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“Home,” Nana said and began to cry.
Our doctor and friend looked at me. “It’s impossible unless you’re ready to pay for round-the-clock care and therapists to come to her. And even then, only if I think it’s safe.”
“Otto,” my grandmother said. She took an exasperated breath and tried again. “Lot.” She looked irritated.
“Lotto,” Jannie translated. “The Powerball lotto money.”
“Well, that’s true,” I said to Dr. Ames. “Nana Mama hit the lottery a few years ago. She started a foundation to promote literacy and aid the poor with some of the winnings, but there’s plenty left over. She has the money.”
“No better way to spend it,” Bree said. “We’ll clear out space in the living room. Bring in a bed, monitors, therapists, whatever you say we need, Dr. Ames.”
“Is that what you want us to do, Nana?” I asked.
“Mmm,” she said, nodding and closing her eyes. “Home.”
40
JOHN SAMPSON WAS BACK at the Bridge to Nowhere again. He’d lost track of how many visits he’d made over the past few days. Now, in the late-afternoon heat and humidity, he climbed the south embankment beneath the ghost ramp, looking for the young couple he’d promised to help get into a family shelter.
The campsite where he and Alex had seen them earlier was now occupied by a surly woman in her sixties. She said the couple with the baby had up and left several hours before. She’d moved in immediately.
That saddened but did not surprise Sampson. He could not count the number of times he’d offered to help people down on their luck by hooking them up with social services only to be turned down or ghosted. Some people didn’t want help. Some didn’t think they deserved it. Some did not want the government paying attention to their lives for one reason or another. The rest baffled him.
From above, Sampson heard a raspy voice ask, “That you, Sampson?”
He pivoted to peer up into the shadows directly below the ramp and saw Sean Brundage sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, smoking a cigarette.
He climbed up to the former Metro PD detective and was surprised to see that Brundage was sitting in Hawk’s spot.
“How are you, Sean?” Sampson said as he eyed the remnants of Hawk’s former shelter, now in ruins.
“Better than the last time we talked,” Brundage replied, scratching at his beard with one hand and stubbing out the cigarette with the other. “Seeing you and Cross made me want to try my meds again.”
“Good to hear. Can I help you get off the street?”
“Nah,” the former detective said. He gestured at the tattered tarp and bent poles, all that was left of Hawk’s place. “I just took the former head high troll’s spot. Don’t want to be giving that up so soon.”
“Where’d Hawk go? He was here this morning.”
“Hawk flew the coop about an hour ago,” Brundage said. “Stuffed everything he could fit into his big pack and left the rest.”
“He say why or where he was going?”
“I did not talk to the man. But I realized he was vacating when he marched by my former squat heading downhill. Soon as I saw him disappear toward the lumberyard, I came up here and staked my claim.”
“You going to fight for it?”
Brundage stared hard at Sampson. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re the new head high troll, and congratulations on that,” Sampson said. “Has Choir Boy been around?”
Brundage shook his head.
“Someone told me his first name was Aldous.”
“If you say so.” He shrugged. “Heard Hawk call him Al once.”
Rodriguez told us that he had no idea what Choir Boy’s real name was, Sampson thought.
