family; I remember being stunned and a little jealous when he announced last year that he was taking time off for a family vacation in Florida.

“I like that morning, tousled look. It works on you.” Joe leads me to a long folding table set up in the back of the barn. “Brings me right back to law school.”

“Brings you right back to last weekend,” I say, and Joe makes a who, me? expression. Joe picks up boyfriends the way corners gather dust. It just happens. “You’re in a good mood.”