We reached Loupe Street fifteen minutes later. Ali was still watching television, an adventure-hunting show featuring a big affable guy in a black cowboy hat.
“You ever heard of Jim Shockey?” Ali asked.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“He goes to all these, like, uncharted places and he hunts, like, ibex in Turkey and sheep in Outer Mongolia.”
“Outer Mongolia?” I said, looking closer at the screen and seeing a line of what I guessed were Mongolians with packs climbing some remote mountain with Shockey, the big guy in the black cowboy hat.
“Yeah, it’s dope,” Ali said, eyes fixed on the screen. “I didn’t know you could do things like this.”
“Outer Mongolia interest you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“That’s right, why not?” I said, and I went upstairs to change.
Naomi decided to stay behind and work on her opening statement. Nana Mama was making herself and Ali grilled cheese and green tomato sandwiches when Bree and I left.
We had the crime scene files and photographs with us as we approached the church again. The groundskeeper was finished and loading his mower onto a trailer. I looked for the chained-off and overgrown road that Naomi had shown us on the way out.
“Nana Mama’s right,” Bree said. “That is a beautiful cemetery.”
I looked up the rolling hill beyond the church, saw rows of tombstones and monuments. I remembered something my uncle Clifford had said two nights ago and something else my grandmother had said earlier this morning.
I pulled over, threw the Explorer in park, and said, “Wait here a second.”
I went to the groundskeeper, introduced myself, and asked him a few questions. His answers gave me chills up and down my spine.
Back in the car, I said, “Short detour before we go to the quarry.”
“Where are we going?”
“The cemetery,” I said, swallowing my emotions and putting the car in gear. “I think my parents are buried up there.”
Bree thought that over quietly for a few beats and then said, “You think?”
“The other night, Hattie’s husband said, ‘Christina’s next to Brock.’ Brock’s my mom’s brother, Aunt Connie’s late husband, and Nana Mama said he’s buried up there. My mom’s got to be buried beside her brother. And the groundskeeper said there’s also a Cross family plot up there.”
I drove through the gate and up the gently rolling hill, looking for the monuments that the groundskeeper had described.
“Alex,” Bree said softly. “You’ve never been to your parents’ graves?”
I shook my head. “People thought I was too young to go to my mother’s funeral, and we were sent to Nana Mama’s right after my father died. Given all that we’d been through, she wanted to spare us the pain of a funeral.”
Bree thought about that, said, “So your parents died close together?”
“Within a year of each other,” I said. “After my mother passed, my father was so heartbroken, he started drinking a lot more, using drugs.”
“That’s horrible, Alex,” she said, her brow knitting. “How come you’ve never told me that?”
I shrugged. “By the time I met you, my past was…my past.”
“And who took care of you and your brothers while all this was happening?”
I thought about that, driving slow, still scanning the hillside. “I don’t remember,” I said. “Probably Aunt Hattie. We always went to her house when things got—”
The monument was gray granite and far down a row of similar tombstones. The name CROSS was carved across the face of it.
I stopped the car, left it running for the air conditioner, and looked at my wife. Her features were full of pain and sympathy.
“You go see,” she said softly. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I kissed her before climbing out into the heat and the clamor of insects coming from the woods. I went around the front of the Explorer and down the row of graves, my attention on the one that said Cross.
A general numbness settled in me when I reached the monument, which was barely tended. Grass grew up at the base. I had to crouch and spread it to find three small granite stones carved with initials. Left to right, they read:
A.C. G.C. R.C.
I dug in the grass to the right of R.C. and found nothing but thatch and soil. There was no fourth stone. No J.C.
I stood and went around the back of the monument, finding more on the people buried there. The first name and the particulars startled me.
ALEXANDER CROSS
BLACKSMITH
BORN JANUARY 12, 1890
DIED SEPTEMBER 8, 1947
The second and third inscriptions read:
GLORIA CROSS
MOTHER AND WIFE
BORN JUNE 23, 1897
DIED OCTOBER 12, 1967
REGINALD CROSS
MERCHANT MARINER
BORN NOVEMBER 6, 1919
DIED MARCH 12, 1993
Puzzled, I climbed back into the car.
“What’s wrong?” Bree asked.
“My father’s not there. Nana Mama’s ex-husband, my grandfather, is, and his parents. I must have been named for my great-grandfather Alexander, who was a blacksmith.”
“You never knew that?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe there’s another Cross plot up here,” Bree said.
“Maybe,” I said, and I put the car in gear.
Nine rows up I spotted the pale white monument that said PARKS below a carved American flag. It was closer to the cemetery lane, four graves in, and well tended, with fresh flowers in a vase. Like the Cross plot lower on the hill, there were smaller stones, two of them, separated by a gap of several feet. They were inscribed B.W.P. and C.P.C.
Brock William Parks and Christina Parks Cross.
The grief swept over me like a chill fog thick with regret and loss. Tears began to dribble down my cheeks as I whispered, “I’m sorry I’ve never been here before, Mom. I’m sorry about…everything.”
I stood there trying to remember the last time I’d seen my mother, and I couldn’t. She’d been dying in the house. I was sure of that because my aunts were there a lot, caring for her. But I couldn’t conjure her up.
Disturbed by that, I wiped at my tears, walked around the back, and looked at the inscriptions.
BROCK WILLIAM PARKS
GREEN BERET
HERO TO HIS NATION
CHRISTINA PARKS CROSS
LOVING MOTHER
I was flooded with emotions and images of my mother on her best days, when she was loving, caring, and so much fun to be around. I could have sworn I heard her singing then, and it took everything I had to make it back to the car.
Bree watched me with tear-filled eyes. “She’s there?”
I nodded, and then broke down sobbing. “She’s been there for all these years, Bree. And I’ve…never…been here. Not once. In all this time, I never even wondered where she was buried. I mean, my God, who does that? What kind of son am I?”