Who else would it be?

Grandma led us to the kitchen, where all laid out on a big wooden table was a banquet’s worth of food. Biscuits and gravy, collard greens, roast turkey with cranberry sauce, and homemade mac and cheese, with a fruit salad on the side. I mean, it was the whole Thanksgiving treatment complete with napkins folded, knives and plates and forks at the ready.

My mouth hung open all drooling and silly, and I realized just how long it had been since we last ate. We sat down at the table with Grandma at the head and Murphy and me on either side of her.

“I cooked every bit of it for you,” said Grandma. “I figured y’all two would be hungry.”

“You figured right,” said Murphy. “Holy shit.”

Grandma’s smile flinched a little at the curse, but she didn’t say anything.

“How did you know we were coming?” I said.

“I had a premonition,” she said. “I get those from time to time.”

A premonition? That was like a vision, wasn’t it? Did Grandma have visions too?

Grandma seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. She smiled at me and reached her hand out and placed it on my forehead. It shocked me, like when you walk around on carpet barefoot and then touch a door handle. I jerked backward a little, and Grandma frowned.

“Then it’s true, isn’t it?” said Grandma. “My Jenny’s dead.”

I didn’t know what to say. We all just sat there silent for a moment before Murphy finally spoke.

“Yes,” she said. “She died a few days ago.”

Grandma sucked in a deep breath and let it out real slow. “How did it happen?”

“A car wreck,” I said.

It was like something broke in Grandma then. Her eyelids fluttered, and her head lolled a little to the side, and for a second, I was worried she might keel over. But the moment passed, and Grandma shook her head and smiled at us, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin.

“My goodness,” she said. “I’ve got all this food prepared. We mustn’t let it get cold.”

I looked at Murphy, and she looked back at me and nodded.

“There’s something else we need to tell you,” I said, “about Mom’s death.”

“What is it, children?” said Grandma.

“We think our stepdad, Horace, killed her,” said Murphy.

“We think he sabotaged her car,” I said, “to get our trust. I mean, the money you set aside for us.”

“He adopted us,” said Murphy. “Illegally.”

“That’s our theory, anyhow,” I said.

Grandma scrunched up her eyebrows at us.

“Do you have proof of this?” she said. “Or is it all speculation?”

“Yeah, we’ve got proof,” said Murphy. “We’ve got documents showing the adoption, and we can testify that they were forged.”

“Also we heard a fight he and Mom had on the night she crashed,” I said. “She drove off hollering about how something was going to end now. She had to mean her marriage to Horace.”