“Me too. I think about the odds of Charlie and Erik finding the people who took Ant, chasing him down when he wasn’t with the rest of the group, and then deciding he would be better here than anywhere else. Is it weird that I’m grateful but also bothered by how lucky he had to be?”
“No, I feel the same way,” Javier answers, his voice heavy. “That Google alert I had for him? I set it quickly after he went missing. I didn’t even know it was a thing you could do—somebody had to show me. I hadn’t checked that email account for the longest time. I happened to see the message notification on my laptop. I sat in front of my computer for a really long time before I believed it was real. Save for the articles we interviewed for, it’s the only time that alert has ever gone off.”
I shiver, thinking about how close Ant came to oblivion. “Sometimes I look at the work we’re doing and I see the number of people we help versus the number of people still in these horrible situations, and I don’t even know if we’ve done any good.”
Javier kisses my temple. “I know exactly how you feel. On one trip to Minneapolis, I got drunk with a teacher, and we talked about how impossible our jobs seemed. She shared with me a teacher’s parable about starfish. Have you heard it?”
I shake my head.
“Essentially, a guy goes to the beach after a big storm and finds millions of starfish dumped on the beach as far as the horizon. So many starfish. He starts picking them up and throwing them back into the water, one right after the other. He’s eventually approached by a local who asks him what he’s doing, and he explains that he’s trying to save the starfish.
“‘You’ll never get to all of them,’ the guy says. ‘There’s so many. You’re not even making a dent in the problem. This work you’re doing doesn’t make any difference.’
“Instead of listening to him, the guy picks up another starfish and turns to the man. ‘It makes a difference to this one,’ he says, and throws the starfish out into the sea.”
I scratch my beard. “So…I’m supposed to find that inspiring and not incredibly depressing?”
Javier lets his head fall back with a laugh. “It’s about your perspective. For the first time, I’m around people who have a higher level of access than I do. They’re asking me what I’m doing at the microscopic level, and I’m over here throwing starfish back into the sea as quickly as I can. And so are you. Is it efficient? Will it solve the problem? No. For trafficking to go away, the big governments on the planet have to decide it’s actually a problem. They have to actually go after the traffickers. They have to dry up the money at the source. They have to cripple the companies that use humans who’ve been enslaved. They have to go after these rich men who traffic young children. But at least we’re doing something.”
“Sounds like textbook savior complex.”
“Yeah? So? Some people need saving,” he says, leaning in close to nudge my ear with his nose.
“Hard to argue with that.”
We kiss on it and go in for breakfast.
* * *
Javier,Gael, and Yaya go into Austin with Charlie while Ant and I spend the rest of the morning introducing Domino to the other horses, and he’s perfect.
So is Ant, for that matter. He’s so gentle with Domino, praising him when he interacts well and reining him in when he gets a little testy with me.
“Have you ever considered working with horses full-time?” I ask as he gets Domino set up in his new stall.
Ant goes quiet for a moment, and when he looks at me, conflict settles into his eyes. “I…I would feel disloyal if I left Justin and Nacho after everything they’ve done for me.”
“I’m pretty sure they would smack you upside the head for saying that.”
“What? Why?”
“Because they love you to death. All they want is for you to be happy and safe.”
“You think? They wouldn’t be mad at me if I did something else?”
“Dude, no. They’re your friends. I promise. They just want you to be happy.”
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
He sticks his tongue out at me, and we make our way to the therapy area as Javier, Charlie, Erik, and Anders walk in through the front door and aim right for us.
“What’s up?” I ask Charlie and Javier. “I thought you two were in Austin with Yaya and Gael.”
Charlie makes a pained expression. “We’ve got a time-sensitive issue, and it involves all of you.”
We gather around, and he explains, “Wimberley’s been looking into the information Javier gave to Parker, and they like where his head is at with hitting the problem at the source. It doesn’t matter if a warehouse is liberated if the people actually doing the kidnapping are still taking people from their communities. Globally, Wimberley has identified hundreds of small towns near large cities ripe for trafficking.”
