Growing up without knowledge of her biological parents would have been an insurmountable obstacle for many children, but Monica had the iron-willed Lily in her corner. She had blossomed under Lily’s loving but stern parenting style. Zoomed through school with stellar grades and graduated as valedictorian of her high school. Finished summa cum laude at Spelman. Went to Duke Medical School. Came back home to ATL and did her residency in pediatrics at Emory, where Troy was also completing his residency in radiology. They had been together ever since.

“She was all I had,” Monica said softly. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, but couldn’t stanch the steady trickle of tears.

Troy took his handkerchief and gently brushed it across her damp cheeks. He hated to see her in pain, wished there was something he could do to alleviate her anguish, but this was one of those rare times when even his considerable powers of persuasion came up short. There was nothing to do but to allow grief to burn through her.

“She was all I had,” Monica said again, in a broken voice.

“You have us, baby,” Troy said, and squeezed her, but he might as well have been speaking to Monica from the bottom of the sea.

The choir was singing at a feverish pitch:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see . . .

The sanctuary’s acoustics amplified the voices of the gifted choir. The three-piece band—keyboardist, drummer, and guitarist— played the old song with all the verve of touring musicians rocking at Phillips Arena in front of a crowd of thousands. He doubted there was a dry eye in the whole building.

His cell phone vibrated in his suit jacket pocket. His secondary phone. It was in poor taste to step out, but the truth was, he needed some fresh air or else he was going to implode.

He kissed Monica on the temple, told her he’d be right back. Immersed in grief, she barely registered his presence anyway. But as he rose from the pew, his mother gave him a questioning glance, and Junior looked as if he wanted to hop out of her lap and go with him. He ignored both of them.

The funeral attendees favored him with sympathetic looks as he hurried down the long aisle. It was a sea of grief-stricken faces, most of them black, but many white, Hispanic, and Asian, too. Lily’s charity had known no color.

“God bless you, Dr. Stephens,” the usher said, and opened the sanctuary doors for Troy.