Page 7

Five years before Derrick Bell’s murder

“Don’t sleep much anyway,” he’d told her a dozen times. “Don’t need it when you reach my age.”

Her grandfather had raised Noelle and her two younger sisters since she was thirteen.

Their mother had passed from breast cancer when her youngest sister, Lucia, was only two, and their father currently was serving twenty to thirty in prison.

Not that his absence mattered; he’d rarely been around before he was convicted of second-degree murder.

Their grandfather and his sister, Daisy, were the only parents little Lucia had known.

Unless you counted Noelle. She’d mothered Lucia, giving her advice on clothes and friends as she grew up, the current girly things that Great-Aunt Daisy wasn’t in touch with.

Their unusual family had done well raising Lucia and Eve.

Both women were smart and sweet and caring.

Noelle strode up the driveway, automatically glancing at the empty spot where her sister used to park her car.

Eve had moved out six months ago, and Noelle still wasn’t accustomed to her absence.

The nineteen-year-old now lived with four other girls in a cramped apartment.

But she was happy, and that was what mattered.

As Noelle went to slide her key into the door’s lock, it abruptly opened. She grinned at her grandfather. He wore baggy pajama pants, slippers, and a bathrobe that belonged to Aunt Daisy. He grinned back, his eyes nearly disappearing in his happy squint.

Noelle never tired of the sight. The two of them had something special.

“Hey, Poppa.”

“How was slinging drinks tonight? Did ya see the governor?”

“Not tonight.”

He wasn’t a fan of the current governor, but he’d been impressed last month when Noelle told him the governor had tipped her twenty dollars on a glass of wine.

Cheap wine. She’d tried to steer the man toward one of her favorite Argentine reds, but he’d insisted on a US brand.

Important people had sat at Noelle’s bar and enjoyed her drinks, even a few celebrities.

She treated everyone the same. If she took an order, she gave her best service.

“Are Lucia and Aunt Daisy asleep?” she asked as she quietly closed the door behind her.

“Lucia is. Daisy’s been wandering around complaining about the carpet.”

As usual.

Her great-aunt hated the dark brown of the carpet.

Noelle did too, but she kept it to herself.

Money was tight, and she didn’t want her grandfather dipping into his retirement account to change perfectly good carpet.

He’d been a police officer for two decades in San Francisco, but now he drove a school bus for the local school district and loved it.

Always wore goofy hats and learned all the kids’ names.

But Noelle couldn’t help wondering if he worked because he feared running out of money.

He brushed her off every time she tried to bring it up.

“I’ve got scads of money,” he’d say. And he always refused any money she offered for the mortgage.

Instead, she contributed by purchasing all the groceries and paying any utility bill she could swipe before he saw it.

He was healthy as a horse. Tall and strong. A former college athlete who still lifted weights in the garage and walked a couple of miles every day. He rarely slowed down. He had a close group of friends who liked to bowl and fish, and he spent every weekend working in the yard.

When his daughter—their mother—had died, he’d moved the three girls into his home, where he lived with his sister, Daisy. It’d been ten years. Ten very happy and loud years. Their poppa was extremely outgoing and energetic compared to their quiet mother.

Looking back, Noelle wondered if her mother had been sick for longer than they knew.

Or possibly she’d been depressed. Their father had never helped, but Noelle remembered the adoration in her mother’s eyes when she looked at his picture.

His murder conviction hadn’t taken away the adoration; it’d simply made her sad.

Perhaps her cancer had fed on that sadness.

Noelle’s grandfather had not liked his daughter’s choice of spouse from day one.

He kept it to himself while she was alive but had privately told Noelle—once she was an adult—that he’d known her father was trouble the first time he met him.

He’d dealt with enough criminals to see the problems with their father.

It added to Noelle’s shame that she’d made a poor decision with her own marriage. She was twenty-four now and figured she’d most likely marry again at some point. She was determined not to make the same mistake twice.

But no good prospects had crossed her path.

I’m not looking anyway.

Right?