Текст книги "Cross Current"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

X

Collazo wasn’t present while a female officer took my official statement. He’d heard the story already and, for once, he wasn’t accusing me of holding anything back. When it had been transcribed and I’d signed it, the woman called in an artist, and we ended with an okay likeness of the man I’d seen at the hospital. I was amazed at how little I really remembered of his face beyond the mustache and beard. When it came to the shape of eyes, nose, and ears, I just hadn’t paid enough attention.

I went upstairs to Collazo’s desk in the back of the room full of detectives’ desks. He sat with his jacket draped over the back of his chair, his head bent over a mound of paperwork.

I sat in the chair opposite him. “Hey, does the Fort Lauderdale PD have a Haitian officer?”

He shook his head without looking up.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “How many people work here?”

“Something like five hundred. The translator I brought with me is a civilian, an outside contractor.”

“You mean you don’t have anyone who speaks Creole working for Fort Lauderdale PD? Man, you guys need to open your eyes. Look around at this city.”

For just a second, he flicked his eyes up at me. “They don’t consult me on their hiring decisions.”

“Collazo, you are a piece of work.” It was kind of nice not to be adversaries, to be cooperating with the detective. He stopped writing and looked up at me. He held his gold pen in front of his face, his hands clasped around it. He seemed to be deciding something.

“You need to get this girl to talk to me,” he said.

This was a moment to remember. Collazo needed my help. I could be nasty and rub his nose in it, but I decided it would be smarter to use the moment.

“You got any kids, Collazo?”

“No,” he grunted, and went back to his paperwork.

“Me neither,” I said.

“Just get her to talk to me.”

I leaned across his desk. “There’s something about this kid. She gets to me. I’ve never even liked kids before. But this one... it’s something about how she looks at me, I think. She totally believes that I can help her. Do you think that’s what it’s like to be a parent? I don’t know. It scares me.”

He looked up from his paperwork. “Miss Sullivan, we are through here.”

“You just want to get to Solange before Miss FBI does, huh?”

He shot me a look that was supposed to deny my accusation but had the opposite effect.

“I might be able to help you, but I need something from you as well. Can you give me the name of your Creole translator?”

He pulled a yellow Post-it pad to him and wrote down a name and number. “She works for a radio station out in Davie—they do Caribbean shows, reggae, that kind of music. You can usually find her there or leave a message.” He tore off the note and handed it to me.

“Okay, the kid has been talking to me. I don’t know what’s wrong with her right now, but as soon as she comes out of it, I’ll call you.”

He nodded and bowed his head over his paperwork again.

“So, anyway, nice talking to you. And thanks,” I said, standing up and holding out the Post-it note. “This is weird, us working together all nice like this. You haven’t even accused me of anything yet. I hardly recognize you.” I smiled at the top of his head and turned toward the door.

“We’re not working together, Sullivan,” he said to my back. “You’re not working anything. Go back to your little tugboat.”

I turned back at the door. “Ah, there you are, the Detective Collazo we all know and love.” I waved my fingers at him. “Bye.”

It was after four o’clock by the time the officer dropped me off at the entrance to Broward General. Rusty was gone, Jeannie had returned, and Solange was unchanged. Jeannie motioned me over to the far side of the room. I brought her up-to-date on what had happened. We spoke in whispered tones because of the cop outside the door. Solange seemed more unconscious than asleep.

“There are two ways we can do this,” Jeannie said. “I could go out and get the paperwork done legally and get myself appointed as her temporary guardian. That might take several days and then any yahoo who is out looking for her would be able to trace her to me. Or we could snatch her. Personally, since I don’t really want any machete-wielding Haitians showing up at my house tonight, I vote for number two.”

“Wouldn’t that be like kidnapping or something? I’m not up for doing something that might get me sent to jail.”

“Nah, not to worry. We’ll let Mr. Greenjeans know we’ve got her, and he agreed to her staying with me. I don’t see it as a problem. We just don’t want to leave a forwarding address here at the hospital.”

“Okay, what do we do?”

Jeannie outlined her plan, which involved me getting Solange to the side door, where Jeannie would be waiting with her van. Out in the hallway, I set about stealing a wheelchair. I headed for Mrs. Johnson’s room first and got lucky.

