SAM HURRIES AWAY, LEAVING IT ALL unfinished. Leaving all the wrong things said and unsaid. I stumble toward the park, collapse on a bench. My shoulders shake with sobs. There has to be a reason—a good reason, a normal reason—why Sam is taking money from a white cop in a secret meeting. He can’t be the traitor, I know it in my gut, but my mind keeps going back there and I can’t get my thoughts off this train.
Cherry finds me, finds my little shopping bag all loose and strewn about me. She sits down beside me. “I wasn’t gone that long,” she says. “What happened?”
My response is to start sobbing louder. I can’t bring myself to say the truth out loud. Cherry slides her arm around me. “I’ve never seen anyone this upset to stop shopping,” she quips. I shake my head. I need her to know I’m not an idiot.
Sighing, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a lacy handkerchief. I dry the tears off my cheeks and gradually gasp myself calm.
“You want to talk about it?” Cherry says.
“No.” I jump to my feet. “Let’s go.”
It’s terrible, what I’ve done. To accuse Sam of something so awful. After Steve died at the hands of the pigs, of course Sam would never . . . but he didn’t give me any explanation. My mind works, trying to fashion one.
Sam lost the money and the man returned it. But why would Sam have that kind of cash in the first place? Even if it was all one dollar bills, it was too thick to be his allowance. And those bills felt crisp and new.
Sam placed a bet and the man is paying him his winnings. But Sam wouldn’t know a bookie from a cookie, and anyway no one I know would lay a bet with somebody white.
The man works with Sam’s father. The money belongs to him. I can almost sink my teeth into that one.
It wasn’t money in the envelope at all, it only felt like it. It was . . . papers cut to the size of money. Tickets? Receipts? Something important and rare that the Panthers might need. Nothing comes to mind.
I can’t sleep for worrying about it. I don’t know what to do. I’m Leroy’s eyes and ears. I’m supposed to tell him when things happen. Do I share my suspicions, even though I’m sure they can’t be true? What if Sam can’t explain, and he did do something he shouldn’t? How would I feel if I turned him in?