When Ghosts Come Home(23)

“Don’t be cute,” Marie said. She smiled at him, and her smile felt good to Winston.

“Did Debbie ever see any photos of those boys from Colombia? I’ll deputize her and give her a gun if she did. Let her take up the night watch out there on the runway.”

“I’ll put her on night watch in our driveway,” Marie said. “Keep you in this house at night so I can get some sleep.”

“I’m just glad to see you eating something,” Winston said.

The phone rang in the kitchen.

“I bet that’s Debbie with some hot leads,” he said.

Marie stood from the table and tossed her wadded-up napkin at him. “You sit,” she said. “I’ll get it. You’ve done enough investigating today.”

Marie picked up the phone from its cradle on the wall beside the sliding glass door. Her back was to Winston.

“Hello?” she said, and then she turned around and looked at him. “Hey, honey,” she said, her words and the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes telling Winston that Colleen was on the other end. He stood from the table, but she raised her finger to send him a signal that let him know that she wanted to hear her daughter’s voice for as long as she could. It would be his turn after that. She crossed her arms and leaned her back against the wall, the sunlight coming in the sliding glass door playing on her skin, hollowing out her cheeks, and glinting on her hair. “How are things down in Dallas?”

Winston sat back down and took another bite of his sandwich, suddenly hungry and willing to eat because he didn’t know what else to do while he waited. He watched Marie as she knitted her eyebrows together. She looked at him.

“Oh,” she said, “in Wilmington?” She put her hand over the receiver and said, “She’s at the airport in Wilmington.”

Winston stood up from the table and walked toward Marie, his mind alive with scenarios and possibilities. Had Colleen and Scott planned a surprise trip home? Had they separated? Did she need him to pick her up?

“What happened?” he whispered, but Marie raised her finger to silence him again.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Marie said, her voice softer than Winston had heard it in a long time. “It’s okay, honey. We’ll come get you.” She looked at Winston, widening her eyes as if sending him a cue to speak a line that only he could speak or to take some action that only he could take. “Your father’s already on his way.”





Chapter 4




“Those white folks are probably going to eat you,” Kelvin had said. “That’s what they do to Black people up there in the country.”

Jay wasn’t supposed to have been hanging around Kelvin after what had happened, and he’d known he’d be in even more trouble if his parents caught them together. After all, it had been Kelvin’s fault that Jay had been sent up to the country in the first place. Jay shouldn’t have trusted him, but Kelvin was fifteen, a year older than Jay, with an older brother named Terry who’d already finished high school and had a job at the shoe store in the mall in Decatur. Terry had called them both babies whenever he’d seen them hanging out at Kelvin’s house after school.

“Y’all babies found your peckers yet?”

“Y’all babies still watch cartoons?”

“Y’all babies getting sent to juvie?”

And, for a while, Jay thought for certain they would be sent to juvie.

The plan had been that they would walk into Wright’s corner store just like they’d walked into it every day since they’d been old enough to walk home from school. Kelvin would distract Mr. Wright by talking to him, and Jay would make his way to the back of the store, where he would slip two bottles of MD 20/20 from the cooler and slide them into the waist of his jeans before cinching his belt tight. If anything went sideways, Kelvin would use their code word—Thriller—and the mission would be aborted. Jay had wondered why they couldn’t switch places, why he couldn’t distract Mr. Wright while Kelvin pinched the liquor. Kelvin had brushed that suggestion aside. “Because you can’t talk like I can,” he’d said. But it was his brother Terry’s talking that had gotten the whole thing started.

Terry had told them both that girls liked MD 20/20, which he called Mad Dog, especially Banana Red and Electric Melon. Terry had told them both that if a girl drank Mad Dog, she’d let you kiss her and touch her wherever you wanted to touch her. Jay had never kissed a girl before, and he didn’t know what to think about that advice, but Kelvin said he’d kissed a bunch of girls, and he knew that what Terry was saying was true. Kelvin said he’d hooked up with Robin Francis, a tall, skinny girl with buck teeth and braces who lived down the street from him. He’d told Jay they’d take the Mad Dog to Robin’s house next time she had a friend over. He’d said Jay would see.

“I’ll take Robin,” Kelvin had said, “depending on what friend she’s got with her.”

“I ain’t kissing Robin,” Jay had said, mostly to sound defiant, but also because he couldn’t imagine kissing anyone, much less someone taller than him with braces on their teeth. “I don’t want those big old buck-toothed braces in my mouth, clacking against my teeth.”

Kelvin had laughed. “Come on, man,” he’d said. “Pecking on those teeth is just like pecking on a typewriter.” He raised his hands as if placing his fingers on the keyboard, and he began typing. “Click, click, click, ding!” he’d said. At that sound he thrust his hips forward before beginning to type again. Jay had laughed. “Come on, man,” Kelvin had said again. “You’re going to love it.”