4. Vice Blackwell #2
“He was my brother,” Mace finished, his words coming out in just above a whisper. “I’ma miss him.”
He stepped away from the microphone before anybody could see much more than that and returned to his seat. I looked at him when he sat down, but he kept his eyes straight ahead.
Again, I let it go.
The service continued, and by the time we made it to the cemetery, I was ready for the day to be over.
Not because I wanted to leave my family, but because every minute made Sam’s death feel more permanent.
At the hospital, there had still been chaos surrounding everything.
Police asking questions. Doctors moving around.
Family coming and going. Since then, I’d stayed busy making sure my aunt didn’t have to worry about funeral arrangements or anything else.
Standing in front of a hole in the ground was different.
There was nothing left to handle.
My aunt held onto my arm while the pastor spoke. I barely heard a word he said. My attention stayed on the casket until they started lowering it, and that was when she broke down again.
“No… no, wait.”
She moved forward before I could stop her, and I caught her around the waist.
“Come on, Auntie.”
“That’s my baby, Kaiden.”
“I know.”
“They can’t put my baby down there.”
Her words damn near took me out, but I held it together for her. I turned her away from the grave and pulled her against me while she cried into my chest.
“I got you,” I told her. “I got you.”
I didn’t know how long we stood here, but I knew it was long enough for most of the crowd to start clearing out. Family members came over to hug her, and I stayed beside her until she was finally ready to leave.
Mace had barely moved.
He stood several feet away from the grave with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground where they’d just lowered Sam. Everybody else had started walking back toward their cars, but he stayed there.
I watched him for a few seconds.
Something wasn’t adding up.
I just didn’t know what it was yet.
“Kaiden...” My aunt’s voice pulled my attention away from him.
“Yeah?”
“Come by the house when you leave here.”
“You need something?”
She shook her head, no. “I have some of Sam’s things. The hospital gave them to me, and there’s some stuff at the house too. I want you to look through it.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.” She wiped beneath her eyes. “Anything. You said he wasn’t supposed to be at that hospital, right?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then maybe there’s something in his things that’ll tell you why he was there.”
My eyes went back to Mace to see him finally walking toward us.
“Yeah,” I said, turning my attention back to my aunt. “I’ll come by.”
She nodded before reaching up and touching the side of my face.
“You be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“No, you’re not.” Even with swollen eyes and tears still drying on her face, she gave me the same look she’d been giving me since I was a kid. “You think because you’re grown and got money now, I don’t know you. I know exactly how you get when somebody messes with your family.”
I couldn’t even argue with her.
She knew me too well.
“I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”
“That’s what worries me. Your idea of stupid and mine ain’t never been the same. I want you to find out who killed my baby, but let the law handle them their way. Whatever information you get, you take it straight to the police.”
That almost made me laugh. She knew better than that.
“Go home, Auntie.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Sometimes I got to.”
She slapped my arm before pulling me into another hug. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I watched one of my cousins walk her toward the car before turning back toward Mace just as he stopped beside me.
“You heading to your aunt’s?” he asked.
“Yeah. She got Sam’s stuff from the hospital.”
Something moved across his face so quickly I almost missed it.
“What stuff?”
I just looked at him for a while. Then said, “Don’t know yet.”
He nodded, but the question sat with me.
Mace had spent the entire day looking like somebody had taken something from him that he couldn’t get back. Now, for the first time since we’d left my house, he looked nervous.
I didn’t say anything about it. I just headed toward the car.
The ride to my aunt’s house wasn’t much different from the ride to the church.
Mace kept his attention on the road while I sat here thinking about the way his expression had changed when I mentioned Sam’s belongings.
It could’ve meant nothing. Sam worked with us, so there was a good chance Mace was wondering the same thing I was.
If there was anything on Sam’s phone that could tell us why he’d been at Grady or who he’d been dealing with before he died, we needed to find it.
Still, something about Mace had been bothering me all day.
I looked over at him. “You good?”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel before he glanced in my direction. “You already asked me that.”
“And you gave me the same bullshit answer you always give.”
“What you want me to say, Vice? My nigga dead.”
