“Maybe so, but it’s not why I’m marrying Bree,” I told her. “And it’s not a good enough reason to either.”

“Well, I can think of worse. Just don’t blow it, mister,” she said, and sat back again with a wink to let me know she was joking.

Half joking anyway.

Chapter 38

I SHOWED UP at St. Anthony’s that morning feeling pretty good about the way the day had started. My conversation with Nana was a little hard, but productive, I thought. It felt as if we were on the same team again. Maybe it was a sign that things were looking up in general.

Then again — maybe not.

Bronson James’s social worker, Lorraine Solie, was waiting for me in the hall when I got there. As soon as I saw how red and puffy her eyes were, my stomach dropped.

“Lorraine? What’s happened?”

She started to explain, and then she just broke down in tears. Lorraine was tall and very thin, but I’d seen her hold her own with some very rough characters. This could mean only that the worst kind of thing had happened.

I ushered her into the office, and we sat down on the vinyl couch where Bronson usually perched for our sessions.

I finally had to ask, “Lorraine, is he dead?”

“No,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But he’s been shot, Alex. He’s in the hospital with a bullet in his head, and they don’t think he’s going to wake up.”

I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d always tried not to think of as an inevitability for Bronson. It was also why I had tried my best not to care too much about the boy, and had failed.

“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me everything. Please.”

Slowly, Lorraine choked out the rest of the story. He had apparently made a robbery attempt on a liquor store in Congress Heights — a place called Cross Country Liquors, she said. The name — Cross — was enough of a coincidence that I noticed, but I didn’t make too much of it. My mind was on Bronson, and little else.

This was the boy’s first actual armed-robbery attempt, as far as either of us knew. He’d brought a handgun into the store, but the owner had one, too — no surprise. Congress Heights was one of MPD’s designated hot spots for violent crimes. Part of the problem was that the locals had gotten fed up and started fighting back — in the street, at home, and in their places of business.

There had been an argument. Bronson fired first and missed. The man returned fire and struck Bronson in the back of the head. Pop-Pop was lucky just to be alive, if that’s what you could call it.

“Where is he, Lorraine? I have to go see him.”