Jeannie had already pulled out the IV and was sticking a Band-Aid on the girl’s arm when I wheeled the empty chair into the room. She gave me a brown bag with clothing in it. “We’ll dress her and then put the hospital gown back on over her street clothes.”

It was like dressing a doll. Her head rolled around as we lifted her frail body, pushing her feet into the legs of the shorts and her arms into the T-shirt sleeves. We slipped yellow Big Bird slippers on her feet. “I know these aren’t exactly inconspicuous, but they’re the only kid slippers I’ve got. Andrew loved Big Bird, had to have everything Big Bird for a while there.”

“Jeannie, are you sure she’s okay? Maybe she needs to stay here in the hospital.”

“Some kids are like this, Sey. They sleep the sleep of the dead. You could set a bomb off next to my boys and it wouldn’t wake them. She’s going to be fine.”

“How are we going to get her past him?” I pointed to the doorway.

“There’s another set of elevators if you go left and follow the yellow line down the corridor and around to the right. Take the hospital gown off her just before you get into the elevator, in a room if you have to, and then carry her like she’s just a sleeping child visiting someone. When you exit the elevators, go right and find the east parking lot exit. I’ll be out there in the van. Don’t leave the room until you hear me calling for the police.”

She took her car keys and then handed me her purse. “I’m about to get mugged,” she said.

Solange was propped up in the wheelchair, the basket of toys on her lap helping to keep her upright. I was afraid that some nurse or orderly would show up at any minute to take her blood pressure, change her IV, or bring her another hospital meal. I saw Jeannie get on the elevator and disappear behind the closed doors. It seemed to be taking forever. Every time the elevator doors opened, I strained my ears, listening for some indication of Jeannie’s distraction. When it came, I realized there was no way I could have missed it.

“Help! Police!” she bellowed. I heard the chair in front of the door scrape across the linoleum as the officer leapt to his feet. “Help! My purse! He took my purse!”

When I wheeled Solange out the door, all the women in the nursing station were leaning over the counter, staring at the floor of the open elevator. The policeman was bent over, his hand on the back of his neck in a gesture of misery as he contemplated what I assumed was Jeannie flat on her back. It would take some time to get her upright. We scooted down the hall, and no one paid us the slightest attention. Good thing, too, since hanging from my shoulder was the very purse Jeannie was claiming had been stolen.

As I rounded the corner, I saw a group of people at the far end of the corridor waiting for the elevator. No privacy there. I glanced in the rooms on either side of the hall and turned into the first one that had an empty bed. I ignored the moans from behind the other bed’s curtain, parked the wheelchair, took the basket of toys off the kid’s lap, and slid the hospital gown to the floor. The rigging knife from my shoulder bag cut through the plastic ID bracelet on her wrist. I hoisted her onto my hip, rested her head on my shoulder, and grabbed the basket of toys in my free hand.

I joined the crowd waiting for the elevator and when one arrived I squeezed in.

A little man with a white bushy mustache and a porkpie hat looked up at me. “She looks pretty tired,” he said.

I hate it when people want to talk in an elevator. “Yeah,” I said, “we were visiting her mom, and the excitement wore her out.” The elevator stopped at the next floor down, and two more people squeezed in.

“What’s wrong with her mother?”

Geez, what’s wrong with these people? “She was in a car accident. Internal injuries, broken pelvis, may be paralyzed.” That ought to get him, I thought. Nothing will silence people like saying someone’s paralyzed.

“Oh, but you got on at the fourth floor. She’s not on the fourth floor, is she?”

The doors slid open at that point, and I nearly fell out the opening. The lobby. Finally. I nodded at the little old guy and headed off down the corridor. For such a skinny kid, Solange sure was getting heavy. I’m a strong woman, but my left arm felt like cooked spaghetti. I saw the sunlight through the glass double doors that led out to the side parking lot, and I picked up my pace.

“Miss, hello, miss...” A voice and footsteps were coming up behind me. I tried taking longer strides, but I felt Solange slipping, my arms giving out.

“Miss! Please, stop.”

I heard heavy breathing right behind me, and the plaintive note in the voice made me turn. It was Mr. Porkpie Hat. He was leaning over, his hands on his knees, his face so red he looked like a heart attack in the making. He was holding a bright yellow fuzzy Big Bird slipper. “You... dropped ... a shoe,” he said, gasping for air.

