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“No. I can come by myself,” I said so lowly that I knew he had to strain his ear to hear me.

He gave me the address and told me to ask for him when I arrived. I barely remember hanging up. For several minutes, I sat there staring at my phone. Then I started praying.

“Lord, please. Please don’t let that be my baby.”

I repeated those words as I got dressed, grabbed my purse, and searched for my keys. I repeated them while walking to my car, and I was still saying them when I pulled into the parking lot of the medical examiner’s office. I had spent years praying for Giovani’s safety, but I couldn’t remember ever begging God for something the way I was begging him now.

I sat in the parking lot for nearly ten minutes before finding the strength to get out of my car. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Every time I reached for the door handle, another thought entered my mind. Maybe they had gotten his name wrong. Maybe somebody had stolen his identification. Maybe Giovani was somewhere perfectly fine, completely unaware that his mother was about to have a nervous breakdown.

I wanted so badly for one of those possibilities to be true. When I finally made it inside, I approached the receptionist and gave her the medical examiner’s name. She asked me to have a seat, and a few minutes later, a woman came to escort me into a private room. There were two men waiting inside.

“Ms. Baxter?” one of them asked.

I nodded.

“I’m Detective Harris, and this is Detective Coleman. We appreciate you coming down.”

I looked between them before taking a seat.

“Can somebody please tell me what’s going on with my son?”

Detective Harris pulled his chair closer.

“Ms. Baxter, a deceased male was discovered at an abandoned fairground earlier this morning. We recovered information that led us to believe the victim may be Giovani Baxter.”

I pressed my fingers against my lips.

“May be?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re hoping you can help us confirm his identity.”

“What happened to him?”

“Based on our preliminary findings, he suffered a fatal gunshot wound.”

I stared at him.

“Somebody shot him?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I lowered my head. My God. My poor baby.

“Do y’all know who did it?”

“Not at this time. The investigation is still ongoing.”

Detective Coleman opened a folder in front of him.

“We did recover a significant amount of cash near the body. At this point, we’re looking into whether the shooting may have been connected to a robbery or a drug transaction that went wrong.”

I looked up. Giovani had been using my card for any and everything up until he left. I’m not sure where this money could have come from, but I knew it couldn’t have belonged to my son.

“Money?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Money had been at the center of so many of Giovani’s problems. It seemed like every time he got himself into something, there was money involved. I’d tried explaining to him that there wasn’t a dollar amount in this world worth losing his life over, but my son had always been determined to do things his own way.