“There, you got it.”

So much talking and thinking exhausted Ptolemy. Then remembering that Reggie was dead and that they’d never go to the bank again made him sad.

Robyn squeezed his hand and tilted her head to the side so that he’d have to notice her.

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Grey,” she said. “It’s all gonna be all right.”

“How?”

“Reggie gonna go to heaven an’ Hilly gonna go to hell.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I am,” Robyn said, her young features set with grim certainty.

Such serious intentions on a child’s face made Ptolemy smile. His smile infected her and soon they were giggling together, holding hands, sitting next to Reggie’s corpse.

After a while the girl stood up, pulling Ptolemy to his feet. Together they left the dead man and went back down the long hall. When they approached the room where the woman cried, Ptolemy asked, “Is that the girlfriend?”

“They been married for three years.”

“His wife?” Ptolemy remembered that Reggie was gone for four days once because of his wedding. Then he’d gotten a job at a supermarket and would bring him strawberry jam and old-fashioned crunchy peanut butter almost every week.

Robyn nodded. “And their children. She sat down in Niecie’s room on the way back from seein’ Reggie an’ now she cain’t stop cryin’.”

Ptolemy pushed the door open and walked in.

The room was filled with yellow light. The walls and the floor were dark, dark blue. A high-yellow woman was slumped across the blue sheets of the bed, crying, crying. Lying next to her head was a toddler girl in fetal position and sucking her thumb. Next to the girl sat a five-year-old boy who was turning the pages of a book. Both children were much darker than their mother.

The boy looked up when Ptolemy and then Robyn came in.

“You readin’ that book, boy?” Ptolemy asked slowly as if each word was a heavy weight on his tongue.

The boy nodded.