War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

each, and a cup of coffee, which sounded good despite the heat.
    Elijah grabbed a chocolate chip, then disappeared down the hall, probably heading to his bedroom.
    “He’s become a teenager,” I said.
    “Overnight.” She sighed, and untied her apron, hanging it on a peg in the half - kitchen. Then she led me to the table, which she had placed in front of the glass patio doors, one of the few features of her apartment that I liked better than mine.
    “I made those calls,” I said as I sat down on the nearest wooden kitchen chair, “and I was wondering if I could see that letter about Daniel’s scholarship.”
    A slight frown creased Grace’s forehead, but to her credit, she didn’t ask me any questions as she went to the small desk pushed up against the wall. She thumbed through a pile of open envelopes until she found the one she was looking for.
    Then she handed it to me.
    It was exactly as Grace had reported to me: because Daniel hadn’t completed his fall semester and hadn’t enrolled for the spring semester, he would lose his scholarship if he didn’t enroll in the upcoming semester, which was Fall of 1969.
    “That’s odd,” I said.
    “What is?” Grace sat down across from me. She had poured herself some coffee, but now she pushed the cup away from her, as if she couldn’t bear to drink it.
    “I spoke to a man in the registrar’s office who told me that Daniel had completed the fall semester. He even mentioned the grades.”
    I would have thought that St. James was looking at the wrong file if he hadn’t mentioned where Daniel had grown up and the color of his skin.
    “He did?” The news brightened Grace considerably. “That sounds more like Daniel. He always completes what he starts.”
    “But he still didn’t register for the spring semester,” I said. “He’s not at Yale.”
    Her lips thinned, and that brightness faded just as quickly as it had come. “How come they never contacted me? Aren’t they supposed to?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Everyone I spoke to made a point of reminding me that Daniel is an adult. And he is, Grace. He has the right to make his own choices. Even the police had no record of him, at least in the last few months.”
    Grace sighed. “I can’t imagine him dropping out without telling me.”
    I could. But I wasn’t his parent. I wondered if I would become this blind about Jimmy — or if I already had.
    She stood. “I can’t believe he would give up all that we worked for. That scholarship was everything. He knew that.”
    She shoved her hands in the pockets of her dress, pulling it across her back.
    “What kind of example is this for Elijah? How am I supposed to make something of other people’s children when I can’t even control my own?”
    “You got him there,” I said. “What he did after that is his business.”
    She shook her head. “College wasn’t the end. He knew that. He had proven that a black boy from a bad high school could get into one of the best schools in the world with his smarts, his willingness to work outside of class, and his stick-to- it iveness. I used to tell him that if he could get into a college, he’d fought part of the battle. That would show the world that he was good enough for all the perks a college like that provided. He could be a lawyer or a doctor or anything white folks could be, only he could be better.”
    She spoke with so much force that her body shook with each word. Yet she still didn’t face me as she talked.
    I was glad that she didn’t. Her words echoed St. James’s. Daniel had taken the view she had expressed and twisted it, trying to mold the university into a place that would be his ideal school. He had been following Grace’s plan, only in a more militant fashion.
    She sighed, pulled her hands out of her pockets and threaded them together as she turned around.
    “I guess I should thank you,” she said. “I’ll just wait until he calls me.”
    “There’s one other choice.” I