I took the shoe from his extended hand. “Uh, thanks. Sorry.” I fast-walked the remaining twenty feet and was glad to see the doors were self-opening. I wouldn’t be required to lift one hand.

Just as I got to the curb, Jeannie’s van came around the corner from the north-side parking lot, doing well over thirty miles per hour. At least if she hit someone, it would be a short trip to the emergency room. I threw the basket of toys in through the open passenger-side window and slid the van’s side door open. Solange flopped down on the bench seat and, for the first time in our whole ordeal, her eyes opened, but they remained unfocused.

“It’s okay,” I said as I jumped in and slid the door closed. “We’re taking you to Jeannie’s house. You’re going to live with her for a little while.” Jeannie took off a little hotter than was necessary, but she seemed to be enjoying her role as getaway driver. I made sure Solange was comfortable on the seat and buckled her in, then I climbed into the front seat. “How’d you get out of there so fast? Last I saw, you were on your back in the elevator.”

“I let that nice young officer lift me to my feet.”

That, I would’ve liked to see.

“And then I said I would go down to the front lobby security desk to report my missing purse. I think he was rather glad, actually. He seemed to be in a bit of pain.” She didn’t take her eyes off the road, but her body shook as she laughed to herself. “I’d left the van parked in the No Parking area right by the front door.”

That explained what had taken her so long to stage her mugging. I jerked my thumb toward the back of the van. “She’s awake, but she’s just staring. Still not talking.”

“Give her time.”

Jeannie circled back and dropped me off a block from the hospital so that I could pick up my Jeep. I said good-bye to Solange but got just a blank stare in return.

XI

I was disappointed to find my cottage empty when I returned home. I’d been hoping Pit would be there, lounging on my couch after his afternoon of windsurfing off the MacArthur Causeway, waiting to regale me with stories about his travels and his quest for the perfect combination of wind and wave.

I have two brothers, and they could not be more different. Our parents had this crazy idea of naming all their children after islands, and sometimes it was a struggle as we were growing up, being saddled with these weird names. Pitcairn’s name fits him, as he’s spent his life roaming from island to island. Pit is the brother I get along with best, the brother I adore. Madagascar, the oldest, is, well, Maddy. When we were kids, if we were eating cookies and I had finished mine first, Pit would share his last cookie with me. Maddy, on the other hand, would snatch the halves out of both our hands and laugh. In school, Pit was the athlete; Maddy was the fat kid. The girls were all crazy about Pit even though he was more interested in the daily surf report. Maddy tried to bully the weaker kids to get the girls’ attention. Pit seemed to glide through life effortlessly, while Maddy was always suffering from demons—most recently his addiction to gambling. I love both my brothers, but even when you’re related, some people are more difficult to like than others.

Abaco was giving me the look that all dog owners know, the one that says, “You’ve been neglecting me, you don’t love me anymore.” The great thing about dogs is that they have such blessed short memories. I reached for the leash, and all was forgotten and forgiven. She leapt and spun in midair, full of pure doggy joy.

I’d just snapped her leash onto her collar when the phone rang.

“Hey, Seychelle, it’s Joe here. I just thought I’d call to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear. It was nice seeing you at the beach this morning.”

This guy was more than twenty years older than me. While I found the attention flattering, and I did consider him attractive, I felt the need to change the subject—fast.

“Joe, I just got home from the hospital and my dog is desperate to go out.”

“You were visiting your little friend? How is she?”

“Physically, she’s fine. The doctors say that in spite of how skinny the kid is, she’s in good health. She’s bounced right back from the exposure.”

“You know, if there’s any way I can help, I’d like to.” “Well, that’s really kind of you, but—”

“I’m serious. At my age, you want to be helping the next generation. It’s the least I can do for Red’s daughter.”

I liked hearing that. It had been a while since I had thought of myself as a daughter. Maybe I was misreading Joe. Maybe he just needed to feel like a father as much as I yearned to be a daughter again.

“You know I’m retired,” he continued, “and sometimes I get kind of bored. I don’t have enough to do. I know people, I’ve got access to information, and maybe I can help you find her dad. I’m just offering.”

I thanked him and promised I would call him if I needed assistance. In fact, I doubted I would ever make that call. Maybe it was a result of having grown up, from age eleven on, in an all-male household, but I had a very difficult time asking for help.

