She was buried at a small cemetery on the south side of Ardmore, three blocks from the garage. The headstone was modest. Bobby had picked the simplest one the funeral home had; he couldn't afford the kind with the angels.
Bobby visited her every Sunday. Kendrick visited her every day. He brought her flowers from the lot beside the railroad tracks—black-eyed Susans in summer, goldenrod in fall, holly in winter when nothing else was alive. He learned which weeds were actually wildflowers if you looked at them right.
And he brought her a notebook, which he read out loud to her quietly because the cemetery was small and other families were sometimes there. He read her cases, property disputes, stories about people fighting to keep what was theirs. He read her about a woman in Mississippi in 1957 who'd lost her family farm to a land grab and won it back 40 years later. He read her about a man in Detroit whose grandfather's deed had been lost in a courthouse fire, and how he'd reconstructed it from old church records. He read her about justice that came late. He read until the sun went down.
He kept the promise.
The papers arrived on a Tuesday.
Kendrick was sitting on a stool behind the cash register doing geometry homework when the door chimed. A man in a charcoal suit walked in. He didn't ask about a car. He didn't even take his sunglasses off. He looked at Bobby. He looked at Kendrick. Something in his face, the tiniest flicker of pity immediately suppressed, said he knew exactly what he was doing.
He handed Bobby a thick manila envelope, said, "You've been served, Mr. Jackson," and walked back out to a black SUV idling in the lot. The engine was running the whole time; he'd been planning to leave fast.
Bobby's hands were still streaked with grease. He wiped them on his jeans before he opened it. He read the first page. He read the second. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
Kendrick slid off the stool, walked over, and took the papers out of his father's hands gently, the way you'd take a knife from someone who didn't realize they were holding it. He read.
Belmont Holdings was suing for the land. They claimed the original deed from 2002 had a mistake in it. A 16-foot strip of property—the strip that included the western wall of the garage itself and Marsha's memorial garden out back—had supposedly always belonged to the parcel next door, a parcel Belmont had just bought last month from the estate of a deceased Black woman named Elnora Reed.
The lawsuit demanded everyone be off the property in 60 days. Sixty days.
Kendrick lowered the papers. He looked at his father. Bobby was staring at the floor. His shoulders were doing the thing they did when he was about to cry, but wouldn't. The garage was quiet. Outside, a truck rolled past. Somewhere in the back, a fan kicked on and off.
Kendrick said very softly, "Dad, look at me."
Bobby looked up. His eyes were red.
"They picked the wrong family."
That night, Kendrick didn't sleep. He spread the lawsuit on the basement floor, every page in order. He highlighted every word he didn't know. He looked each one up. He cross-referenced citations. He filled six pages of his notebook with definitions before he was done.