Two Black SUVs Rolled Into My Aunt’s Backyard

toolbox.

None of them looked at the hamburgers.

Pierce came straight across the lawn.

He did clock the family. All of them. One sweep. Chairs, fence line, side gate, neighboring yard, tree line beyond the shed. Then me.

“Reed.”

That was all.

No hello.

I stepped away from the picnic table. “Sir.”

My mother blinked. “Sir?”

Pierce handed me a phone that wasn’t continue reading …