"Move or I'll make you move." Blake looked down at the box of family photos. Water was seeping through the bottom. He could see the corner of the wedding album through a tear in the cardboard, the cover already darkening. His mother's polaroids were in there.
The ones from before he was born. The ones where she was young and smiling and didn't have lines on her face yet. He picked up the box carefully, held it against his soaked chest, and carried it inside. He set it on the kitchen floor and opened the flaps. Water dripped onto the tile.
The top album, Amara's Baby Pictures, was damp but intact. He set it aside carefully, shaking droplets from the laminated cover. The wedding album was worse. The white leather cover had buckled and darkened to gray along the edges. He opened it.
The first page, him and his wife at the altar, her dress catching the light, his hand on her waist was wrinkled but visible. He turned to the next page. Water had pulled in the spine and bled across three photos of his mother dancing at the reception. Ruth Powell, 51 years old in that picture, in the blue dress she'd saved four months to buy, spinning with her grandson on her hip. The colors were running.
Her face was dissolving into the background. He closed the album. The Polaroids were at the bottom, sitting in 2 in of water. He reached in and pulled them out one by one. His mother at 23 holding baby Blake on the steps of their apartment in Greyfield.
His mother and his aunt at a Fourth of July barbecue laughing at something off camera. His mother's high school graduation portrait, the only copy that existed. The emulsion was already lifting from the paper. In an hour, the image would be gone. These weren't photographs.
They were the only proof that a young black woman in Greyfield had lived, had laughed, had raised two children alone, and never once asked anyone for pity. And a woman in a tennis skirt had just hosed them down because she didn't like the color of his skin. Blake laid the polaroids on the counter in a row. He pressed his palms flat against the granite. He breathed.
He didn't cry. He was past that, too. Outside, Diane stood on the driveway, chest heaving, hose at her feet. She was waiting, waiting for him to come back out, swinging, cursing, giving her the excuse she needed. He came back out, walked past the hose, past her, straight to the truck, pulled out another box.
That's when she broke. She grabbed her phone, turned her back to him, and dialed 911. Her voice changed instantly. The screaming, commanding Diane vanished. In her place was a small, frightened woman, fragile, helpless.
The tremble was back, and it was perfect. Hello. Yes, I need help. There's a black male who's been parked in front of a vacant house on Willowbrook Lane. I asked him to leave and he threatened me.
He walked toward me and said, "You need to stop. I'm scared. He keeps reaching into the back of his truck. I think he's hiding something. Drugs or a weapon.