"Josiah. Look at me. Are you looking?"
He nodded.
"A grown man asked a little boy to keep a secret from his mama," she said. "That is on the grown man. Every ounce of it. Not one crumb is on you. Do you understand me? You were six years old and somebody tricked you, and you just did the bravest thing in this whole house. You showed me."
"Is Malik coming home now?"
She closed her eyes. "Not yet, baby. Soon. Not yet."
At 9:40 that night she called Beatriz Ocampo's cell phone, which Beatriz had given her with the words "only if it's real," and Beatriz picked up on the first ring with a television going behind her.
"Don't delete anything," Beatriz said, when Clara had read her three messages out loud in a voice like a dial tone. "Don't reply. Screenshot every single one, with the dates showing, and email them to me tonight. Don't let the tablet die. Clara, listen to me." The television went off. "This is a direct violation of his no-contact condition. He's contacting a minor in a protected household through a third party, and he's gathering information about the victim's other child. This isn't a letter about a father's rights. This is the thing I couldn't show a judge. I'm calling his parole officer at eight a.m., and I'm amending our filing before noon."
Clara sat at the kitchen table after she hung up, with the tablet charging next to her like a patient on a monitor. At 11:15, her phone buzzed.
It was Lucius. "White Silverado," he said. "Been idling at the corner of Delmore and Fenner twenty minutes, lights off. I got the plate. I called it in. I'm sitting out on my porch with my lights on and my radio up so whoever's in that truck knows somebody on this street is awake." A pause. "There it goes. Turning. Gone."
"Lucius."
"I'm staying out till morning, sugar. Lock your chain."
VI.
The text from Tariq came on the sixth day, during fourth period, and Malik read it under his desk in Geometry.
yo. dude in a white truck at the shell by school asked me where u been. said he's ur little brothers dad. said tell malik i said whats up. bro is that the guy?? the one from the trial??
Malik asked to go to the bathroom. He went to the bathroom. He stood in a stall with his back against the metal door and called his mother three times, and three times it went to voicemail, because she was sitting in Beatriz Ocampo's office in the legal aid building with her phone face-down on the table. He called Jojo's tablet. It rang and rang. He texted Tariq: did he do anything to u. Tariq wrote back: nah he was smiling. thats what was weird.