I hunched my shoulders and appeared to agree. But I knew exactly where my years went, made it my business to plan them, and mostly enjoy them. We made small talk, then eventually I found my footing and inched toward something real. “How your brothers?”

This shifted her mood, so she stopped smiling and said, “We lost Quan that fall. Got shot by some dudes from the Low End.” Hearing that phrase, Low End, gave me goose bumps. The feeling included a facial expression because Stacia matched mine. Then the jig was up; we couldn’t pretend that we weren’t both sitting on some heavy memories.

“What happened to you on the day of the raid?” I asked. She looked around the store, nervous. Then glanced out of the window into the parking lot. I followed her eyes, then asked, “You want to talk in my car?”

She nodded.

Behind the shelter of locked doors with the heat humming softly, Stacia filled me in. “We wasn’t talking at the time, but I went down to the square hoping you and Precious was playing rope.”

“We stopped going to the square by then because we were hiding from you and your sisters,” I told her, probably with more bite in my voice than I intended.

She felt it, nodded fast with a face full of regret. She paused for a second, then continued. “Before I could go down the porch to look for you and Precious, my little brothers and sister popped around the corner, all out of breath, talking at the same time, shook. Moon and Jet got these panicked eyes and Ty got both arms wrapped around my thigh, crying into my leg. Moon and Jet talking over each other, but I heard one of them say, ‘They took Gail.’

“‘What?’ I say, then Moon repeat it: ‘Police got Gail.’ Moon face serious when she tell me, ‘Quan say come on.’

“‘Where they take her from?’ They all say, ‘The house.’ I run for the stairs, but turn back to tell them not to follow me. ‘Where Quan at?’

“‘In his car, by Farren,’ they say. I tell them to go back to the car, that I’m coming. Then I take the stairs two at a time.”

While Stacia told me her story, my mind wandered again, to the day when I walked into her bloody apartment, missing furniture and electronics. I’m twelve again and she is too, her face twisting and lips smacking the way they used to when we were children. I know what she’s going to find in that apartment.