As I walked across the cul-de-sac on Loupe Street to the third bungalow, I was mindful of the unmarked police cruiser pulling out behind me, and I wondered about the strength of the case against my young cousin. I’d have to get Naomi to show me the evidence, and—
Aunt Connie’s animated voice came through the screen door, followed by the sound of women cackling and men braying over something she’d said. The breeze shifted and carried the mysterious and wonderful odors from the kitchen of my aunt Hattie Parks Tate, my late mother’s younger sister. I hadn’t smelled those scents in thirty-five years, but they made me flash on boyhood memories: climbing these same front steps, smelling these same smells, and reaching for the screen door, eager to be inside.
This house had been one of my refuges, I thought, remembering how peaceful and orderly it was compared to the routine chaos across the street. Nothing had changed about that, I decided after peering in through the screen and seeing my family sitting around Hattie’s spotless house with plates piled high with her remarkable food, contentment on all their faces.
“Knock, knock,” I said as I opened the door and stepped in.
“Dad!” Ali shouted from a wicker couch, waving a bone at me. “You gotta try Aunt Hattie’s fried rabbit!”
“And her potato salad,” Jannie said, rolling her eyes with pleasure.
Hattie Tate bustled out of her kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and beaming from ear to ear. “Land sakes, Alex, what took you so long to come see me?”
I hadn’t seen my mother’s sister in nearly ten years, but Aunt Hattie hadn’t aged a day. In her early sixties, she was still slender and tall with a beautiful oval face and wide almond-shaped eyes. I’d forgotten how much she looked like my mom. Long-buried grief swirled through me again.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Hattie,” I said. “I…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, tearing up. She rushed over and threw her arms around me. “You’ve given me hope just being here.”
“We’ll do everything we can for Stefan,” I promised.
Hattie beamed through her tears, said, “I knew you’d come. Stefan knew too.”
“How is he?”
Before my aunt could answer, a man in his midseventies shuffled into the room with a walker. He was dressed in slippers, brown sweatpants, and a baggy white T-shirt, and he looked around, puzzled, then became agitated.
“Hattie!” he cried. “There’s strangers in the house!”
My aunt was off across the room like a shot, saying soothingly, “It’s okay, Cliff. It’s just family. Alex’s family.”
“Alex?” he said.
“It’s me, Uncle Cliff,” I said, going to him. “Alex Cross.”
My uncle stared at me blankly for several moments while Hattie held his elbow, rubbed his back, and said, “Alex, Christina and Jason’s boy. You remember, don’t you?”
Uncle Cliff blinked as if spotting something bright in the deepest recesses of his failing mind. “Nah,” he said. “That Alex just a scared little boy.”
I smiled weakly at him, said, “That boy grew up.”
Uncle Cliff licked his lips, studied me some more, and said, “You tall like her. But you got his face. Where he got to now, your daddy?”
Hattie’s expression tightened painfully. “Jason died a long time ago, Cliff.”
“He did?” Cliff said, his eyes watering.
Hattie rested her face against his arm and said, “Cliff loved your father, Alex. Your father was his best friend, isn’t that right? Cliff?”
“When he die? Jason?”
“Thirty-five years ago,” I said.
My uncle frowned, said, “No, that’s…oh…Christina’s next to Brock, but Jason, he’s…”
My aunt cocked her head. “Cliff?”
Her husband turned puzzled again. “Man, Jason, he liked blues.”
“And jazz,” Nana Mama said.
“He like blues most,” Cliff insisted. “I show you?”
Hattie softened. “You want your guitar, honey?”
“Six-string,” he said, and he shuffled on his own to a chair, acting as if no one else were with him.
Aunt Hattie disappeared and soon came back carrying a six-string steel guitar that I vaguely remembered from my childhood. When my uncle took the guitar, fused it to his chest, and began to play some old blues tune by heart and soul, it was as if time had rolled in reverse, and I saw myself as a five- or six-year-old sitting in my dad’s lap, listening to Clifford play that same raucous tune.
My mother was in that memory too. She had a drink in her hand and sat with my brothers, hooting and cheering Clifford on. That memory was so real that for a second I could have sworn I smelled both my parents there in the room with me.
My uncle played the entire song, finishing with a flourish that showed just how good he’d once been. When he stopped, everyone clapped. His face lit up at that, and he said, “You like that, you come to the show tonight, hear?”
“What show?” Ali asked.
“Cliff and the Midnights,” my uncle said as if Ali should have known. “We’re playing down to the…”
His voice trailed off, and that confusion returned. He looked around for his wife, said, “Hattie? Where my gig tonight? You know I can’t be late.”
“You won’t be,” she said, taking the guitar from him. “I’ll make sure.”
My uncle chewed on that a bit before saying, “All aboard now, Hattie.”
“All aboard now, Cliff,” she said, setting the guitar aside. “Lunch serving in the dining car. You hungry, Cliff?”
“My shift over?” he asked, surprised.
My aunt glanced at me, said, “You have a break coming to you, dear. I’ll get you a plate, bring it to you in the dining car. Connie? Can you take him?”
“Where’s Pinkie?” Cliff said as Connie Lou bustled over to him.
“You know he’s down in Florida,” she said. “C’mon, now. And use your walker. Train’s an awful place to fall.”
“Humph,” Cliff said, getting to his feet. “I worked this train twenty-five years and I ain’t fallen yet.”
“Just the same,” Aunt Connie said and followed him as he shuffled back down the hallway.
“I’m sorry about that,” Aunt Hattie said to everyone.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Nana Mama said.
Aunt Hattie wrung her hands and nodded emotionally, and then turned and went off to the kitchen. I stood there feeling guilty that I’d not come back and seen my uncle in better times.
“Alex, you go get some food so Ali and I can have seconds,” Bree said.
“Leave some for me,” Jannie said.
I followed Aunt Hattie into her kitchen. She was standing at the sink with her hand over her mouth, looking like she was fighting not to break down.
But then she saw me and put on a brave smile. “Help yourself, Alex.”
I picked up a plate on the kitchen table and began to load it with fried rabbit, potato salad, a green-bean-and-mushroom dish, and thick slices of homemade bread, the source of one of those delicious odors I’d smelled.
“How long since you knew?” I asked.
“That Cliff was suffering from dementia?” Hattie asked. “Five years since the diagnosis, but more like nine since he started forgetting things.”
“You his sole caregiver?”
“Connie Lou helps,” she said. “And Stefan, this last year or so he’s been home.”
“How’re you getting by?”
“Cliff’s railway pension and the Social Security.”
“Enough?”
“We make do.”
“Hard on you, though.”
“Very,” she said, and pushed back at her hair. “And now all this with Stefan…” Hattie stopped, threw up her hands, and choked out, “He’s my miracle baby. How could my miracle baby…”
I remembered Nana Mama telling me that the doctors said Hattie and Cliff would never have children, and then, in her thirties, she’d suddenly gotten pregnant with Stefan.
I put my plate down and was about to go over to console her when Ali ran in, said, “Dad! I swear to God, there’s like a gazillion lightning bugs outside!”