“Malcolm, baby. Are you there? Baby, please pick up the phone.”
Silence.
“All right, baby. You must not be there. I was just going through some old family photo albums. You keep drifting across my mind. Baby, I’m getting a little worried about you. I haven’t heard or seen you since the funeral. Give me a call.”
At first Malcolm had no intentions of calling any of them back this late, but there was something about his mother’s voice that tugged at his soul and made him pick up the phone and punch in her number. Even as he listened to the phone ring, he chastised himself for calling so late. She was probably asleep, he reasoned, and even hoped.
“I’ll call her tomorrow,” he said, and started to hang up.
“Hello?” His mother’s soft southern twang filtered over the line. “Malcolm?”
“Hey, Mom,” he answered with an aloofness he didn’t feel. “How are you?”
“Actually, that’s the question I wanted to ask you. Are you all right, baby?”
No was what he wanted to say, but he had some sense to at least pretend he was keeping it together. “Yeah. I’m all right. How are you holding up?”
“Well…I guess I’m doing about as well as can be expected.” Her voice grew heavier with each word. “I wish you were around more, though. Why haven’t you been by?”
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