Chapter 3
I drove until I ended up at the basketball courts behind my old middle school.
The lights were off.
The hoops were bent.
The chain nets were gone.
But I knew every crack in that asphalt.
I had learned to dribble there.
Learned to fight there.
Learned how to act like words didn’t hurt.
I sat on the hood of my car with the envelope beside me.
My phone rang twelve times.
Ma.
Dad.
Ma.
Dad.
Then my sister, Tasha.
I stared at her name.
My little sister.
Except now I didn’t know if she was my sister.
I answered.
“Andre?” she said, breathless. “What happened? Mom called me crying.”
I closed my eyes.
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No. She just said you left and Dad’s downstairs breaking stuff.”
I sat up.
“Breaking stuff?”
“Not like that. He threw the old mail basket. I yelled at him. He stopped.”
That sounded like Tasha.
Nineteen years old and five-foot-two with no fear of anybody.
I swallowed.
“Tash…”
“What?”
“I’m adopted.”
Silence.
Then, “What?”
“Or something like adopted. I don’t even know.”
She breathed hard into the phone.
“By who?”
“Mom’s cousin had me. Denise Ellis. She died after I was born. Mom raised me.”
Another silence.
This one different.
Not shock.
Something else.
“Andre,” she whispered. “I know that name.”
My chest tightened.
“How?”
“When Grandma was sick, she kept calling Mom Denise. I thought it was dementia.”
My hands went cold.
“What else?”
“She said, ‘You should’ve told him before the money came.’”
I slid off the hood.
“What money?”
“I don’t know. I thought she was just talking crazy.”
The life insurance policy.
Twenty-five thousand.
But my grandmother made it sound bigger.
“Tasha, did Mom ever talk about Denise?”
“No. Never. But Grandma had a photo album she kept locked in her cedar chest.”
“Where is it?”
“After she died, Mom took it.”
Of course she did.
I looked back toward the road.
“I’m going to Aunt Cheryl’s.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Aunt Cheryl was my grandmother’s younger sister.
She lived twenty minutes away and knew every family secret because she believed silence gave people ulcers.
Tasha said, “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Yes. You don’t get to find out we got secret dead relatives and leave me out.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
“Fine. Meet me there.”
Aunt Cheryl opened the door wearing a robe, slippers, and a face that said she had been expecting disaster for years.
She looked at me.
Then at Tasha pulling up behind me.
Then sighed.
“Patricia finally told you.”
My stomach dropped.
Tasha whispered, “Oh my God.”
Aunt Cheryl stepped aside.
“Come in before the neighbors start collecting pieces of our business.”
Her living room smelled like peppermint tea and furniture polish.
She made us sit.
Then she brought out a tin box from under the sofa.
Not a drawer.
Not a cabinet.
Under the sofa.
“I told your mama lies rot faster in the dark,” she said.
I leaned forward.
“You knew?”
“I knew Denise had you. I knew Patricia took you home. I did not know she changed every record she could get her hands on until later.”
“Changed records?”
Aunt Cheryl’s face hardened.
“Your mother did not legally adopt you at first. She just took you.”
Tasha gasped.
I stood.
“No.”
Aunt Cheryl looked at me with sad eyes.
“She loved you, baby. But love and legality are not always the same thing.”
I felt sick.
“Are you saying she kidnapped me?”
“No. Denise was dead. The family was a mess. Nobody stepped up. Patricia did. But then she got scared someone might take you. So she made choices.”
“What choices?”
Aunt Cheryl opened the tin box.
Inside were photos.
Letters.
A copy of a will.
And one sealed envelope with my name written across it.
Andre, when you are old enough.
I knew the handwriting wasn’t my mother’s.
May you like
I touched it with shaking fingers.
Aunt Cheryl whispered, “That’s from Denise.”
