Part One: What the Note Said
The phone rang at two in the morning on a Tuesday in November, fourteen years back. I still remember the cold bite of the kitchen tile against my bare feet when I picked up, and the way Reggie’s voice cracked apart before he could even get a full sentence out.
“Gabriel. She’s gone. Yolanda’s gone.”
I gripped the receiver hard enough that my own knuckles went white. My best friend’s wife, Yolanda, was only thirty-one years old. An aneurysm, Reggie told me. No warning whatsoever beforehand. Their son, Deshawn, was four years old, sound asleep in the next room, fully expecting his mother to be there waiting when he woke up for breakfast.
“I can’t do this, Gabriel. I genuinely can’t,” Reggie kept repeating.
“I’m so sorry, buddy. I’ll be there first thing in the morning. Just hold on until then.”
