Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(104)

“I lay a stone on the side of . . .”

I hesitate over the final word like it really will reverberate in eternity, and then I drop it like a stone in water whose ripples are infinite.

“Peace.”





39





Kenan





I really want to reach my destination before the sun goes down. These backroads and swamps are creepy as fuck. Any minute now, I fully expect Google maps to say, “Really, dude?”

If it fails, I also have the directions Iris sent me. She said the last few miles can get tricky.

“Tricky?” I ask aloud, even though I’m the only one in the rental car. “Feels more like Middle Earth than Louisiana.”

The closer I get to MiMi’s house, or I guess it actually belongs to Iris and Lotus now, the more uncertain I feel. It’s not the backwoods, or the alligators, or the trees that seem animated with arms reaching for me as I drive by. I’m uncertain because I don’t know what state I’ll find Lotus in. No one’s heard from her. The last time we spoke, she was heading to New Orleans to visit her mother in the hospital. I was in China, wishing like hell I was back in the States and could go with her. That was a week ago. The team is still in Shanghai, but the game is over. It’s all goodwill stuff and appearances, so I told them I had a family emergency and needed to return early. It’s still pre-season, so things are looser.

It does feel like an emergency. Iris hasn’t spoken to Lotus in three days, not since she got word that May DuPree passed away. Lotus told Iris she was going home and hasn’t been heard from since. Every call rolls into voicemail, and I’m going out of my mind. This could be a fool’s errand, me coming all the way to the middle of nowhere. What if she isn’t even here?

It’s a chance I’ll take. If she’s hurting, I want to be with her. I would want her with me.

The little house is squat, with a trail of stones leading to the porch, and a blue door. I can’t tell if the yard is overgrown or if it always looks like this—like an extension of the swamp but with no water. Hopefully no gators.

I park, leaving my overnight bag in the car in case I won’t be staying because she’s not here. I knock and wait, but there’s no answer. When I try the knob, it doesn’t turn. There’s no car here, besides the one I’m driving, so I’m not sure how she would have gotten here or would plan to get home. More and more, it feels like I’ve wasted my time.

She’s talked about this place so much. I don’t know what I expected, but I have trouble imagining my vibrant, beautiful girl growing up here, so isolated and removed from everything. But she spoke of it lovingly, even longingly. Maybe it was the woman who lived here who made her love it—the world MiMi made for Lotus that she loved. A world where pink clouds chase the blues away and magic trees make you feel safe. To her, it’s not a swamp, but a wonderland of sorts, exactly what she needed after the hell she went through.

People had nothing to depend on but their faith, whatever form that assumed. That was how they survived.

Lotus said that to me at Sylvia’s when we discussed religion and voodoo. Is that what she found here with MiMi and her gris gris and potions and spells? Maybe Lotus found faith, in whatever form it assumed, so she, too, could survive.

I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.

Her words from our day in Brooklyn come back to me, and I glance at a path worn in the grass leading behind the house.

Worth a try.

I follow the path with no real hope of finding much, but there’s a whole other world I wouldn’t have known existed. A canopy of trees shades the path down to the water. Flowers bloom everywhere, not well-kept, but wild, beautiful. And then I see what must be Lotus’s tree. It’s huge, and I can imagine a little girl thinking she could see the whole world from up there. I search the line of limbs and branches until I catch sight of something bright, something gold.

There’s a rustle of leaves and a shifting of branches. I walk a few feet to the left and have a clear view of Lotus on a limb maybe twenty feet off the ground.

“Lotus!” I yell up at her.

She turns her head, unstartled, and looks right in my face, but there’s no response. Her eyes, even from here, seem vacant, distant, like the girl I know, the one I love and who loves me, has gone into hiding somewhere.

“Baby, come down,” I try again. “It’s too high. I don’t like you up there.”

No answer, but a frown that draws her fine brows together. She shakes her head.

“Dammit, Lotus,” I mutter under my breath and walk to the tree, glancing at my tennis shoes. “Guess we’ll see if these Glads are made for climbing.”

I can’t say I’ve ever actually climbed a tree. I grew up in Philly. I’m a city boy through and through, and never saw the value in climbing anybody’s damn tree, but if I can beat August climbing a rope, I can climb a tree.

There aren’t many limbs between her and me, but there’s a lot of space between each one, and I’m not sure how she made it up here when I’m struggling. I’m one branch below her, close enough to look into her eyes, when she speaks.

“Why are you here?” she whispers.

I’m not sure how to answer that. Obviously I’m here for her, but grief has a way of making things less obvious—make less sense.