He saw Mr. Grant come into the frame with his thermos. He heard: Better he hates me. Better he hates me and he's two hours up the road sleeping in my old bed than he's here being brave. He heard: He wrote Malik's name. He wrote my baby's name in his handwriting and put a stamp on it.
He watched it twice. Then he sat on the closed toilet lid with the phone against his forehead.
Deacon Teague knocked once, after a while, and said through the door, "Pantry'll keep," and went away.
Malik called his mother. This time she picked up.
"I know, Mom," he said. "Jojo sent it to me."
There was nothing on the line for so long he thought the call had dropped. Then he heard her breathing, and knew she had her hand over her mouth.
"They picked Curtis up this morning," she said finally. "His parole officer. For the messages. He's in county until his revocation hearing, the twenty-seventh, same day as ours. Beatriz says it's not over. It's not over until a judge says so." She drew a breath. "I'm coming up Saturday. Lucius is driving me. My hands won't hold still on a steering wheel."
"Is Jojo okay?"
"He sleeps with that tablet like it's a teddy bear."
"Mom." He didn't know what came after. "Mom, I—"
"Saturday," she said. "Say it to my face. Whatever it is. I owe you that much. I owe you a whole lot more than that."
VIII.
Lucius Grant's 2004 Lincoln Town Car came up Chapel Hill Road at eleven on Saturday morning at nineteen miles an hour. Before it had fully stopped, the back door opened and a small person in a stegosaurus shirt hit the gravel running.
Malik caught him at the carport. Jojo climbed him like a tree and hung on with his arms and his legs and his face jammed into Malik's neck, and said, all in one breath, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I told him I didn't know he was bad I'm sorry—"
"Hey. Hey, Rex." Malik knelt and set him down on the bottom step and held him by the shoulders. "Listen to me. You know what grown-ups who make little kids keep secrets from their mamas are? They're wrong. Not you. Them. Okay?"