CHAPTER 70 Nana Mama
Nana Mama
NANA MAMA SITS ON the sofa in the dimly lit living room. Her great-grandkids Jannie and Ali are asleep upstairs. So is Willow Sampson. A few hours earlier, Nana had filled them up with a supper of pork chops and garlicky greens, plus apple pie and ice cream for dessert. Comfort food at its finest.
God knows they all need comforting.
When Ali said, “This is one of Damon’s favorite meals,” Nana had had to turn away from the table. Couldn’t let the young ones see her crumble. She had to stay strong. For them. And especially for Damon.
Wherever he is.
Nana reaches up to a shelf over the sofa and pulls down a thick photo album. It’s been a long time since she looked at it. The edges are worn and some of the pages are loose. When she flips the book open, a snapshot falls onto her lap.
It’s a picture of her grandson and John Sampson back when they were young boys, sitting on the front steps of the house. John was such a regular visitor, he practically moved in. He and Alex were thick as thieves. Still are.
Nana runs her hands over the acetate sleeves, looking back through time. She sees Christina Parks, Alex’s mom, in a photo taken just a year before her death. And a smiling portrait of Alex’s father, Nana’s son Jason, long before he disappeared from their lives.
After he was gone, Nana Mama stepped up.
She’d taken Alex and his brothers in, but the older boys moved on quickly.
Alex was the youngest, not even ten years old when he moved in with her in Washington, DC.
She’d raised Alex—and pretty much raised John Sampson too—then opened her home to Alex again later, this time to help the single father raise his children while chasing down killers and trying to figure out what made them tick.
Even now that Alex had Bree, Nana finds that from time to time, she still has to remind him that family comes first.
With her, it always does.
Nana Mama has suffered plenty of tragedy and loss in her nine decades. But she cannot lose her eldest great-grandchild now. Not Damon. Simply cannot.
She flips to one of the last pages in the album and finds a picture of Damon at his high-school graduation. Smiling, beaming, so handsome.
She presses her palm to his picture and says a silent prayer—the same prayer she’s said for Damon’s father, Alex Cross, many, many times.
“Keep him safe, dear Lord, and in Thy mercy, bring him home.”