The room stopped breathing.
Patrice sat down.
She sat down slowly, the way people do when the floor has become uncertain, and her hand went to the Cartier watch on her wrist and stayed there.
“Miss Carrington,” Mr. Abernathy said, gently, “you’re in shock, and that’s appropriate. I’ll give you the box and the paperwork and a week.
But I’d start with Sunday thirty-one.
And I’d find Kiara Booker before anyone else in this room does.”
PART 3
I listened to Sunday thirty-one that night, at my mother’s kitchen table, on a cassette player I bought at a pawnshop on the way home because nobody I know owns one.
The first hour was us.
Me and Mr. Booker on the porch, the street, his voice — “That you, baby girl?” — and mine, and I had to stop the tape twice and put my head down on the table, because a week is not long enough to be ready for a de*d man to say your name.
