Chapter 69

She replied with a question for a question. “Will it be dangerous?”

I hemmed. I hemmed some more. I could’ve made a nice frock I hemmed so much. “Um…”

“You’re asking your own mother to risk her life?”

I squinted at my phone. “Isn’t that what mothers do?”

She laughed. “Show me that in that manual.”

“You’ll be in disguise,” I told her. “Plus, you’ll be in disguise as a cop. Plus, it’ll be dark, what with it being a bar. Plus, you’ll be helping your son.”

“June nineteenth,” she said.

I scratched my head. “What is the holiday that commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery, Alex?”

“No,” she replied. “That’s the day you’re taking your grandmother to get her hair and nails done, thereby freeing me from myslavery. However temporarily.”

“Not quite a fair comparison, Ma.”

“Take it or leave it, Barry.”

“You’re extorting your own son.”

I sensed a shrug on the other end of the line. “I can live with that.”