I recognized Aunt Tia. My sister-in-law Cilla and Nana were on the porch with the kids. Sampson was there with a girlfriend named Millie, a lawyer from the Justice Department.

Some of them waved as I pulled up, so I knew everything was all right. This wasn’t more trouble. But what was this all about?

I saw my niece Naomi and her husband, Seth Taylor, who had come all the way from Durham, North Carolina. Jerome Thurman, Rakeem Powell, and Shawn Moore were standing on the front lawn.

“Hey, Alex, good to see you,” Jerome’s deep voice boomed out at me as I passed near him on my way to the porch. I finally set down my travel bag and started shaking hands, giving out hugs, receiving back pats and kisses from all sides.

“We’re all here for you,” Naomi said. She came over to me and hugged me tightly. “We love you so much. But we’ll go away if you don’t want us here now.”

“No, no. I’m glad you’re here, Scootchie,” I said, and kissed my niece on both cheeks. A while back, she’d been abducted in Durham, North Carolina. I had been there for her, and so had Sampson. “It’s good that you and Seth are here. It’s good to see everybody. You can’t imagine how good it is.”

I hugged relatives and friends, my grandmother, my two beautiful kids, and I realized again how lucky I was to have so many good people in my life. Two teachers from the Sojourner Truth School had also come to the house. They were friends of Christine’s, and they started to cry when they came up to me. They wanted to know if any progress had been made and if there was anything they could do.

I told them that we had a witness to the abduction and that we were more hopeful than ever. The teachers were buoyed by the news, which wasn’t nearly as good as I made it sound. Nothing more had come of the one eyewitness account of the abduction. No one else had seen the white van that took away Christine.

Jannie cornered me in the backyard around nine o’clock. I had just spent half an hour with Damon in the basement, talking man to man, shadowboxing a little bit.

Damon had told me that he was having trouble remembering Christine’s face, exactly what she looked like. I told him that it happened with people and that it was all right. Then we shared a long hug.

Jannie had patiently waited to talk with me.

“My turn?” she asked.

“Absolutely, sweetheart.”

Jannie then took my hand and pulled me forward into the house. She quietly led me upstairs — not to her room, but to mine.