Page 25 of The Best Shot

YASMINE

Istood on my mother’s porch and debated whether to knock.

Stupid.

I’d grown up behind that door. Still had a key somewhere in a drawer back at my apartment that I hadn’t touched in years. But right then, with the siding peeling in the same old spots and Mrs. Johnson’s wind chimes tinkling that same thin, metallic song, I couldn’t make myself walk in.

I knocked. Waited.

Nothing.

I tried the handle. Unlocked.

“Mama?” I called.

The living room was spotless. Mama’s house always was. Clean lines, careful bargains, nothing out of place until Shaun forgot the rules applied to him. A game controller sat facedown on the couch cushion, and a Gatorade bottle sweated a ring onto the end table she’d spent three weekends refinishing.

Seemed about right.

“Yasmine! You came.”

She appeared from the kitchen, dish towel in hand, smile at full brightness, and pulled me into a hug that smelled like Palmer’s and sweet potatoes going caramelized in the oven. Her hair was pulled back, just starting to gray at the temples.

“Hey, Mama.”

“Hungry? I made chicken and rice.”

I followed her into the kitchen and stopped short. Shaun was leaning in the hallway doorway.

He wore dark sweatpants and a T-shirt gone soft from too many washes. Shaun had Dad’s broader build where I’d gotten Mama’s long, lean one, but there was enough shared between us that nobody ever had to ask if we were related. The beard was new since the last time I’d seen him, more neglect than intention.

“Hey,” I said.

He took his time about it. “Yasmine.”

Mama stepped between us before the silence could harden. “You want sweet tea?”

“Yeah.”

I looked around the kitchen while she poured, mostly because it gave me somewhere to put my eyes.

“Did you do something different in here, Mama?”

“The curtains,” she said, nodding toward the window over the sink. “Found them on clearance.”

They were new, yellow checked and cheerful.

“They’re nice.”

I glanced toward the hallway. “CeeCee upstairs? I should go say hi.”

Mama’s hand paused on the pitcher.

Then she kept pouring.

“She’s not here.”

My attention went to the back door. CeeCee’s bag wasn’t on its usual hook. It was eight o’clock on a Tuesday. She’d be nowhere else but home.