Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(80)

I sat down across from her at the breakfast table. A wave of powerful old feelings and memories came rushing over me. I recalled so many talks like this one in our collective past.

Nana took up a little crust of toast. She dipped it in marmalade. If birds could eat like humans, they would eat like Nana Mama. She is quite a piece of work.

“She’s a beautiful and I’m sure a very interesting white woman. You’re a very handsome black man, sometimes with a good head on your shoulders. A lot of people don’t like that idea, that picture. You’re not too surprised, are you?”

“How about you, Nana? Do you like it?” I asked her.

Nana Mama sighed very softly. She put down her teacup with a clink. “Tell you what, now. I don’t know the clinical terms for these things, Alex, but you never seemed to get over losing your mother. I saw that when you were a little boy. I think I still see it sometimes.”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress syndrome,” I said to Nana. “If you’re interested in the name.”

Nana smiled at my retreat into jargon. She’d seen that act before. “I would never make any judgments about what happened to you, but it’s affected you since you arrived here in Washington. I also noticed that you didn’t always fit in with the crowd. Not the way some kids do. You played sports, and you shoplifted with your friend Sampson, and you were always tough. But you read books, and you were moderately sensitive.

You follow me? Maybe you got tough on the outside, but not on the inside.”

I didn’t always buy into Nana’s conclusions anymore, but her raw observations were still pretty good. I hadn’t exactly fit in as a boy in Southeast D.C., but I knew I’d gotten a lot better at it. I was accepted okay now. Detective/Doctor Cross.

“I didn’t want to hurt you, or disappoint you with this.” I returned to the subject of the tabloid story.

“I’m not disappointed in you,” my grandmother said to me. “You are my pride, Alex. You bring me tremendous happiness almost every day of my life. When I see you with the kids, and see the work you do here in this neighborhood, and know that you still care enough to humor an old woman—”

“That last one is a chore,” I told her. “About the so-called news story, though. It’s going to be impossible for a week or so. Then nobody will care very much.”

Nana shook her head. Her little white helmet of hair turned neatly in place. “No. People will care. Some people will remember this for the rest of your life. What’s that saying? ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ ”

I asked her, “What was the crime?”

Nana used the back of her knife to clear away toast crumbs. “You’ll have to tell me that yourself. Why are you and Jezzie Flanagan sneaking around if everything is aboveboard? If you love her, you love her. Do you love her, Alex?”

I didn’t answer Nana right away. Of course I loved Jezzie. But how much? And where was it going? Did it have to be going somewhere?

“I don’t know for sure, at least not in the way I think you’re asking the question,” I finally said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out now. We both know the consequences of what we’re doing.”

“If you love her for sure, Alex,” my grandmother said to me, “then I love her. I love you, Alex. You just paint on a very large canvas. Sometimes you’re too bright for your own good. And you can be very peculiar—by the ways of the white world.”

“And that’s why you like me so much,” I said to her.

She said, “It’s just one of the reasons, sonny boy.”

My grandmother and I held each other for a long moment at the breakfast table that morning. I am big and strong; Nana is tiny, frail, but just as strong. It seemed like old times, in the sense that you never really grow up completely, not around your parents or grandparents. Not around Nana Mama, certainly.

“Thank you, old woman,” I said to her.

“And proud of it.” As usual, she had the last word.

I called Jezzie a few times that morning, but she wasn’t home, or she wasn’t answering her phone. Her answering machine wasn’t on, either. I thought about our night in Arlington. She’d been so wired. Even before the National Star had arrived on the scene.

I thought about driving over to her apartment, but I changed my mind. We didn’t need any more tabloid photographs or news stories while the trial was winding down.

Nobody said much to me at work that day. If I’d had any doubts before, that showed me how serious the damage was. I’d taken a hit, all right.

I went to my office and sat there all alone with a container of black coffee and stared at the four walls. They were covered with “clues” from the kidnapping. I was starting to feel guilty, and rebellious, and angry. I wanted to punch glass, which I’d actually done once or twice after Maria was shot.

I was at my government-issue, gunmetal desk, facing away from the door. I’d been staring at my work schedule for the week, but I wasn’t really seeing anything written on the sheet.

“You’re in this one all alone, motherfucker,” I heard Sampson say at my back. “You’re all by your lonesome this time. You are meat cooked on a barbecue spit.”

“Don’t you think you’re understating things a little?’ I said without turning to him.