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kiss smack and said dryly to Ethan, “Have a good day.” He stood to his feet, and she held up a hand. “I’ll see myself out, thanks.”

After Denise left, Ethan grabbed his food and drink and sat across from Amara.

“What’s going on with her?”

“Nothing. She just—nothing.”

“What?” Ethan asked in between bites of his salad.

“You have a bit of egg on your mouth.”

“Where?” He licked the left and right multiple times as Amara laughed at his failing. She then got up from the table and used her finger to flick it away at the same time that Ethan tipped his head down to kiss her wrist. He moved his hands underneath her robe and slapped her ass before he laid her down on the table, pushing the rest of the Crown Fried Chicken off to the far side.

This is how their dynamic always worked: a fight or disagreement served as the best kind of foreplay. But this time, however, Amara did not come. He finished without her and kissed her on the lips before heading into their bedroom to grab his gym clothes. This is also how their routine was: they slept together, he worked out in the gym within the apartment building, he’d come up to shower, and if he wasn’t working on a brief himself either in the living room or at his office in Midtown, he would lie in bed with her. Once Ethan was out the door, she threw all of the Crown Fried Chicken in the trash and splashed cold water from the kitchen sink faucet on her face and neck.

From there, Amara walked past her living room to her bedroom, where she opened the first drawer of her nightstand on her side of the bed. Tucked toward the middle pages of the Book of Common Prayer was the royal-blue-and-crystal-bead eleke that she’d kept safe ever since Hallow’s birth. She made the sign of the cross over her body then held the eleke to her abdomen, took three large breaths, and a torrent of tears gave out until she couldn’t see directly in front of her.

All Amara needed was five minutes. Five minutes to feel the grief and move on. Every part of her life was systematized, from the arguments and make-up sex with Ethan to the cathartic cries whenever a case filled her with remorse. She would hold the eleke with her fingers around the beads like a rosary and remember the greatest sacrifice she made to achieve her dreams. She would remember the crisp October sky when her water broke and the comets that shot across the darkness as she bore down to usher her child into the world. Afterward, she’d return the eleke to the inside of the Book of Common Prayer and pull out the bottom drawer of the same nightstand, where pink, blue, green, and yellow sticky notes marked the many pages of a thick, black notebook. Amara held that notebook to her chest, carried it into the living room, and opened the pages beside her laptop, where she scoured the dark web and other corners of the internet for the other remembrance of the sacrifices she made that filed into one sharp purpose: to take down the Melancons.

She had been studying independently for years. There existed a thriving network of people who spoke of caulbearing women through coded language on the blogs and private message boards for which she developed multiple aliases and avatars to gain access. On some nights, she would call a driver to take her by the Melancon brownstone, where she would sketch the exterior before she expanded into sketching the entire block. There was no stoop or doorknob on West 145th and Frederick Douglass whose features she didn’t know. On weekends, she would travel to the New York Public Library near Bryant Park to descend into the large columns and rows of books full of folklore and occultism, searching for anything she could find about cauls, caul selling, and birthing. From there she pored over how to translate these practices into illegality. None of her colleagues knew about her research, and she didn’t confide in Ethan about it either. She did not want anyone stifling the passion that preceded her becoming an assistant DA, and she especially did not need anyone interrupting her course when she believed that she was on the precipice of quenching her thirst for revenge.

Once the frequency at which the news outlets were reporting on Asali Givens began to taper off (though not by much), Amara ordered another driver to take her uptown to the 32nd Precinct, where she had not visited since she was in her early twenties. She forewent makeup and other accoutrements because she wanted to make sure Officer Robinson could recognize her. Unlike in the past, when she entered the precinct and everyone was running to and from the main area to file papers or discuss ongoing investigations, when Amara entered, all the conversations gradually slowed down, and everyone lifted their head to see what she would say or do. Amara was immediately drawn to a few officers whose uniform shirts were stained pink and whose red faces were dotted with seeds.

“What happened here?” Amara asked.

“Protestors,” one officer responded while removing chunks of tomatoes from his scalp and groaning as he tossed them into a nearby garbage can.

Rapidly changing the subject, Amara asked, “I’m looking for an Officer Robinson. Is she here?”

“Yvonne Robinson?” someone else asked.

“I don’t remember her first name.”

“Kinda heavyset, short curly hair, nice smile?” another asked.

“Yes, that’s her!”

“She retired a few years back, but that man back there was close friends with her if you’re looking for more details.”

Amara saw a large office with glass windows toward the back of the main area. A Black man with a thick moustache of gray and black hairs was whirling around while sitting in his chair, moving between his desk and the coffee machine. She promptly knocked on the door then entered before the officer had a chance