"She keeps it in her closet. Hanging on a hook. I’ve seen it. I always thought it was—" Danielle laughed, a short ugly sound with nothing in it. "I thought it was sentimental. Something of his. I thought it was the belt he wore to church."
"It was," Marcus said.
Danielle looked at him then, a long look, and he knew she was remembering the back porch in Croydon, the teapot, the roses. He knew she was putting it together, the brass buckle and the words and the boy who never touched a toy gun again, and he could not bear to watch her do it, so he looked at the plate of chicken and rice under its foil on the stove.
"She told him not to tell me," Danielle said. "She told him it was between them. She put him in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt before I got home. Jeans, Marcus. It was ninety degrees at four o’clock. I got in at half five and he was sitting at the kitchen table in jeans doing his reading log and he wouldn’t look at me, and I thought he’d done something at school, and your mother was at the stove making cornbread and humming. Humming. She asked me how my day was. She told me there was a casserole for tomorrow. Then she went to change for prayer meeting and she kissed him on the top of his head on her way out the door, and he let her." Her voice cracked on the last words and she stopped and pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth.
"He wouldn’t sit properly at dinner. He kept shifting. I thought he needed the loo. Then I ran his bath and he wouldn’t get undressed, he said he wanted a shower instead, by himself, he’s never once in his life wanted a shower, and I said don’t be silly, and I pulled his shirt over his head—"
She did not finish. She did not need to.
"I called you," she said.
Marcus took his phone out of his pocket. He knew before he looked. He had put it on driving mode in the parking deck in Chattanooga and dropped it face down on the passenger seat. Four missed calls from Danielle between 7:02 and 7:31. One text, at 7:33: Call me. It’s important. He had seen it at the gas station in Dalton. He had thought, I’ll be home in an hour and a half, whatever it is I’ll deal with it there. He had bought a coffee and a pack of peanut butter crackers and gotten back on the highway.
"I saw it," he said. "In Dalton. I thought—I thought I’d just get home."