“When I got to the playground, it was ghost. Breezeway, ghost. Parking lot, ghost. Then I see Quan’s Impala parked up there on 51st Street. Moon, Ty, and Jet all squeezed in the back, crying. Quan kept the front seat open for me, and as soon as I hopped in, I whisper in his ear and tell him that Sweat dead.

“He shot straight down State with the music blasting dusties. I look over there at him and see his eyes all shiny. He trying to be strong and not cry about our dead brother. I start up too, thinking about how we left him up there on the floor, alone.

“We jump on the E-way and go out to Indiana where my brother Ed stay. The little kids in the back still crying and shit. I open the window, let the wind beat the tears off my face. When I look back at them, they hugging each other. They always been like that, them three, sticking together, keeping each other company. I look out the open window and watch cars go by us. I know ain’t none of them people got problems like us, they ain’t running away from nothing like this.”

Then just like that, she stopped talking. I wanted to know so many things, mostly if she’d heard something about Tonya. It seemed insensitive to ask. I knew that her mind was still on Sweat.

“They killed Quan right before the end of that year. We was gone set a place for him at Christmas dinner, but he ain’t make it.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer. She cut her eyes over at me but didn’t turn her head.

“I gotta get back to work, can you come back this time tomorrow?” I didn’t want to, so I searched around for a lie, but then she said, “I want to give you something,” and curiosity made me nod my head.

She opened the door, let in a blast of wind that seemed to clear out the ghosts of Robert Taylor’s past, and I drove away, planning to ask her about Tonya when I came back.

I went to the café the next day to meet her, sat up at the counter, and when the time came for her to show up, she appeared down the cereal aisle, walking toward me, but then she stopped and turned around, as if to go back. Finally, she reset and walked in my direction again.

She had a book in her hand. I thought, Really? You want to make a novel recommendation? As she got closer, I noticed that the book was thin. She threw it on the counter, then scurried away, disappearing into the thick crowd of Thanksgiving shoppers.