“Tell me the one about the tenth car.”
“You’ve heard the one about the tenth car.”
“Tell me again. Do the sulk.”
I do the sulk.
My mother came once, in June, on her one Sunday off, and stood on the porch for a long time looking at the chair and the green blanket, and then she sat down in the chair — the only person besides Kiara and me who ever has — and folded her hands on the blanket and listened to the street.
“He asked about Jaylen every week?” she said.
“Every week.”
“And he didn’t have to.”
“He didn’t have to, Mama.”
She was quiet for a while.
“I’d have liked to tell him thank you,” she said. “In person.”
“He heard you,” I said. “He heard everything. It’s on the plaque.”
Kiara listened to the tapes over a year.
One a week.
Sunday one in April, Sunday forty-four the following spring.
