Chapter 12: Altadena

The mountains came first.

I had lived in Los Angeles all my life and had never really looked at them. But as Natalie’s little Corolla climbed north through Pasadena that morning, the San Gabriels rose straight out of the suburbs, purple and enormous, with a flat ribbon of smog lying along their feet. The streets grew quiet and leafy. Jacaranda branches arched over the road, the last of their violet blossoms scattered across parked cars like confetti.

“This is a beautiful place to hide,” Natalie said.

“Don’t say hide.”

“Sorry. To retire.” She glanced at the GPS. “Left at the next light.”

We had slept only a few hours. I’d called the hospital at six, and a bored voice informed me that Grace Mitchell was in surgery and could not receive visitors. I’d asked whether she was alive, and the voice had said, I’m not at liberty to say, and my stomach had dropped so far I felt it in my knees.

I hadn’t called Mason. I’d told Natalie I wasn’t ready to, and she’d looked relieved.

His text had arrived at seven, polite and brief. “Good morning. I hope you got some rest. I have a name for you, a notary in Pasadena who handled your grandmother’s estate. Can I pick you up at nine?” I’d typed Thank you, not today, deleted it, and typed I’m still sleeping, which was a lie, and sent that instead. Then I’d turned the phone face down on the dashboard and watched the road unspool.

It was a small deceit, and it didn’t feel small. Every mile towards north I thought of Grace in her white blouse saying Don’t trust the man who found you, and of how badly I wanted her to be wrong. I’d had so little kindness in the last two days that I would have given almost anything for him to be real.

“You’re doing that thing,” Natalie said.

“What thing?”

“Chewing the inside of your cheek. You do it when you’re about to cry or about to fight someone.”

“Both,” I admitted.

She reached across the gearstick and squeezed my knee. “Whoever she is, we’ll find her first.”

Mount Zion Baptist was a squat red-brick building with a white steeple and a hand-painted sign. The parking lot was nearly empty, with only a faded blue minivan parked beside the steps and a hand-lettered sign taped to the door that said Food Pantry Thursdays — All Are Welcome. Through the glass I could see rows of wooden pews and a pulpit draped in white cloth, and sunlight pouring through a stained-glass window that cast red and gold across the floor. It was the first place in three days that felt like it had never heard of me, and I stood there letting the quietness settle on my shoulders. A woman in a lilac blouse was pruning the rosebushes by the front steps, humming to herself under her breath.

She was small and brown-skinned, in her late sixties, with silver hair tied in a neat knot and reading glasses on a beaded chain. She moved with the unhurried care of a person who had spent her whole life on her feet. When our shadows fell across the flowerbed, she looked up with a polite, practised smile.

“Good morning, ladies. Service is at eleven, if you’ve come early.”

“Sister Patience Mensah?” I asked.

The smile held. But something behind it cooled.

“I’m Patience,” she said. “And you are?”

“My name is Amelia Coker. This is my friend Natalie.” I swallowed. “I think you knew my grandmother. Ruth Coker.”

The clippers stopped.

For a long moment she looked at me. She looked at my hair, my forehead, the line of my jaw, the way a person studies a painting they’ve seen reproduced in books and never expected to meet in a gallery. Her hand tightened on the shears until her knuckles turned pale. A ladybird walked across the back of her wrist, and she didn’t notice it.

“I don’t know any Ruth Coker,” she said. “Please excuse me.”

She turned toward the church. Her step was brisk, and she was already fumbling in her pocket for a key.

“Grace Mitchell sent me,” I called.

She froze mid-step.

“Grace is in the hospital,” I said, my voice shaking. “Someone stabbed her last night in her own kitchen. She told me to find you before they did. She said you’re the only one who saw.”

The roses trembled in the breeze. A mockingbird started up somewhere in the jacaranda, a bright, ridiculous song.

Patience’s shoulders sagged, slowly, as though someone had unbuckled something heavy from her back.

“Not here,” she said.

“Please—”

“Not on the street. Come inside.”

She led us through a side door into a small fellowship hall that smelled of floor wax and coffee. Folding chairs stacked against the walls. A banner that read HE MAKES ALL THINGS NEW hung crooked over a kitchen pass-through. She locked the door behind us, then checked the window blinds one by one with trembling hands.

“Sit,” she said.

We sat. She stayed standing, her back to us, and for a minute she didn’t speak at all. When she did, her voice was very low.

“Twelve years ago a woman came to my door. White hair, a church hat, a bag of oranges. She said her name was Ruth Coker and she wanted to ask me about a night at St. Anne’s. I shut the door in her face.” Her voice cracked. “I told her I’d never heard of her. I told her to go away. She stood on my porch for an hour. She said, ‘Please. I only want to know if she’s alive.’ And I said nothing.”

My throat closed.

“She came back twice more. She even left her phone number under a flowerpot. I never called.” Patience turned around slowly. Her eyes were wet. “She died, didn’t she? I heard from someone at church. I told myself it was a different Ruth.”

“Eight years ago,” I whispered.

“Eight years ago.” Patience pressed the back of her hand to her lips. “God forgive me. I let that woman die believing nobody would speak to her.”

“Mrs. Patience—”

“Just Patience, child.”

I took the cracked plastic bracelet out of my bag. I’d carried it all day, wrapped in tissue, like something that might break if I breathed on it. I set it on the folding table between us.

ST. ANNE’S — BABY GIRL — B. — 11 Oct

Patience looked at it.

The colour left her face in a slow, terrible wave. She sank into a chair, and her hand reached for the bracelet, then stopped an inch away, as if the plastic might burn her.

“I cut that off a baby’s ankle myself,” she whispered. “I told myself I’d thrown it into the incinerator.”

“Whose baby?”

“Yours.” She finally lifted her eyes to mine, and they were full of tears. “I wondered when you’d come, little B.”

Natalie reached for my hand under the table. I held on to it so tightly that I felt her bones grind.

“Tell me everything,” I said.