"So… UPS, what brings you to town?" Carl asked as he and OGD began their hunt for trees.
"Man, c'mon!" OG complained with a wave of his hand. "If you ain't gonna call me by my name, I'd rather you call me Cornelius."
"Ok. Cornelius, what brings you to town?" he asked again.
"Not so loud, dawg!" he complained again. Carl laughed at him and waited for an answer. "I was seeing this girl, and then I started gettin' a lil' on the side, and I got caught red-handed with her cousin, so now I'm just hidin' out, waitin' for her to cool down, so that crazy bitch doesn't stab me."
Carl pursed his lips in annoyance at the language, but something else caught his attention. "Laura said it was her sister," Carl corrected with a raise of his eyebrow.
OGD paused. "I don't know what to tell ya, man. Close family. Know what I'm sayin'?"
Carl glared at him in disgust.
OGD took a deep breath and sighed. "Yo, man, if you already know, why you askin'?"
"Because I don't believe you. I've been a cop for decades, son. I can smell a lie through the phone. Why are you really here?"
OGD kept walking and didn't say anything for a long time.
Then Carl broke. "You in trouble again? I have a right to know if you're putting my daughter in a bad situation."
"No. I wouldn't do that to Laura. I'm not in any trouble," he said firmly.
Carl looked at him in surprise. "That's the first honest thing you've said tonight."
OGD pursed his lips. "Laura and Steve have always been good to me. I wouldn't put 'em in any real danger. I been on the straight and narrow for a while anyway."
"Then what are you hiding from, son?"
OGD paused and looked at a tree. He stared at it as he said to Carl, "Look, man. I'll tell you so you get off my back, but you can't tell no one else. I don't want 'em to know."
"What is it, Cornelius?" Carl prompted, looking at the same tree so OGD didn't feel his eyes on him.
"My… Uh… My grandma died."
Carl gasped. "What? When?"
"Just before I came down here. She been sick for a long time. I been takin' care of her pretty much since the last time I was here. Once you took care o' things with my man, Fresh Squeeze, I stopped livin' that life. I moved back in with my Grandma. I got a real job. I was workin' the gift shop at the DIA." He chuckled as he played with one of the branches in front of him. "'Round all the snobby white people all the time, sellin' 'em coffee mugs with a Rembrandt on the front. It was so lame, but Grandma was so proud." He smiled as he thought about. "She really thought that was how I was gonna turn my life around, get outta the city. Even if it was one of the shitty cities around Detroit, anything outta the D sounded good to her. She said she couldn't wait to be a burden on me… and my wife in a little ranch out in the 'burbs." His face fell. "Then she got sick. Real sick, real fast. It was the big C. She hid it from me for a while, but it spread fast, so when I noticed, I took her to the doctor. They gave her two months. She made it four. I quit my job to take care of her, even though she begged me not to. She finally passed Tuesday. We did a memorial service Thursday. We put her in the ground and then my girlfriend, who's real by the way, she hosted the luncheon. I crashed at her place that night. Then Friday morning, I drove out here. I jus' couldn't go back to my grandma's empty house. I didn't wanna spend the holidays alone, or with my girlfriend's family, or with anyone who knew that she was gone. I just wanted to spend the holidays with my family, or as much of my family as I could pull together. Steve's the only Urkel who still talks to me, so here I am."
"Cornelius," Carl said in that low, fatherly voice, "I'm so sor-"
"Nah, man," he interrupted. "C'mon. Don't. I don't wanna talk about it. I came down here so I wouldn't have to talk about it."
"Ok," Carl agreed, looking at him meaningfully as he avoided eye contact. "So we won't talk about it, but if you ever decide you wanna talk about it, I'm here for you."
"You should get this one," he suggested, pointing at the tree he'd been staring at. "It's nice."
Carl nodded. "Yeah. It is."