The director was still talking, something about lost files in a flood years ago, but James couldn’t hear her. The world had narrowed to the paper-thin hand on his face and the faint smell of cocoa butter and gardenias that hit him like a memory he didn’t know he had.
He stood up too fast, dizzy.
“Ma’am,” he managed, voice cracked in half, “what did you say?”
She just looked at him, eyes wet, and whispered again, “My James.”
He didn’t remember leaving the check. He didn’t remember driving home. He only remembered those eyes and that whisper following him all the way back to the mansion that suddenly felt too big and too empty.
That night he tore through the attic until he found the box Aunt Evelyn had told him never to open. Inside was one photograph: a beautiful young Black woman in a yellow sundress holding a chubby toddler on her hip, both of them laughing at the camera.
On the back, in faded ink: Loretta & James – 1984
He sat on the attic floor and cried like the five-year-old he’d never been allowed to be.