Abaco and I were about halfway down my block, going very slowly as the dog sniffed every single bush and tuft of grass, when B.J.’s black El Camino pulled up alongside.

“I was hoping you’d be home,” he said. “I brought dinner.” He pointed to several white paper bags resting on the seat next to him.

“Great.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. It’s not that I wasn’t happy to see him, but after living with him for a couple of months, I knew what his version of dinner might be. Granted, after two days of burgers, it would probably do me good, but why did B.J.’s version of good have to taste so yucky? “The cottage is open. I’ll just let Abaco sniff a while longer, and I’ll see you back there.”

When I returned and let Abaco off the leash in the backyard, she ran straight back to the dock where B.J. sat with legs dangling over the water. She licked his ears, and he scratched hers. She soon began groaning in pleasure as his magic fingers did their work. I smiled as I sat next to them. I could relate.

B.J. handed me an icy Corona. He was drinking from a plastic bottle of Florida spring water. “The food’s all ready, I just wanted to sit out here for a bit. Enjoy the river. How’s the little Earth Angel doing?”

“Not good. I mean, she’s recovering from the exposure at sea faster than expected, but something happened at the hospital today.” I hesitated, reluctant to tell the story again, but B.J. just waited quietly until I was ready to start.

We watched a small outboard chugging its way up the river as I talked. An older black man and a boy were in the inflatable dinghy, but with a mere four horsepower, the craft was barely able to make any headway against the current.

“I followed this one guy, a tall Haitian who was dressed and acting like an orderly. He seemed normal enough at the time. I even spoke to him, but I didn’t realize until later that he was probably the one who did it.”

“Did what, exactly?”

“Well, I don’t really know for sure. That’s where it gets weird. None of us saw it, and he was with her for only a few seconds. They couldn’t find any evidence that he had fed her anything or given her an injection, but now she acts like she’s drugged or in a trance. There’s a Haitian nurse who works there at Broward General. She as much as said that she thinks this guy put a curse on her. The kid won’t talk. She just stares straight ahead. She acts like a zombie.” I watched his face to gauge his reaction.

“Hmm. Zombies. Everybody in America hears ‘Haiti’ and thinks Voodoo and zombies.”

“I said like a zombie. I don’t think he really turned her into a zombie. I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“You don’t?” B.J.’s eyebrows arched high.

“Hell, no.”

“You might be surprised at what goes on down there. Don’t be so quick to write it off as silly superstition. There’s a great deal about this world that we still don’t understand, that our science can’t explain.”

“Come on, B.J., zombies?”

“Haiti is so close to the United States, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Did you know, you can do graduate work in world religions in this country and never study Voodoo? Yet they’re right there,” he said, extending his arm out in front of him, his flat palm indicating how close. “Like six million of them, and nearly all of them are Voodoo practitioners. There’s a saying: ‘Haiti is ninety percent Catholic and a hundred percent Voodoo.’ ”

I knew one of B.J.’s degrees was in comparative religions, but I didn’t know his expertise extended to Voodoo. “How much do you know about it?”

“Not that much. I’ve read some. I know that it is a real religion, even if to most Westerners it sounds like a bunch of superstitious mumbo jumbo. But if you think about it, Christianity would sound that way if you were hearing about it for the first time.”

“Okay, but we don’t go poking little pins in dolls.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “Sey, Voodoo is a monotheistic religion, which means its followers believe in one supreme being. Not so different, right?”

“Okay.” I smiled. It was really fun sometimes to poke at him when he got all serious. “But what about the zombies and the dolls?”

He ignored my question. “Voodoo originated in West Africa, and in the last three centuries, a lot of Catholicism has been blended into the mix. Voodooists believe in over two hundred different spirits, and many of them are now intertwined with Catholic saints. For example, an altar to their mother spirit—I forget her name—might include photos or statues of the Virgin Mary. They call upon these spirits much as Catholics call upon their saints.”

“Geez, B.J., should I be taking notes?”

He squinted. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No. It’s just that you’re very cute when you lecture.”

He smiled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away. Sometimes I can’t help it.”

“I know.”

