Grip Trilogy Box Set

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Bristol’s narrowed eyes shift from me to our daughter clapping and happily cussing on the floor. My wife pokes a finger in my chest.

“Marlon James, you better fix her.”

It takes the rest of the day to reprogram Nina, and I’m still not convinced she won’t say “shit” at inopportune times. I’m plating steaks from the grill for dinner when I realize it’s been a while since I heard any sounds from Bristol’s office. She’s negotiating a new deal for Jimmi, a Vegas residency, and it’s been more complicated than she anticipated. Kai’s in another Broadway show, and Rhyson wants Bristol to set up a Prodigy office in New York. I have to keep an eye on her because she acts like she’s not seven months pregnant.

When she’s not in the office, I check the nursery because that’s where she seemed to always be when it was almost time for Nina to come. We don’t know gender, don’t know names—we’ll figure it out when the baby gets here. With our first pregnancy, we knew too much. We even knew that our baby wouldn’t make it. We decided with Nina to take whatever came, and we’re doing it again with this one.

As I expected, Bristol’s in the nursery, but not setting things up or preparing for Baby Question Mark’s arrival. She’s sitting in the glider, where she’ll nurse this baby the way she did Nina. In her lap is a box I haven’t seen in years.

Zoe’s memory box.

We only held Zoe for a day, but I think about her all the time. She lives on in our hearts, but also in the three people who received her organs.

Bristol looks up, eyes as wide and wounded as the day we lost our baby girl.

“I miss her.” She shakes her head and bites her lip. “I think I always will.”

“Of course, we always will.” I go to my knees beside her to study the items in the box on her lap—Zoe’s tiny handprints and footprints, the lock of her hair, pictures of our family and friends holding her, joy and heartache evident in every shot, the purple feather that hung on her door.

“She’s a part of us,” I finally say after we caress all of our memories. “As much as Nina is and as much as this one will be.”

“Yeah.” Bristol nods and tears trickle down her face.

“Dwell in possibility, baby,” I whisper against her belly. Bristol lifts my chin until I meet her eyes.

“Dwell in possibility, baby,” she says to me, her eyes tender, loving, secure.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” I ask.

“A boy, definitely.”

“Definitely?” I cock a brow at her apparent clairvoyance. “How would you know?”

“I just have a feeling.” She shrugs and runs her hand over my head as I lay my lips to her belly. I push the tank top up to see her stomach, hoping for a kick or some signal that our baby is active and healthy. Bristol’s beautiful pregnant. She thinks I say that to make her feel better, but I love how her body blossoms, her breasts full and heavy, her skin glowing.

“Ask me when your belly is full like the moon, and our love has stretched your body with my child,” I say, quoting the vows we took years ago. “Leaving your skin, once flawless, now silvered, traced, scarred.”

I look up, meeting her eyes, swimming again with tears, and I caress the faint striations at her waist, on her skin—from Zoe, from Nina, from this baby she’s carrying now.

“I will worship you,” I remind her, taking her hand and tracing the letters tattooed beneath her wedding band, linking our fingers, showing her the ink beneath mine.

“Still?” she asks with a watery smile.

“Yeah.”

Always. Evermore. Even after.

“Still.”

Author’s Note

STILL is fiction, but the difficult issues raised in FLOW, GRIP, and STILL are fact. Many ask if the story Grip tells about Kalief Browder, an innocent young man who spent years behind bars without trial or conviction and who eventually took his own life, is true.

It is.

Thank you so much for going on Grip & Bristol’s journey.