Iris and Grant

Iris pulls her car onto a side road that leads to cargo and private jet operations. She’s never been here before and she’s trying to remember the times Mike mentioned this plane—he mentioned it as a friend’s, but one where “he had access.” During massive Austin events like the music and film festivals, there would be dozens of private planes arriving and departing, and Mike once joked about his friend charging business associates in Canada high fees for the private jet. She drives along the access road and then she sees Mike’s car. Parked, and between the buildings, near the access runway for private jets, she sees a jet. Parked. Just the one at the moment.

She screeches to a stop behind Mike’s car. Nothing matters right now except finding her child.

She still has the gun, now tucked into the back of her jeans. She hopes the Butlers haven’t broken down the door and called him. The plane is still on the ground. She runs up the access stairs and enters the cabin.

There’s a woman there, with an open medical bag. She stares at Iris.

“Where is he? My son?”

The woman doesn’t answer, and then the door opens and she sees Mike.

“Where is Grant?” she yells.

“Mom!” she hears Grant call behind Mike. He’s in the back room or hold or whatever it is. Mike slams the room’s door shut behind him.

“Grant?”

“Aren’t you looking for Anya?” Mike says.

Her name, spoken by him, staggers her. “Where is Anya?”

“She’s dead. Of course, you knew that already.” A coldness in Mike’s tone, none of the hearty warmth she’s always known from him. But of course everything about him is a lie. Everything. The past two years of friendship were all a falsehood. She can hardly wrap her head around it.

“No…Anya was in touch with Danielle. And with Marland, that drug dealer. Where is she?”

“Dead, where you left her. Where I found her, when I went looking.”

Iris hears Grant screaming in the room, pounding on the door.

* * *

Peter pulls Grant away from the door. Peter’s tall and rangy but not athletic, and Grant dodges away from him.

“Are y’all crazy? He’s not my dad. I talked to my Russian dad.”

“You talked to Boris Stepurin. He’s an old friend of our mama’s. Mama told him he was the father and he believed her. She needed someone else’s name on the birth certificate so Papa wouldn’t know.”

For a moment the phrase doesn’t register with him. Our mama.

“What…?”