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Before I left, I’d told Mr. Browne what Ms. Gia said about Ghost keeping in touch with his aunt. I told him she’d given me an old address in North Carolina and didn’t know if her sister still lived there. He listened, then told me to go check it out. He was home from rehab now, but getting settled and keeping up with therapy was enough for him to deal with. He didn’t need to be chasing a lead that might not even be good.

Sha hadn’t come with me either. I didn’t know what I was walking into, and I wasn’t about to drag him all the way out here without knowing whether Ghost was anywhere near this house. If the address turned out to be nothing, I could take that drive back by myself. If it wasn’t nothing, I’d figure out my next move when I had something real to work with. I looked at the front door again. Ms. Gia had said that Ghost stayed in contact with her sister even after the two of them fell out. I kept thinking about that. There was a whole part of his life I’d never known about, people he could call and places he could go that I’d never thought to ask about. We had grown up together. I’d trusted him with damn near everything. Now I was sitting outside a stranger’s house trying to find him.

I got out, crossed the yard, and walked up the short path to the porch. There was no sound from inside when I knocked. So, I waited, then knocked again. A shadow moved behind the curtain beside the door. A few seconds later, the lock turned. The woman who opened it looked enough like Ms. Gia that I knew I had the right family before she said a word. They had the same eyes and the same shape to their faces, but this woman’s expression was harder. She looked me over without opening the door any wider.

“Can I help you?” she asked in an annoyed tone.

“I’m looking for Giovanni.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes stayed on my face, moving from one feature to another like she was trying to place me.

“And who are you?”

“Tahari.”

She went still. Then she leaned back slightly and stared at me even harder.

“Wow,” she said. “Wow. You look like the ain’t-shit-ass nigga my sister left her family for.”

I knew exactly who she meant. She was talking about my father. I’d come here looking for Ghost, and somehow, I’d managed to bring Theo to her doorstep without saying his name. I swallowed what I wanted to say. Because I wanted to tell her weird ass that I was nothing like my father. and I also wanted to add that she shouldn’t have an attitude with no one when her wig was twisted and she was shaped like a bag of laundry, but arguing with her about my father wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

“Have you seen Giovanni?” I asked.

Her face closed off.

“I haven’t heard from my nephew in years.”

Before I could ask anything else, she slammed the door in my damn face. I stood there for a moment, staring at the wood. I could hear her moving away on the other side, but I didn’t knock again. She’d made it clear she wasn’t talking to me, and I had no reason to believe another knock would change that. I walked back to the car and got in. The address was right. The woman was real. That was all I had to show for the trip. I pulled my phone out and opened Mr. Browne’s contact, then stopped with my thumb over the screen. I’d call him when I got on the road. There was nothing urgent to report, and I wanted a minute before I had to say out loud that the lead had gone nowhere.

What she had said about Theo kept running through my head. Ms. Gia had told me he moved her away from her family when she was pregnant with Ghost, but hearing her sister talk about him made it sound like the hurt was still sitting right there in that house. She looked at me and seen him. I wondered how many times Ghost had stood in front of somebody who had known the truth and gotten the same look. He and I favored, and I never questioned it. Now knowing the truth, I know it’s because we both look like our dad. None of that changed what Ghost had done to Maliah. It didn’t change the three bullets Mr. Browne took protecting her, either. I could understand that our father had left damage behind without making excuses for my brother. I started the car and checked the street before pulling away. Ms. Gia had given me the only lead she knew, and I’d followed it as far as it went. Now I had to drive back home without Ghost in tow and tell everybody I was still looking.

By the time I made it back from North Carolina, I didn’t have the energy to do much more than shower and get in bed. I’d pulled over twice during the drive, once to eat again when I caught myself blinking too damn long at the road. Eleven hours was a long time to be behind the wheel, especially when I had nothing to show for it but a door slammed in my face. I slept for most of the following morning. When I finally got up, I called Mr. Browne and told him what happened. Explaining to him that I had come up with nothing yet again was frustrating, but he was commending me for trying.

By the following evening, I was at the Brownes’ house, sitting in the living room with Maliah while Mr. Browne watched television. He was in his wheelchair, with his legs positioned in front of him and a blanket across his lap. His physical therapist had been there earlier, and from what Eternity told me, he’d been irritated ever since.

“You did what they asked you to do?” I asked him.

He glanced at me.

“What you think?”

“I’m just asking,” I said lowly.

“Then yeah, nigga. I did it.”

Maliah looked up from her phone.

“Daddy…”

“What?”

“You’ve been fussing all day.”

“I ain’t fussing. Everybody just keeps asking me the same damn questions.”

I laughed and leaned back against the couch. I knew he hated having to depend on people for things he used to do without thinking about them. He was putting in the work, though, so he shouldn’t have been this hard on himself. Eternity came out of the kitchen and stopped near the doorway.

“Malik, did you tell MJ to bring those bell peppers?”