“I’ve just always felt that Haiti and her culture have gotten a bad rap. Like you said, you thought this child was acting like a zombie. That’s how most Americans see Haiti: black magic, Voodoo dolls, witchcraft, zombies. It’s not your fault. You’ve been fed that image. When a Voodooist enters into a trance—or is ‘possessed’—it is an absolutely amazing thing to see. I’ve only seen it on video, myself. These people are in altered states brought about by their spiritual beliefs. You said this girl Solange has had a curse put on her. Whether you believe in such things or not doesn’t really matter. We may not share her beliefs, but she is in an altered state, and she needs a hougan or a mambo to help her get out of it”

My head jerked up. “What did you say?”

“That’s what you call the priests and priestesses of Voodoo. The men are called hougans and the women are called mambos.”

“This morning I visited this woman, Racine Toussaint. Remember? From that card I found on the Miss Agnes? I met her husband, but I couldn’t see her, he said, because she was too busy. I liked him, but there was something creepy about the house and how he acted. But he referred to her as Mambo Racine. He asked me to bring Solange back to see the mambo."

“It could be your best bet for this kid. If it is Voodoo that has caused her to be in this state, it’s going to take Voodoo, not Western medicine, to cure her.”

I brought my heels up to the edge of the dock and wrapped my arms around my legs. Part of me wanted to curl into a ball and make all this go away. “B.J., I don’t know what to believe. It was pretty strange today up in Pompano. I wish you could have been there. This house, this man, the way he talked about stuff I didn’t really understand. And then he got all agitated when I told him about the body of that woman who was found in the boat with Solange. He kept repeating her name over and over. He said, ‘Erzulie, Erzulie, I wonder if Mambo Racine knows’ or something like that.”

B.J. snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “That’s it. That’s the name I couldn’t remember. Erzulie is the name of the Voodoo mother spirit.”

B.J. had already set the table with place mats and napkins and little paper packets of wooden chopsticks. All the junk that had been on the table was neatly stacked on the bar that separated my kitchen from the combination living room/ dining room. In the center of the table was a plate that contained what looked like an assortment of colorful little packages, like a miniature birthday party. None of it looked like anything I would refer to as food.

“What’s that?” I pointed to the pile of presents.

“Sushi,” he said with a mischievous smile. “You’re gonna love it.”

That was B.J. He knew very well that I was not going to love it. I don’t like being forced to try new things. Especially pretty things. Food was not supposed to be that pretty.

I piled twin peaks of white rice and some kind of noodles onto my plate and then took the smallest, least fancy-looking little package. B.J. just sat there beaming.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked him.

“Yeah, eventually. I just don’t want to miss any of this.” He nodded in the direction of my plate.

With the wooden chopsticks in hand, I grasped the sushi roll and nibbled a little off one end. It wasn’t half bad. B.J. looked so expectant. He didn’t think I could do it. Just to show him I wasn’t a total wuss, I chomped off a big bite.

The heat started to grow in my mouth. In an instant, my tongue felt like it had turned into glowing charcoal briquettes. After nearly tripping over my chair, I made it to the fridge, grabbed a beer, twisted off the top, and began to chug-a-lug.

B.J. almost fell out of his chair, he was laughing so hard.

“What the hell was that?” I said before taking another swig of beer.

“You picked the one that Sagami’s refers to as the kamikaze roll.” He took a deep breath and tried to make his face look serious. “They’re not all hot like that. Try another.”

“Oh, sure,” I said.

B.J. was trying so hard to control his laughter, but his chest and shoulders kept bouncing as more chuckles burbled to the surface.

I finished the beer, then crossed back to the table and proceeded to drown the rice and noodles on my plate in soy sauce. I pushed the grains of rice around my plate, not eating and not talking. I refused to look up, even when I heard his chair scrape back and B.J. came up behind me and put his fingers on my shoulders. Ever since I was a little girl with two older brothers, I’ve turned very cranky whenever anybody teased me, which was fairly often.

His fingers pushed deep into the tense muscles on either side of my neck, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress the little shiver that ran up my back. The heat from his touch traveled down my arms and made my fingers tingle. Actually, my fingers weren’t the only part of me tingling. He alternated deep muscle massage with a feather touch on my neck.

I knew I should tell him to stop. He wasn’t playing fair. We were supposed to be taking a break, but when I opened my mouth to speak, he ran his hands down my arms, and all that came out were two sharp little gasps for breath. I turned, looked up at him, and then closed my eyes.

I was the first one to push back and break away from the kiss.

