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“What do you mean?”

“I remember the way you loved that boy. Guess he’s a man now. That kind of love doesn’t go away. Ever. And I’m one to know. I always had a soft spot for Kwame, you know. He reminded me of your dad—all headstrong bravado. It’s a blessing and a curse, that’s for sure.”

“Me coming here isn’t about that. About Kwame.”

Though it is indeed about that. At least partly. And the reference to Simone’s father is meant to be a compliment to Kwame, an innocent one, but it smacks Simone with the same bite as the harsh gust of wind in her face.

“It’s so much more, Momma. So much worse.”

“As long as no one’s dead, then everything’s okay.” Once your spouse has a lethal heart attack brushing his teeth, leaving you to raise a traumatized ten-year-old, no other “real” problems exist.

“Actually… someone is dead.”

Donette stops walking and grabs Simone’s arm. “What in the what, child?”

“No, no, sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. No one we know. It’s this guy Wade. A Black kid who went to school with Alex’s grandfather back in the sixties. Something happened to him. And… I think Poppy may have been involved.”

“Say what now?” Donette is still stopped short and grips Simone’s arm even tighter. Simone pulls her along so they can keep moving; she needs the motion to get this story out. Especially since it sounds preposterous to say out loud. Repeating it doesn’t help, though Simone attempts it anyway. And then she recaps the surreal turn of events starting with lunch with Kwame and ending with her visit to Marjorie. She doesn’t mention Alex’s reaction—not yet.

“I know, I know. It’s all so crazy. It’s just hard to even process. It’s impossible to know what happened to him, to Wade. Marjorie didn’t have any details, at least that she was willing to cop to, other than it was some sort of accident. Maybe. Or maybe Poppy wasn’t directly involved, he just got a call from his friend Roger after something happened? But let’s say he did have something to do with it… then what? I just wish… we could get a straight answer out of Poppy. I went directly from Marjorie’s to try to talk to him, but I didn’t get a chance. Probably shouldn’t have bothered… I mean, you saw him at Thanksgiving.”

“I sure did. You could practically hear the marbles falling out of his brain.”

“Mom!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. I feel for the man. Least I did before this news. You’re right, though, I can’t see how you’d get a straight story out of him now. Even if you could, he’d probably lie anyway. Like grandfather, like grandson.” Donette murmurs the last part under her breath, her words competing with the rumble of a passing garbage truck.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” This time it’s Simone who stops short in the middle of the sidewalk, but Donette keeps moving, forcing her to catch up again.

“Just saying, Alex lied to you too. Back when you two first met and he tried to pretend he wasn’t all rich. Playing like he was poor with those raggedy-ass sweaters and shoes, when he was sitting on that fat trust. Apple doesn’t fall far from the old apple tree is all I’m sayin’.”

“That was years ago, Mom,” Simone says, but she does still vividly remember the surprising sting when Alex announced that he had a trust fund to bankroll a move to Spain. It wasn’t a terrible one, as surprises go, obviously, but it still caught her off guard. What else wasn’t her boyfriend telling her, good or bad? She reminds her mother now of the reasoning that soothed her own unsettled reaction to this news. “Alex just wanted me to love him for himself, not his family’s money. He had good intentions and—”

“A lie’s a lie.” Donette cuts her off with the razor-edged certainty of a woman who’s seen enough of the world to know better. “He didn’t need to test you or trick you, like you were some sort of gold digger. As if.”

Is that why you never liked Alex? Simone’s not going to raise the question that she’s thought about at least twice a week for ten years following her mom’s own well-worn advice: don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to.

Instead she opens her mouth to once again try to defend her husband from these particular allegations, and then remembers how he’s been lying to her for the last few months about the company and their finances, and shuts it right back up.

Langston circles back just then, pedaling furiously, as if he can somehow tell the subject has veered close to home and revealed some sort of fragility to his world, a threat he senses. “Mommy?”

“Yeah, hun? The bike working okay?”

“Yeah, and guess what? I saw a dead bird, or almost dead, he’s kinda flopping around.”

“Don’t touch it!” Simone and Donette command at the same time. “Last thing we need is that boy getting bird flu,” Donette grumbles as Langston rides off, promising to keep his hands to himself. “You were just the same, running around trying to save every animal. How many times did I find a half-dead caterpillar in my good Tupperware that you’d made its ‘home’? That child is so much like you. Even has the same laugh.”

Simone is constantly struck by this, the power of genetics and seeing all the parts of herself surface in her son. She can take no credit at all, but it still feels like she’s performed a magic trick in creating another human who holds literal pieces of her inside. How can a laugh be genetic? Or the specific way someone tilts their head? But it is, because Simone has recognized this too, how much Langston sounds like her when he giggles. She would know the sound anywhere. Just like in one of the many nature documentaries they love to watch together that showed an elephant who was able to recognize the particular trumpet of their offspring miles across the savanna. Simone thinks about it every time she picks Langston’s cackle out of a crowd of kids. It gives Simone pause to wonder what other traits her son holds in his genetics. And who they stem from.

“Can I ride around that loop over in there—you can still see me?” Langston calls out, gesturing to a vast dirt lot that’s clearly been recently razed and leveled—yet another manifestation of the constant battle between blight and renewal that’s been a hallmark of her hometown since as long as Simone can remember.

“Sure, but be careful. You don’t have a helmet. Only right there—in the dirt.” Simone reasons it’s soft enough, softer than the cracked asphalt he’d been traversing. “Stay where I can see you!”

He makes a sharp left into the lot, leaving Simone to turn her focus back to this conversation, when all she wants is to also be on a bike, riding free, braids streaming, nowhere else to be and nothing to do but circle the neighborhood to find other kids. It’s wild how so much of childhood is longing to be an adult, and so much of adulthood is yearning to go back to simpler times.

Speaking of paradoxes, Simone accepts that she has to tell her mom the rest of the story. “That’s the other thing, Mom,” Simone sighs. “The business is in shambles, and we—Alex—need to sell it. There’s an offer on the table. Otherwise… we might lose everything.”

“What’s everything?”