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“I remember a lot of times like that,” I told him. “Nana used to say we were brothers, just not flesh-and-blood ones. You were always at the house.”
“This time was different, sugar. I even know why you don’t remember. Let me tell it.”
“All right.”
“See, I never used to go home after school. Reason being, nobody was there most of the time. That night I got home around nine, nine-thirty. Made myself corned beef hash for dinner. Sat down to watch some tube. I used to like Mission: Impossible back then, wait for it all week. There was a knock at the door.
“I went to see who was there, and it was Nana. She gave me a big hug, just like she still does when she sees me. Asked me if I had some corned beef hash for her too. Said she liked hers with eggs on top. Then she cackled her cackle, you know.”
“I don’t remember any of this. Why was she at your house so late at night?”
Sampson continued with his story. “My fath
er was in prison that year. Nothing unusual. That afternoon my mother was convicted for possession of heroin, with intent to sell. She’d been sentenced. Social Services came by, but I was out. Somebody called Nana Mama.
“So Nana came over, and she actually ate a little of the hash I’d cooked. Told me it was pretty good. Maybe I would be a famous chef one day. Then she said I was coming over to your house for a while. She told me why. She had done some of her magic with Child Welfare. That was the first time that Nana saved me. The first of many times.”
I nodded. Listened. Sampson wasn’t finished with his story.
“She was the one who helped get me into the army after high school. Then into the police academy when I got out of the service. She’s your grandmother, but she’s more a mother to me than my own flesh. And I never had a father, not really. Neither of us did. I always thought that held us together in the beginning.”
It wasn’t like Sampson to go on and open up like this. I still didn’t speak. I had no idea where he was headed, but I let him go as much as he wanted to.
“I always knew I didn’t have it in me to be a father or a good husband. It was just something I felt inside. You?”
“I had some fears before I met Maria,” I said. “Then they just went away. Most of them anyway. I knew Maria and I would be good together. First time I held Damon, the rest of the fears pretty much disappeared for good.”
Sampson began to smile, then he was laughing. “I met somebody, Alex. It’s strange, but she makes me happy and I trust her with my secrets. Look at me, I’m grinnin’ like a goddamn Halloween pumpkin.”
Both of us were laughing now. Why not? It was the first time I had seen Sampson in love, and we’d been friends for a long time.
“I’ll mess it up somehow,” he said. But he was still laughing. We joked and laughed most of the rest of the way home. Jesus, John Sampson had a girlfriend.
Billie.
Chapter 86
NANA MAMA ALWAYS used to say, “Laugh before breakfast, cry before dinner.” If you’ve raised a family, you know there’s some truth to that, crazy as it sounds.
When I got back to Fifth Street that night, there was a red-and-white EMS truck sitting in front of our house.
I shut down the Porsche and bounded out of it.
It was raining, and the bracing wind and water whipped at my face. Partially blinded by the rain, I hurtled up the front steps and entered the house. My heart was hammering and a voice inside whispered, No, no, no.
I heard voices coming from the living room and rushed in there, expecting the worst.
Nana Mama and the kids were sitting on the old sofa. They were all holding hands.
Across from them sat a woman in a white lab coat. I recognized Dr. Kayla Coles from the night with Damon’s sick friend, Ramon.
“You missed all the excitement,” Nana said as she saw me enter the room.
“Imagine that, Daddy,” said Jannie. “You missed the excitement.”
I looked toward the doctor sitting in the easy chair. “Hello, Doctor.”
She had a good smile. “Nice to see you again.”
