“Well, I don’t. And I don’t think you do either. I don’t think you even know what’s at stake. You don’t know. How could you? Never in a million years. I came here to tell you goodbye, Roxanne. I came back here to leave off your key and write you a note telling you it’s over before you got home.”

I wanted to protest and fume and fight and swear, to pound his chest and fling myself across his body, but I stopped blubbering long enough to look deeply into his eyes; they could not have been more opaque if he’d had shutters pulled over them. “I don’t understand.”

“Exactly,” he said quietly. He placed his hand on my birthmark. “You are always afraid that this is what people see of you, first and foremost, this color on your face, before you open your mouth, before they know anything else about you. That’s how they remember you. The girl with the stained cheek. Being instantly judged for something you cannot change. Being black isn’t a choice. I cannot change that. That bastard tonight with his foot on my neck, he was just loving the power he had over everyone like me, my daddy, my granddaddy, my brother. Moses Shaw.”

“Oh, what has Moses Shaw got to do with me! With us? I don’t care what all this means, I only want to hold you, to be with you forever!”

“It means I can’t be who I am and come home to you. I can’t do it. I’ve had enough.”

“Look, I know I was wrong the other day. I understand why you didn’t want to be seen with me, why you didn’t want me to drive you back to Naomi Avenue.” By now I was smearing snot and tears away from my face, wiping my hands on my skirt. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand at first. I do now. Really. It’s—”

“It’s over. When I came back from Alabama, I wanted you, I needed you, I needed to hold you and love you and be with you.”

“You love me! And I love you, and we—”

“I don’t want to love you anymore.” Terrence breathed a long, sad sigh, the longest, saddest sigh I knew I would ever hear if I lived to be a hundred. “The truth is, baby, I do love you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have brought the key back. I would have just dropped you like I’ve dropped a hundred other girls.”

“So you’re leaving me just because I’m white?”