I stayed at the hospital until nine, promised Billie I’d be back in the morning, and headed home. Given what had happened the last time I’d exited GW Medical Center and looked for a cab, my head was turning three-sixty.
I saw no threat, however, and stepped to the curb. As I did, Soneji’s voice from earlier in the day echoed back to me.
I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.
It sounded so much like Gary, it was scary. I’d had multiple conversations with him over the years, and Soneji’s tone and delivery were unmistakable.
After I’d gotten into the cab and given the driver my home address, I almost pushed these thoughts aside. But then I blinked, remembering how his voice had cracked weirdly and turned hoarse when he said, “I know I didn’t hit you. I did, you would have gone down like the shit bag you are.”
It sounded like he had something wrong in his throat. Cancer? Polyps? Or were his vocal cords just straining under the tensions wound up inside him?
I tried to remember every nuance of our encounter in the pine barrens, the way he’d swaggered into the trees, finger held high. Where was the gun then? Had he been trying to lure me in for a shot?
In retrospect, it felt like he had, and I’d fallen for it. Where was all the training I’d done? The protocol? I’d reacted on emotion, charging into the pines after him. Just the way Soneji had wanted me to.
That bothered me because it made me realize that Soneji understood me, could predict my impulses the way I could predict his a dozen years before. I mean, how else would he have known to be at the cemetery when I was there to exhume his body? What or who had tipped him?
I had no answers for that other than the possibility Soneji or The Soneji had us bugged. Or had it just seemed the rational thing to do at some point, given the fact that I’d seen someone who looked just like him at least three times now?
These unanswerable questions weighed on me the entire ride home. I felt depressed climbing from the taxi and waiting for the receipt. Soneji, or whoever, was thinking ahead of me, plotting, hatching, and acting before I could respond.
Climbing the porch stairs, I was beginning to feel like I was a fish on a hook with some angler toying with me, messing with my lip.
But the second I stepped inside the house, smelled something savory coming from Nana Mama’s kitchen, and heard my son, Ali, laughing, I let it go. I let everything about the sonofabitch go.
“Dad?” Jannie said, coming down the stairs. “How’s Joh
n?”
“He’s got a fight and a half ahead of him, but he’s alive.”
“Nana Mama said it’s, like, a miracle.”
“I’d have to agree,” I said, and hugged her tight.
“Dad, look at this,” Ali called. “You can’t believe how good this looks.”
“The new TV,” Jannie said. “It’s pretty amazing.”
“What new TV?”
“Nana Mama and Ali ordered it off the internet. They just installed it.”
I stepped into our once cozy television room to see it had been transformed into a home theater, with new leather chairs, and a huge, curved 4K resolution HD screen on the far wall. Ali had on a repeat of The Walking Dead, one of his favorites, and the zombies looked like they were right there in the room with us.
“You should see when we switch it to 3D, Dad!” Ali said. “It’s crazy!”
“I can see that,” I said. “Does it do basketball?”
Ali took his eyes off the screen. “They’re right in the room with you.”
I smiled. “You’ll have to show me after dinner.”
“I can do that,” Ali said. “Show you how to run it from your laptop.”
I gave him the thumbs up, and then wandered through the dining room to the kitchen upgrade and great room addition we’d put on two years before.
Nana Mama was bustling at her command-center stove.