Page 40

“Anyone who’d want to?”

He raised both palms. “Lots of guys, I suppose.”

“But no one here under the bridge? No one in particular?”

Hawk shrugged, then blinked. “Yeah, now that you mention it. That Choir Boy had a thing for her. Said he dug her pigtails. Said she reminded him of a girl he used to sing with when he was younger.”

Choir Boy yet again, I thought as the hospital elevator opened on Nana Mama’s floor. How are we going to find you?

I decided it was worth a shot to put in a request for all patrol officers in Southeast and Northeast DC to be on the lookout for a tall, pudgy young white guy wearing a Choir Boy T-shirt. I stopped outside the elevator and texted the request to my boss, followed by the photo of the ex-seminarian from the latest victim’s Instagram account.

Then I hurried to Nana Mama’s room, feeling strange. I suddenly had some premonition that I did not understand. Slowing before I entered her room, I wondered if this was the moment I’d dreaded from the time I was nine years old. What if she never wakes up?

I mustered my courage and went in. Bree was by my grandmother’s side.

“Anything?”

“They did the procedure to replace the piece of skull bone and stopped the sedatives about an hour ago. She moans and twitches now and then, but she hasn’t opened her eyes. I keep talking to her.”

“Let me try.”

“I’ve got this,” she said. “The aunts are here from Starksville. They’re with Damon in the cafeteria. You should go say hello. I’ll text immediately if Nana starts to come around.”

“My phone’s dying,” I said. “Text Damon I’m coming.”

37

I HEARD MY AUNTS before I saw them. Specifically, I heard Connie Lou Parks’s one-of-a-kind laugh. Aunt Connie, my uncle Brock’s widow, had a world-class infectious laugh that exploded from deep in her belly, shaking her whole body, rising from her throat like a French horn, and radiating warmth in all directions.

I came around a divider and saw my aunt sitting there at a cafeteria table.

Connie Lou caught sight of me, cut off her laugh, and launched herself from her chair.

“Look at you!” I said and hugged her.

“Hush, now,” she said; she grinned and kissed my cheek.

A tall, big-boned woman, Connie used to be quite heavy, but the last time I’d seen her in North Carolina, she’d lost more than forty pounds on a caveman diet and said she had plans to lose forty more. It was clear that she’d met her goal and then some. Even after the initial weight loss, she’d been built like a linebacker, but now she looked more like a hoops forward.

“It’s true. You’re transformed!”

“Ozempic,” said Aunt Hattie, my mother’s younger sister, who’d had her back to me when I spotted Connie.

Hattie Parks Tate got to her feet. She was younger than Connie, shorter than Connie, and naturally slender. As always, she instantly reminded me of my mother. Same almond eyes, same elegant bone structure.

She pushed Aunt Connie aside playfully and said, “Give your aunt Hattie some sugar, Alex.” Her voice was almost identical to how I remembered my mom’s.

I grinned and hugged her, smelling her familiar lavender perfume, which made rare positive memories from my early childhood flash through my mind. “I’m sorry we’re here under these circumstances,” she said.

“I’m thrilled you’re here,” I said. “Thank you both for coming.”

“Where else would we be?” Aunt Connie said. “With her sister, Tia, in that memory-care facility, we had to be here to support Regina. She was always a role model to me. The one who left in search of her dreams.”

“She’s still a role model,” Hattie said, taking her seat again. “You haven’t given up on her, have you, Alex?”

“Not in any way.”

“Good.”