“B.J., I—”

He walked around the table, sat, and, smiling, filled his plate with the colorful rolls and began to eat with those precise bites of his, the careful chewing. He was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with some kind of surfer logo on the front. The fabric set off his teak-colored skin. I watched him fork the last bite of a roll into his mouth, watched his full lips as he chewed.

I was still trying to catch my breath and make the aching go away, and he acted as though nothing had happened.

“Good sushi, huh?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with the message that he was enjoying every moment of my misery.

Why was I pushing this man out of my life? Okay, so he ate weird food. But otherwise, what was the problem? That he wanted to start a family? I thought of Joe, yearning to retrieve his lost family. And then there was Collazo. Geez, I sure as hell didn’t want to end up like Collazo. Was my life alone with my dog and my boat really such a great life?

That was it: The answer was yes. I enjoyed my river, my routines, my rhythms. That was how I defined myself. Sometimes, when making love to B.J., it felt as though I disappeared. I became pure sensation—and it scared the hell out of me. What if I gave in to that, and the me I now know turned into something else? And worse yet, if I let that happen, and B.J. did as B.J. had always done, what would I have left after he went away?

He wiped his mouth carefully with his napkin, crumpled it, and tossed it onto his plate. I glanced down at my still-folded napkin on the table. Oh yeah, I thought. I kind of forgot about that. It’s not something I worry about when it’s just me and Abaco. I wiped my own mouth.

“What’s all that stuff?” B.J. pointed at the gear in the corner of the living room.

“Pit’s in town,” I said, glad that we had found a neutral subject to discuss so my heart rate could ease back to normal. “He dropped that off here this morning, talked to the gardeners, and left me a note. Then took off to go windsurfing. Typical, huh?”

He nodded. “It’ll be good to see him. How long is he going to stay?”

I shrugged. “You never know with Pit. I’m sure it won’t be long, though.” I got up from the table and walked over to the pile of gear. “I have a feeling he’ll be asking me to store some of this stuff.” I pointed with my shoe at the green foot-locker. “Like this, for example.”

“Yeah, too much for traveling the way he does. Not his style.” He got up from the table and began to clear the dishes.

I dragged the footlocker out into the middle of the room and sat on the floor next to it. “He said he’d been storing this over at his old girlfriend’s. I think she got tired of having his junk around.” I ran my hand over the top of the trunk. “I haven’t seen this trunk in years. I remember it was in the garage at the house after Red died, but I didn’t know Pit had taken it. There was so much stuff to be dealt with, I guess when this disappeared, I never even noticed.”

B.J. came over and sat on the floor next to me. He rested his hand on my thigh, and I jumped a little. “This was your dad’s?”

I nodded, started to say yes, but my throat seemed to close on the word. It’s funny how you just never knew when it was going to hit you, that feeling in the center of your chest of missing someone so much. There were lots of times I could talk about my dad without feeling the slightest bit of sadness, and other times when I just wanted to see him again and couldn’t speak without my voice getting tight and my eyes going all blurry. I swallowed and blinked and started again. “When we were kids, Pit and I used to sneak out into the garage and pull this trunk down and get into it even though we weren’t supposed to. Mostly, Red kept his mementos from the navy in here, uniforms, old letters, and photos and stuff. He didn’t really want his kids getting into it, which, of course, only made it all that much more attractive to us. One time we even tried on Red’s uniforms.”

I reached for the brass latches and tried to loosen them. The metal was corroded, green with flaking brown bits. The hinges screeched as they gave way and both latches opened. The smell of musty books, damp wool, and mothballs triggered another montage of memory as I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. I saw my father, back when he seemed so big, bellowing at us, telling us to stay out of the garage, out of his trunk, away from his tools and all his gear. My father, who fell apart after Mother died, until one day when there was no more food in the house and Pit was crying because Maddy was beating on him. That day Red had come into my room and taken me and my brothers to the Winn Dixie and bought boxes of macaroni and cheese and cans of soup. He learned to cook and clean and wash and made us do our share and brought some order to the house and our family and our lives.

And then I saw the three of us, his grown children, so lost that morning after his death. When, by two in the afternoon, all the paramedics and cops had gone, and they had taken his body away, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We wandered from room to room, out to the dock and then to the garage, and back into the house, not one of us knowing what to say or do for the others, each of us so alone in our loss and unable to imagine our lives continuing without Red.