Kiara and I listened.
Then Kiara said, “Where would he sit?”
And that was the whole discussion.
She moved into the back bedroom.
I kept my mother’s house — Jaylen’s treatments are covered now, by a trust a blind man built out of savings his daughter swore didn’t exist — and on Sundays, every Sunday, I drive to Alder Street at two o’clock and sit on the porch.
Sometimes Kiara’s there.
Sometimes she’s at work and it’s just me and the chair and the green blanket and the street.
I don’t pretend to be anybody anymore.
I’m Nia.
I sit where I sat.
And I listen to the cars, and I’m right about the make about six times out of ten, and I’m working on it.
Jaylen comes sometimes.
He’s fourteen, and stronger than he was — the trust pays for the specialist my mother had been told we couldn’t afford, and the specialist, it turns out, was the difference — and he sits on the top step in the spot Kiara sat with the shoebox and asks me to tell him Mr. Booker stories.
