“Did you get the key?”
For a second the whole room went silent.
“I got the key.”
He nodded, satisfied, and let go, and then he asked me who I worked for now, and the good day was over.
But he asked.
Fourteen months in that room and at some level beneath the damage, my father was still waiting to hear about the key.
The pressure came the next week.
Not from Vonetta.
From my aunt Delphine, my father’s sister, seventy-six, who I had not heard from in three years.
“Josiah.
Honey.
Vonetta called me crying.”
“I’m sure.”
“She says you’ve hired a lawyer against her.
She says you’ve been to see Clayton and got him agitated.”
“Aunt Del.
She told me he was d*ad.”
Silence on that line went nine seconds.
“She told me he was in a facility,” my aunt said slowly.
