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“Is this Mrs. Howard?” a man asked.

“No, it’s her niece,” I said.

“Well, is she home or is Mr. Howard home?”

“No.”

“Well, this is Detective Morgan. I was able to track down Mrs. Elder,” he said.

I held my breath.

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the detox unit of a hospital outside of Macon,” he said. “She was admitted two days ago after causing a disturbance in a nightclub and being taken to the emergency room. You can have the telephone number and address,” he continued, and I jotted them down. “Have either of them call me if they would like,” he concluded.

I didn’t thank him. I hung up the phone and stared at the notepaper.

Then I crumpled it in my fist, but I didn’t throw it away. I put it in my room.

But I never told either Uncle Buster or Aunt Mae Louise about the call.

Uncle Buster returned before Aunt Mae Louise. I saw from the look on his face that I would have had a hard time. It really wasn’t until he walked into the house and stopped to look at me sitting there in their living room that the full impact and reality of Daddy’s death hit me. For a while I was able to put it out of mind, pretend it never had occurred, that it was all one of those nasty dreams the shadows brought into my sleep. Most of the time Daddy was away from me, out there doing his selling. It wasn’t hard imagining that he was doing that now, and that some day he would return or call, even though I had told him not to bother unless he was going to take me home. Now, he would never take me home; he would never call.

“Was it really my daddy?” I asked Uncle Buster, and his droopy eyes widened and even brightened.

“For a few seconds after they showed him to me, I had doubts,” he replied. “Seems he didn’t have his seat belt on after all, Phoebe. It must’ve slipped his mind. He was carrying a lot of worry. He hit the windshield pretty hard,” he added, and immediately shut his lips, regretting that those words had somehow gotten out.

“Are you blaming it on me?” I asked in a voice much shriller than I had expected it to be.

“I’m not blaming nobody,” he said. “That’s the Lord’s work. If you have a guilty conscience, you bring it with you to the church. Your mama should do likewise,” he added, and then he thought a moment. “Where is that woman?”

He mumbled something I didn’t understand and then went into the kitchen to use the phone. In the meantime I heard Aunt Mae Louise come in. She looked at me, shook her head, and sighed deeply.

“It’s all arranged,” she said. “Day after tomorrow, whether we find your mother or not.”

“We found her,” Uncle Buster announced, and returned from the kitchen. “Why didn’t you tell me, Phoebe? Why didn’t you tell me the police had called?”

“You knew and didn’t tell?” Aunt Mae Louise exclaimed. “Why not?”

“What difference does it make? She’s no good to anybody,” I said, and left the room with both of them staring after me.

I should be feeling more pain, I kept telling myself. I shouldn’t feel numb. I should feel sad. I should be crying hysterically, beating the walls, something. My daddy was killed. He’s gone for good. My mama is in some nuthouse babbling helplessly. I had seen people lose their loved ones. A girlfriend of mine lost her five-year-old brother last year when he got caught in between two gang members shooting at each other. I never had seen so many tears, heard so many wails of agony. The pain in their hearts was so thick I could feel it in the air.

And then there was Rodney Marks’s father, who had a heart attack playing basketball with Rodney and his friends. A tall, healthy-looking man who had something called an aneurysm and died right there on the court. I was watching them play and saw the look of disbelief on Rodney’s face. I used to be jealous of his relationship with his father. They were together lots of times. He wasn’t just losing a parent; he was losing a friend.

Maybe that was what was wrong with me and my parents. I never thought of them as friends, just as keepers of the cage. There was never much holding us together, but whatever there had been was now gone.

That’s why I feel so numb and light all over, I told myself. I’m like a feather, floating. I have no interest in staying where I am and I have no idea where I should go. I’m in the hands of the wind.

That’s how I felt over the next few days, L

ike someone being carried along. Uncle Buster’s father being the minister and all made it easier to arrange the funeral and burial. None of my friends back in the city came, and I was sure by now word had spread. Bad news had a way of working its way through walls. Maybe people were just happy to talk about terrible things happening to someone else and not to them. Maybe it made them feel safer.

Daddy’s boss showed up with one of the other salesmen in the company. Some of Uncle Buster’s and Aunt Mae Louise’s church friends attended out of respect for them, or maybe out of pity for them being weighed down now with the responsibility of me. I could feel it in their eyes when they looked my way, and I saw it in the almost imperceptible shaking of their heads. They probably didn’t realize themselves how clearly they were showing their thoughts and feelings. I didn’t blame them. Like Uncle Buster had told me, there’s no one we can blame. That’s not our job.

I never looked upon Daddy in death. Because of how badly injured he had been in the accident, the coffin was kept closed and I didn’t want any private visit. It was easier for me to keep pretending he wasn’t dead, but just gone. I heard his name mentioned in the sermon, but I reacted with surprise every time.

Afterward, after Daddy’s boss and fellow salesman and all of Aunt Mae Louise’s and Uncle Buster’s friends had left the house, she came to my room.