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back in the same condition it is today.”
    I slipped it into a plastic sleeve and put it in a file folder. I told her I’d return it at the end of the week, after I’d made some copies and preliminary inquiries.
    “But I don’t want your sister to imagine this will be easy. I never guarantee results. And, in this case, we may end up with too many dead ends for you to want to continue.”
    “But you expect me to pay you even if you don’t find him.”
    I smiled brightly. “Just as your pastor expects to be paid even if she can’t save your soul.”
    She eyed me narrowly. “And how will I know you’re not cheating her? My sister, I mean? And me?”
    I nodded. She had a right to know. “I’ll give you a written report. You, or Pastor Karen, can do some spot-checking to see if I’ve done what I claim I did. But until you give me the names of your son’s friends, there’s very little I can do.”
    When I left a minute later, I heard all the bolts on the door snap shut in reverse order. I stood in the hallway, already depressed by the inquiry.
    IN THE DETECTIVE’S ABSENCE I
    “HI, MISS ELLA. YOUR SISTER SPENT AN HOUR IN HER chair today. We’re going to see if she can get to her feet tomorrow,” the nurse’s aide said brightly. “Have you come to give her her supper? She’s tired after working so hard on her therapies today.”
    Miss Ella nodded but didn’t answer. Claudia, the family beauty: it was harsh to see her like this. Was it a judgment on them, Claudia lying in bed, hardly able to move or talk, wearing diapers like a great big baby? Pastor Hebert would have said so, but Pastor Karen didn’t agree. Pastor Karen said God wasn’t an angry old man handing out punishments like an overseer or a prison warden.
    “But it feels like it, Lord,” Miss Ella murmured, not realizing she had spoken aloud until the aide said, “What was that, Miss Ella?”
    It seemed to happen more and more these days, that she spoke out loud without realizing it. Not a crime, or even a sin, just a nuisance, one of the many of growing old.
    The aide carried a tray of mushy food into Claudia’s room. The television was on, as if grown women needed to have babble shouted at them twenty-four hours a day. The woman who shared the room with Claudia was rubbing the end of her blanket between her fingers, staring vacantly ahead. Claudia herself was asleep, her breath coming out in fast little snorts. Her hair hadn’t been washed, Miss Ella noted grimly, preparing her list of complaints for the head of the ward. That black hair, how it bounced and flipped when Claudia was young, all the way into middle age, really, before it started to go gray and she’d cut it short. She’d let it turn into an Afro, a crown of soft gray curls, while Ella adhered to a life of iron discipline, giving her head over to chemicals and hot irons every month.
    Ella sat on her sister’s left side, where she still had feeling and movement. Claudia’s right hand looked soft, young, the hand of the beautiful girl Ella had been so jealous of all those years back, but her left hand was as knotted and gnarled with age as Ella’s own.
    “The detective came today,” Ella said. “She took a picture of Lamont away with her, she’ll talk to people, she’ll ask questions. Does that make you happy?”
    Claudia squeezed Ella’s hand: yes, thank you, that makes me happy.
    “Maybe she’ll even find our boy. And then what?”
    “ ’ Ate ’n’ ’ear,” Claudia spoke with difficulty. “ ’ Ate ’n’ ’ear al’ays wron’, Ellie. ’Ill e-d-estroy ’ou.”
    She had trouble making her lips move to form consonants. The speech therapist made her work on them during the day, but alone with her sister at night she relaxed and did what came easiest.
    Hate and fear. Always wrong, will destroy you. Ella knew she was saying that because she’d said it so many times in the eighty-five years of their life together. Pastor Karen thought some special gift of