Andre was five months sober. He had a new chip in his pocket and an old one in Leon’s, waiting. He lived at his cousin Reggie’s in Randallstown, came to dinner on Sundays, drove Jayden to practice on Wednesdays with Tasha in the passenger seat, sat beside Leon in a folding chair on Tuesday nights. Last week he had asked her whether he could come home in April. She had said she would think about it. She was thinking about it. She did not know yet what she would say. Leon had not asked her, and would not.
The choir room smelled of floor wax and pressed robes. Tasha opened number seven. Loretta’s white robe still hung on its hook; neither of them had been able to take it out. On the floor of the locker behind it sat a new bag, a black duffel from Target, and inside it, Leon knew without being told, were clothes for a woman and a boy, and two birth certificates, and one thousand one hundred and forty dollars in old bills with small presidents, which Tasha had refused to spend or replace. Mr. Hoppity was not in it. Mr. Hoppity lived on Jayden’s bed and had acquired, at some point in the winter, a second red X over his other eye, by way of a dog named Biscuit who belonged to Reggie.
Tasha took a small white envelope from her coat pocket. On the front, in a hand that slanted like her mother’s, she had written: March 13, 2027.
She held it out to him. “You can read it,” she said.
He shook his head. “It’s yours.”
She looked at it a moment longer. Then she propped it against the back of the locker, beside the bundle of twenty-four envelopes, which she had put back exactly where they had been, with a new rubber band.