“I haven’t been inside since the fight,” she said. “Three years. I don’t even know if my key works.”
“Mine does,” I said. “Patrice gave it to me. For Sundays.”
Kiara looked at the key in my hand for a long moment.
“She gave you a key to my grandfather’s house,” she said, “so you could be me.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re giving it to me so I can be me.”
“Yes.”
She took it.
Patrice was in the kitchen.
She had boxes.
She had a garbage bag, and in it, when Lorna Pike asked her to set it down, were three years of letters from Kiara Booker to her grandfather, unopened, addressed in a hand that started grown-up and, over thirty-one envelopes, got slowly angry, and then stopped.
Kiara looked at the bag.
She did not say anything.
She did not have to.
The bag said everything the tape hadn’t.
