Page 68 of When a Soul Cries

“Aaaaand there it is.”

“Man, answer the question.”

Darius laughed. “Rome, I’m giving you what I can see. I ain’t this girl’s baby daddy. Apparently, I know about as much about that nigga as you do.”

I shook my head. “You don’t see a name?”

“Nothing I can verify. No custody case. No paternity case. No child-support case. No marriage record. Nothing public connecting a man to the child.”

“So he ain’t involved?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Dead?”

“Don’t know.”

“She could’ve never filed anything?”

“Don’t know.”

I sucked my teeth. “You ain’t very fucking helpful.”

“Nigga, you hired me to search records, not call Miss Cleo. What you want me to do, make up a baby daddy?”

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “Man, fuck you.”

“I’m serious. He could be dead, gone, married, hiding, living in somebody basement—I don’t fucking know. The paperwork ain’t talking.”

“Send me what you got.”

“Already did.”

“And keep this between us.”

Darius went quiet for half a second. “Oh, absolutely. Because when Kai finds out you got me running background checks on women, I’m charging his ass for the information.”

“Darius—”

His laughter came through the phone.

I hung up on him.

“Everybody around me is a fucking idiot.”

The smile lasted until I opened the report. Then it disappeared.

Seventeen when she lost her mother. Twenty-one when she lost her father. Left Pinehaven. Left the only close family connection Darius could find behind in Mississippi. Worked. Raised a little girl.

Whatever support system she’d managed to build here, she’d built it without much family.

And somewhere in that story was a father nobody could seem to find.

That was the part no database could explain.

My phone rang.

Mama.