Page 12

The editor, a guy who owns a chain of local car dealerships and bankrolls the paper as a passion project (and free advertising), acted like that amount was a gift—and a burden. It’s not about the money for Simone, but she does want to be compensated for her work. It makes it easier to feel like she truly is working.

“It’s not exactly like you need the money, though?”

Simone can’t parse if this statement is a passive-aggressive dig or just a factual observation. She decides to give Kwame the benefit of the doubt; he’s not wrong.

“So yeah, speaking of work. I’m looking into something, potentially a new story. Maybe you can help?”

“Happy to if I can.”

“Your, uh… Alex’s grandfather went to the Tate School, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, Alex did too. Why?”

“When I was at the Murrow Awards, I got a tip from an old-timer who used to work at The Milwaukee Star. Back in the day, this Black kid who went to Tate went missing in the sixties, right before graduation. He was one of the first Black kids to ever attend the school. There were like four or five in the whole school.”

“Wow, that’s a crazy small world. But yeah, the school has always prided itself on integration.” Simone doesn’t mention that there are still very few brown faces in the student body, which is another reason she’s reluctant to send Langston there. A battle Simone can punt for a few more years. “But so what… a missing kid?”

“I don’t know. This guy, Jackson, thought there was something there for me to find. Wade, that’s his name, just up and disappeared. I got the original article from The Star. Wanna see?”

“Of course.” Her curiosity is piqued. “Love that you’re packing research to bring to lunch. That tracks.”

“You know me,” Kwame says, handing her a copy of the clipping.

TATE STUDENT GOES MISSING

Simone scans it. Wade Freeman—seventeen years old. The article describes how Wade Freeman was among the first Black students admitted to the prestigious prep school in the late fifties. Wade excelled at the school, and during his senior year he was accepted to Howard, her own dad’s alma mater. But just one week before he was about to graduate with honors, he went missing. He hadn’t shown up for his final exams, just seemed to disappear suddenly from the campus without a trace. According to the article, Wade’s shoes were found at a local reservoir, leading authorities to speculate that he had likely gone swimming and drowned.

She gets to the last line: Fellow classmate Jedidiah Jenkins, who, along with Wade, was one of the first five Black students admitted to the prestigious boarding school, said he suspects foul play, but so far the authorities have found nothing to suggest Freeman met harm.

Kwame’s right. There’s clearly more to this. They may be a little rusty, but her reporter instincts point to it. Also, history.

“I’ve already tracked down Jedidiah, the friend mentioned in the clipping. He’s retired and living in Jacksonville. I’m gonna head there to see him next week,” Kwame says as she passes the paper back to him. “But… wouldn’t your father-in-law… Larry, right?… have been there around that time too?”

“Yeah, that math sounds about right.”

“Maybe I could talk to him?”

“I don’t know…” She also doesn’t know why she’s experiencing a mild panic at the thought of her worlds colliding.

“Why not? I’m intrigued and just trying to get color… see who this Wade guy hung around with. Though it’s probably not likely Larry would have been friends with this kid.”

“Why would you say that?” And, a better question, why is Simone so defensive? Kwame is probably right. She hasn’t known Poppy to have one Black friend, except (he would say) for Terry, a man who was his personal mechanic for two decades for his fleet of vintage Cadillacs. Given that Poppy employed him, Simone doesn’t count Terry. There’s also the fact that, as far as Simone knows, Poppy hasn’t seen his “good friend” since Terry retired.

“You can’t assume every old white guy is a bigot, Kwame. You’re always so suspicious of everyone. The ‘evil white devil.’ Some people deserve the benefit of the doubt. You don’t even know for sure if something bad happened to this kid.”

“Yeah, because it was usually a happy ending for Black boys in Jim Crow America. Or hell, America right now. Not that I’m accusing anyone of anything.”

It sure feels like that to Simone, who can practically feel the air between them getting thicker.

“Like I said, I was just curious about Wade and what happened to him. That could have been us if we’d been born just a generation earlier, fighting to have an opportunity no one wanted us to have. I mean, that’s still us in a lot of ways,” he adds. His bitterness fading into wariness.

She has an eerie feeling that he’s going to grab her hand, so she drops hers into her lap just in case. There’s no way she can predict how she’ll react if Kwame touches her.

“Okay fine, you’re probably right that my father-in-law wasn’t besties with this person,” Simone concedes. “But it doesn’t matter anyway because he has dementia. It’s pretty bad. So I don’t know how useful he would be.”

“Oh, man. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Simone doesn’t know if Kwame is referring to Poppy’s illness or the fact that he can’t be a “source.”