Cross Justice Read Online Free PDF

try Aunt Hattie’s fried rabbit!”
    “And her potato salad,” Jannie said, rolling her eyes with pleasure.
    Hattie Tate bustled out of her kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and beaming from ear to ear. “Land sakes, Alex, what took you so long to come see me?”
    I hadn’t seen my mother’s sister in nearly ten years, but Aunt Hattie hadn’t aged a day. In her early sixties, she was still slender and tall with a beautiful oval face and wide almond-shaped eyes. I’d forgotten how much she looked like my mom. Long-buried grief swirled through me again.
    “I’m sorry, Aunt Hattie,” I said. “I …”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said, tearing up. She rushed over and threw her arms around me. “You’ve given me hope just being here.”
    “We’ll do everything we can for Stefan,” I promised.
    Hattie beamed through her tears, said, “I knew you’d come. Stefan knew too.”
    “How is he?”
    Before my aunt could answer, a man in his midseventies shuffled into the room with a walker. He was dressed in slippers, brown sweatpants, and a baggy white T-shirt, and he looked around, puzzled, then became agitated.
    “Hattie!” he cried. “There’s strangers in the house!”
    My aunt was off across the room like a shot, saying soothingly, “It’s okay, Cliff. It’s just family. Alex’s family.”
    “Alex?” he said.
    “It’s me, Uncle Cliff,” I said, going to him. “Alex Cross.”
    My uncle stared at me blankly for several moments while Hattie held his elbow, rubbed his back, and said, “Alex, Christina and Jason’s boy. You remember, don’t you?”
    Uncle Cliff blinked as if spotting something bright in the deepest recesses of his failing mind. “Nah,” he said. “That Alex just a scared little boy.”
    I smiled weakly at him, said, “That boy grew up.”
    Uncle Cliff licked his lips, studied me some more, and said, “You tall like her. But you got his face. Where he got to now, your daddy?”
    Hattie’s expression tightened painfully. “Jason died a long time ago, Cliff.”
    “He did?” Cliff said, his eyes watering.
    Hattie rested her face against his arm and said, “Cliff loved your father, Alex. Your father was his best friend, isn’t that right? Cliff?”
    “When he die? Jason?”
    “Thirty-five years ago,” I said.
    My uncle frowned, said, “No, that’s … oh … Christina’s next to Brock, but Jason, he’s …”
    My aunt cocked her head. “Cliff?”
    Her husband turned puzzled again. “Man, Jason, he liked blues.”
    “And jazz,” Nana Mama said.
    “He like blues most,” Cliff insisted. “I show you?”
    Hattie softened. “You want your guitar, honey?”
    “Six-string,” he said, and he shuffled on his own to a chair, acting as if no one else were with him.
    Aunt Hattie disappeared and soon came back carrying asix-string steel guitar that I vaguely remembered from my childhood. When my uncle took the guitar, fused it to his chest, and began to play some old blues tune by heart and soul, it was as if time had rolled in reverse, and I saw myself as a five- or six-year-old sitting in my dad’s lap, listening to Clifford play that same raucous tune.
    My mother was in that memory too. She had a drink in her hand and sat with my brothers, hooting and cheering Clifford on. That memory was so real that for a second I could have sworn I smelled both my parents there in the room with me.
    My uncle played the entire song, finishing with a flourish that showed just how good he’d once been. When he stopped, everyone clapped. His face lit up at that, and he said, “You like that, you come to the show tonight, hear?”
    “What show?” Ali asked.
    “Cliff and the Midnights,” my uncle said as if Ali should have known. “We’re playing down to the …”
    His voice trailed off, and that confusion returned. He looked around for his wife, said, “Hattie? Where my gig tonight? You know I can’t be late.”
    “You won’t be,” she said, taking the guitar from