There was enough irritation in his voice to let me know I’d hit a nerve, but I didn’t take it personal. Shit, I had lost my cousin, so I would’ve been the same way. “I know.”
“Then stop asking me if I’m good. I’m not.”
I nodded and looked out the window. That was probably the most honest answer he’d given me since Sam died, so I left it alone.
Everybody grieved differently, and Mace had been around long enough to be considered family.
If he needed to be pissed off at the world for a while, I understood that better than anybody.
My aunt’s house was already full when we got here.
Most of the family had come back after the burial, and judging by the number of cars lining the street, nobody planned on leaving anytime soon.
Food covered every inch of the kitchen counters, kids moved through the house while the adults talked over one another, and every few minutes somebody stopped my aunt to ask if she needed anything.
She always said no. That was just her. She could be falling apart and still worry about everybody else before herself.
I found her sitting at the kitchen table with two of my older cousins when I walked in. She looked exhausted, but the second she saw me, she waved me over.
“There you are,” she said.
“Told you I was coming.”
“You tell me a lot of things.”
I bent down and kissed her cheek before pulling out the chair beside her. “You been eating?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t come in my house asking me if I ate like I’m one of your little girlfriends.”
I stared at her for a second before I laughed. “What the hell that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired of people asking me if I ate.”
One of my cousins laughed from across the table. “I asked her the same thing.”
“And I told you to mind your business too.”
I couldn’t do shit but shake my head at her.
Even after burying her son, she still had enough in her to fuss at everybody around her.
I knew it wouldn’t last, though. Grief came in waves, and right now the house was full enough to keep her distracted.
Eventually everybody would go home, the food would stop coming, and she’d be left with the kind of silence no mother should have to sit in.
I reached over and squeezed her hand. “You know I got you, right?”
Her expression softened. “I know, baby.”
“You need anything, you call me.”
“I know.”
“I mean anything.”
“Kaiden, I heard you the first two times.”
“Just making sure.”
She gave my hand a squeeze before letting it go. “Come on. Let me give you that stuff before I forget.”
I followed her down the hallway toward the bedroom Sam used whenever he stayed over. He hadn’t lived there in years, but she’d never completely changed the room. There were still old pictures on the dresser and a few things in the closet he probably hadn’t touched since he was a teenager.
My aunt walked over to the bed and picked up a plastic hospital bag.
“This is everything they gave me.”
I took it from her and looked inside. Sam’s wallet, keys, watch and a few other things sat at the bottom. His phone was there too, the screen cracked across one corner.
“They said that was everything he had on him,” she explained. “I don’t know if there’s anything in there that can help you, but I figured you’d know what to look for.”
“I’ll go through it.”
She nodded, but instead of leaving, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the bag in my hand.
“I keep trying to figure out what he was doing there.”
“So do I.”
“He didn’t say anything to you?”
“No.”
“What about Mace?”
The question caught my attention, causing me to frown. “What about him?”
“I don’t know. Them two talked all the time.”
“Sam talked to everybody.”
“Not like he talked to Mace.” Before I could ask what she meant, she shook her head and waved it off. “Maybe I’m thinking too much. I don’t know. I just keep going over everything, trying to figure out if I missed something.”
“You didn’t.”
“How you know?”
“Because Sam wasn’t a lil’ boy, Auntie. If he wanted you to know something, he would’ve told you.”
“That don’t mean I wouldn’t have noticed.”
I sat beside her. “Auntie, don’t do that to yourself.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I spent years doing the same thing with your mama.”
I didn’t say anything.
She didn’t talk about my mother often. Neither one of us did.
“For the longest time, I kept asking myself what I missed with her. What I could’ve done different. If I should’ve tried harder to get her off them drugs.” She let out a tired breath and shook her head. “Eventually, I had to accept that I couldn’t save somebody who didn’t want to be saved.”
I’d heard some version of that my whole life. My mother had chosen drugs. Chosen the streets. Chosen everything except me. By the time she died, I’d already stopped expecting anything different from her.
“You did what you could,” I told her.
“So did you.” I just looked at her. “You were a child, Kaiden. I don’t ever want you forgetting that.”
“I won’t.”