“Nah,” said Terrence in a manufactured drawl. “Us all looks alike. Y’all thinking of someone else, boss.”

I leaned against Terrence’s bloodied shirt. He gave off an electric current that felt like it would fry me on the spot. He took a step to the side. He did not want my protection. To the older cop I said, “He has a key. He lives here. There was no burglary.” I stapled a smile across my mug. “It’s a simple mistake. Right? Charlie?”

“I guess I made a mistake.” Charlie felt gingerly over his swelling eye. “How was I to know you and—”

“Shut up. It’s a simple mistake.”

“Well, maybe.” The cop folded up the paperwork, and would have pocketed it.

I stopped him. I know how this works. I was not Leon Greene’s granddaughter for nothing. I held out my hand. “No, I need you to tear that up and give it to me.”

“But it’s official.”

“Not anymore, it’s not. It just cost me one thousand dollars for it not to be official.”

Reluctantly the older cop tore up his forms and put them in my hand. They gave Terrence back his wallet, but not before he opened it, took out the cash, and gave it to the kid with acne scars. He opened Charlie’s wallet and took out the cash, and gave that to him too. They both went down the stairs, the older one whistling “Dixie.”

Terrence walked to the rail that framed the porch. Stood there, clutching, roiling his fists around the banister.

Charlie’s lip curled in disgust. “I don’t care what you paid that bastard cop, Roxanne, the world’s gonna find out you’ve been sleeping with a Negro, and you’re gonna be murdered in the press, and I’m gonna laugh.”

“Get the hell out of here,” said Terrence over his shoulder. And at that Charlie and his surfboard went downstairs.

People who had been watching this fracas from the beach slowly broke up their little gawking groups, and went their own ways. The waves washed in and out. Otherwise everything was eerily quiet; a muffled sunset floated uneasily at the horizon. I moved to embrace Terrence, but he shook me off. He stood as though rooted, as though he were some ten-ton black marble idol. His face was devoid of emotion, but his eyes were alive with fire. I felt as though I were living in geologic time, waiting for the rough fissures of earth to creak and teeter and realign the universe. After an eon, Terrence finally turned to me. I wrapped my arms around him, held him, pressing my cheek against his chest. I could hear his heart thudding, and his breath rasping, as though choking down emotion he could hardly control. Then he let go of me and went inside. I heard the bathroom door slam shut.