Jayden took the string in both hands and looked at the key. Then he put it over his head, catching it on one ear the way he had the other one, and tucked it under the collar of his red hoodie, and patted it flat against his chest.
“The other one was Grandma’s,” he said.
“The other one was a door out,” Leon said. “This one’s a door in.”
*
On the thirteenth of March, the following spring, a Saturday, Leon closed Carter’s Chair at noon for the first time in twenty-four years and hung a sign in the window in Quentin’s handwriting that said FAMILY BUSINESS — BACK MONDAY — GO SEE PERCY ON NORTH AVE IF IT’S AN EMERGENCY, WHICH IT ISN’T.
Odessa let them in the side door of Bethel Hope. The basement hallway was dim and empty, the Step Group room dark, the Serenity Circle room dark. Tasha walked ahead of him in her camel coat, the brass key with the 7 on it in her hand. She had paid the rent on the locker herself since November, five dollars on the first of the month into Odessa’s small palm. Andre had tried to keep paying it. She had told him no.