Mary, Mary

or regrets.
    Oohh, I’m scared, Tom
.

Chapter 75
    “MR. TRUSCOTT CALLED for you. He said he’d like an interview. Said it was important. That he’ll come to the house if you like. He wondered if you received his notes about the women on death row.”
    I frowned and shook my head. “Ignore Truscott. Anything else happen while I was away?”
    “Did Damon tell you he and his friend broke up?” Nana asked me quietly. “Did you even know he had a girlfriend?”
    We were sitting in the kitchen that Saturday afternoon on my first day back. I looked over toward the living room to make sure we were still alone.
    “Is that the girl he’s been talking to so much on the phone?” I asked.
    “Well, not anymore,” she said. “Just as well, I’m sure. He’s too young for any of that.” She got up humming “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” and turned her attention to a pot of chili she had going on the stove.
    I was distracted by the chili itself, and the fact that she had used ground turkey instead of her usual beef or pork. Maybe Kayla Coles had worked some magic and finally gotten Nana to do something new to take care of herself. Good for Kayla.
    “When did Damon tell you he had a girlfriend?” I asked, unable to completely drop the subject. I was more curious about it than I was reluctant to show how out of the loop I had become with my older son.
    “He didn’t tell me; it just sort of presented itself,” Nana said. “It’s not something teenagers talk about directly. Cornelia’s been to the house a couple of times. To do homework. She’s very nice. Her mother and father are lawyers, but I didn’t hold that against her.” She laughed at her little joke. “Well, maybe I held it against her just a little.”
    Cornelia?
Nana the expert, and Alex the outsider. All my good intentions and the promise I’d made myself to do things differently had been swallowed up by whatever it was that always—
always
—seemed to drag me back to the Job.
    Missed out on Damon’s first breakup. Can’t get that one back. Cornelia, we hardly knew ya
.
    It was good to be home anyway. The kitchen was soon overflowing with the smells of Nana’s cooking, exponentially so, as I was being received back with a party for friends and family. Besides the chili, there was Nana’s famous corn bread, two kinds of garlicky greens, seasoned steaks, and a batch of caramel bread pudding that was a rare show-off treat. Apparently, Dr. Coles hadn’t completely gotten through to her about the taking-it-easy part.
    I tried to help without getting in the way, while Nana checked her watch and just about flew around the kitchen. I would have been more excited if I felt I deserved a party. Not only was I out of the running for father of the year, but my return trip to L.A. was already booked.

Chapter 76
    “LOOK WHO’S HERE with the family! Will you look at this. Where’s my camera?”
    Sampson and Billie arrived early with three-month-old Djakata, whom I hadn’t seen since she was a newborn. John, beaming, lifted her out of the Snugli on Billie’s chest and put her in my arms. What a sight this was—Sampson with his baby girl.
Papa Bear,
I thought.
And Mama and Baby Bear
.
    “What a rare beauty,” I said, and she was—with cocoa skin and soft little swirls of dark hair all over her head. “She has the best of both of you. What a doll.”
    Jannie came around and slipped between us to get a good look at Djakata. She was at the age where it sets in that she may have babies of her own someday, and she was starting to take a perspective.
    “She’s so teensy-tiny,” she said, her voice tinged with awe.
    “Not too tiny,” Sampson said. “Hundredth percentile height and weight. Takes after her father. She’ll be as big as Billie when she’s
five
.”
    “Let’s just hope she doesn’t get your hands and feet, poor thing,” Nana leaned in and said. Then she winked at Billie, who was already considered part of our family.
    An intense feeling of homecoming overtook me right then and there. It was one of those transcendent moments that grabs you a little by surprise and reminds you all at once about the good things. Whatever else happened, there was this, where I needed to be, where I belonged.
    Snapshot—remember the feeling for the next time I need it.
    The feeling of intimacy didn’t last long, though, as the house soon began filling up with other guests. A few of my old guard from DCPD were the next to show up; Jerome and