“Are you sure you saw my mom?” João asked twenty minutes later.
Imani crawled up onto the couch with me and rested her head on my chest, frowning. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that she was there. I was so nervous that Ana wasn’t with her, so I went to your house. By the time I got there, they were already home. I don’t know how she got back so quickly, but …”
“But?” João asked, sticking a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it up, the way he did when he was nervous. João always brushed it off as something he did to look cool, but he had started smoking after a doctor diagnosed Ana with HIV.
“But I’m sure, João. I saw her.”
Shrugging on his coat, João grabbed his keys and walked up the stairs and out the basement door, leaving me with Allie and Imani for the night.
Allie slept on on
