Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(103)

The shock of that pain fills the room like floodwaters, rising all around me and over my head. I hold my breath. I gasp for air. The panic batters me in waves, but I draw air into my lungs by little sips at a time until I can take deep breaths. Like it has so many times before, this pain tries to drown me.

But it can’t. I won’t let it.

“He stole my innocence,” I pick up where I left off, my voice trembling and fainter, but still loud enough for me to hear—for her to hear if she can. “And instead of punishing him, instead of seeking justice for me, you chose him. And I’ve asked why almost every day since. Oh, I may not have said it aloud, but every time I doubted myself, thought I wasn’t pretty enough, light enough, needed to be different, needed to be more, I was asking why you did it. Trying to get to the bottom of what was so wrong with me.”

My spine straightens and I push against the weight of old pain and faded nightmares. I square my shoulders, finding the strength to toss them off like a cloak. “But you know what?” I ask rhetorically, because I already know the answer. “There ain’t a damn thing wrong with me. The problem was with you. The sin was his, and the shame, the guilt, the dirt I carried around for years, that was his, too. That was yours, and I refuse to keep it.”

I shake my head, tears streaming over my cheeks, into the corners of my mouth, collecting at the base of my throat.

“The only good thing you ever did for me was give me away,” I say, stroking my gris-gris ring. “I didn’t come here to see my mother before she died, because my mother is already gone. MiMi was the best mother I could have asked for. Anything good about me finds its way back to her, and anything that’s not, she taught me how to accept or change.”

I fold the letter because I’ve memorized the last line. It is the truth that I came into this room knowing, and I’ll leave this room having said my piece.

“I came here not to blame you for giving me to her,” I tell May DuPree, “but to thank you for giving her to me.”

The hospital room door opens, and Aunt Pris rushes in with a jewelry box.

“I just brought the whole thing,” she says, handing it to me. “In case you get a . . . a vibe from one piece instead of another.”

“A vibe?” I ask, lifting one brow.

“I don’t know.” She shrugs elegant shoulders. “Whatever you and MiMi do, just do it. Just save her.”

“I can’t.” I shake my head and pass the box back. “I don’t know how to save anyone.”

“No, you can.” She clutches my hands between hers, desperation making her grip painful. “You have to. MiMi said you were the strongest.”

“What? When?”

“Always,” Aunt Pris says impatiently. “Even when you were a little girl, five, six years old, she said you were the strongest of us all. She said all the power we didn’t want passed on to you.”

“What? I . . .” I falter and process that. “Well, I can’t save a dying woman.”

“You have to,” Aunt Pris says, tears turning her dark eyes even more luminous. “They say she may not have much time.”

And like her words were an invitation, death comes. It’s not some cloaked figure that only I see holding a scythe. Not a dark angel or a creature with horns and a tail. It’s the sudden cold and the goosebumps that spring up on my arms.

MiMi said we miss most of what’s happening in the world because we can’t see it—that we miss the important things relying only on the evidence of our eyes.

Like when death enters the room.

“I can’t save her,” I tell Aunt Pris. “But there’s one thing I can do for her.”

“What?” Fear twists her ever-pretty face. “Anything. What can you do?”

I take Aunt Pris’s hand, grasping it tightly, and look to my mother dying right in front of me.

“You know who I am,” I say, my voice, in spite of the bold words, shaky. “I’m here to make my judgment known.”

“What are you doing?” Aunt Pris tugs on her hand, but I don’t let go. “I don’t want to be part of no spell. What is this?”

“It’s the power of an unbroken line,” I tell her, keeping my voice calm since her fear is evident. “Two women from our lineage have more power than one.”

She stops pulling her hand away. “And we can save her?”

“No, but I think we can help her along the way.”

“No.” Tears spill over her smooth cheeks. “She can’t . . . you have to . . .”

I slowly shake my head, grip her hand more firmly, and turn back to the bed.

“You know who I am,” I say again. “I’m here to make my judgment known. This woman’s soul hangs in the balance.”

I replay all the things I read to Mama, all the things she never said to me, all the questions I’ll never have answers for. Even if she could answer me, it wouldn’t be enough.

I remember all the pain her actions caused me. I live with the legacy of it still.

I honestly don’t know if I have any influence over this woman’s afterlife. She’s practically a stranger to me. So maybe this is just a show for my aunt to ease her coming grief. Maybe in death, I’m giving May DuPree something she never had in life. Or maybe this is a selfish act, and the words I whisper are not for her in the afterlife, but for me in this one.