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Show Go Love/193 "You want his number?" Dora asks. "No." The casket freezes Lara. "We'll be home soon," Renee says and sobs and the three of us hug. We lift Lara up and hug But my daughter's eyes lock on the casket-the great mystery. "Baby, we'll be all through this soon," Renee says into the side of my face, and I can feel the wet of her lips. Her father's birthday-the Cap's 70th-Mama wouldn't have pulled this for all the world, not in a million years. "I'll drive," Renee says, "We're not riding in the car with that man." O.W and Brother Dell walk through the doors together. Both see us at the same time. "Bless you, son," the preacher says, his hands laced behind his back. "Bless you." Renee snaps up Lara and I watch her walk away, out the doors, toward the far off spot in the hot lot where our Silver Pathfinder sits, sought now via missing vehicle reports from Florida to Memphis. Dell disappears and I'm left with O W. We walk together, and I follow when he makes a right into the Men's We each take a urinal and face the white wall like the one Mama once screamed at me through-get help. Joey, he's killing me No getting away from that-those words, her plea But he'd been her caretaker as well, her odd caretaker. No doubt, he'd opened the briefcase, maybe during the operation, after Mama had him try on all those suits then Xed his name off the bank accounts and insurance policies He'd seen into Mama's briefcase. He had surely held in his own hands the photograph of Shawn Terrence Lord that is now ripped up in my pants pocket, evidence that I've now destroyed. There's more. Maybe he'd carefully wiped his fingerprints off all those |