“I love you, too!” he said. “Addie doesn’t have a mama anymore, but she said it’d be okay if you were her mama.”
My heart broke for the poor little girl. Chase hadn’t really said what had happened to her parents, just that June and Earl had custody. “Well,” I said, “luckily, Addie has her Mamaw and Papaw.”
“But what if something happens to them?” Henry asked.
I shook my head. “Like what?”
“I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “Like a fire.”
I sat up, concerned about where all this was coming from. “What’s got you thinking on all this?”
He sighed. “Sometimes I have bad dreams.”
“Oh, baby,” I said, pulling him onto my lap and rocking him a little. “I know. But you can always tell me when you have a nightmare, you know that, right? I don’t want you to think about horrible things like that. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.” He sighed and then added, “Mama, I had one the other day.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. “It might help.”
He sighed again. “I dreamed about our day today.”
“Well, that’s a good dream, isn’t it?” I said. “We had a lot of fun.”
He nodded. “It was a good dream until the end. That’s when Mr. Dean died.”
My stomach sank like a great boulder had dropped, dragging it down. “What?”
“Mama,” he said, his face scrunched up with the gravity of his question, “didMr. Dean die today?”
Chapter sixteen
Iheard the screaming first. Then a cacophony of voices shouting instructions. And then came the crying.
“Mama, what’s wrong?” Henry asked, his voice edged with fear.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, baby. You stay here and watch cartoons, and I’ll take a look.”
It’d been relatively quiet in the couple of weeks since our outing with Whit, but this wasn’t an intruder trying to get through to me by reliving some horror from the past. This was one of the residents of Dawes House.
I hurried out of the apartment and realized the screaming was coming from the floor below us. I raced down the stairs and nearly ran into Ms. Pearlie and Merilee.
“What’s happening?” I shouted so they could hear me over the screams.
“Kitty’s in labor,” Merilee said in a rush, brushing past me to get to Kitty’s apartment.
“Isn’t it a little early?” I asked.
Pearlie turned me back toward the stairwell. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ve got it under control. Merilee is doing everything she can.”
“Shouldn’t Kitty be at a hospital?” I demanded.
“I’m sure Merilee will call if she needs to,” she said, her voice maddeningly calm. “Just go on back to your apartment.”
Clearly not welcome, I returned to the apartment to find Henry sitting on the couch, clutching his teddy bear.
“It’s okay,” I assured him, turning up the cartoons to drown out the noise from below. Eventually, the screaming stopped. I kept checking my phone, hoping to receive a text with an update from Merilee or Ms. Pearlie of June or—hell,anybody—but nothing came.
Finally, I tucked Henry into bed for the night, glad it was quiet but worried sick about Kitty and her baby.
