PART 2

I spent twenty years believing my mother had chosen a homeless man over her own daughter. Even after she passed away, I only kept bringing Samuel food because I had given her my word. But the moment he placed her missing locket in my hands, I discovered that Mom had never been concealing charity from me.

She had been concealing family.

The day after my mother’s funeral, the homeless man who had lived behind our house disappeared.

For most of my childhood, Samuel had stayed behind our modest rental home in a makeshift shelter built from tarps and salvaged wood. Every single day, my mother brought him food.

When I returned carrying the meal she had pleaded with me to deliver, Samuel was standing beside a black SUV, dressed in a clean coat, holding my mother’s silver locket.

The same one she insisted had vanished when I was eight years old.

“I thought you couldn’t come, Fiona,” he said.

I almost dropped the food container.

“Samuel? How?”

Without the beard, he looked older. His eyes were exhausted and rimmed with red.

“I brought dinner,” I said. “But what’s going on?”

His hand tightened around the locket.

“Before she died,” he said, “your mother begged me to stay silent.”

A chill rushed through me.

“About what?”

Samuel glanced toward the kitchen window where Mom used to watch him whenever she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

“About who I am.”

Every afternoon, my mother packed three meals.

Two remained on our worn kitchen table.

The third went into whichever plastic container she had washed and saved for Samuel.

I hated it.

I hated watching tape cover the holes in my sneakers while Samuel received the largest piece of chicken. We were struggling too.

I was eleven when I finally said what had been building inside me.

“He eats better than I do, Mom.”

Mom kept stirring at the stove without looking up.

“Fiona, don’t start. Please.”

“Mom, the lights got shut off twice this winter,” I said. “But Samuel gets lunch every day like he’s family.”

The spoon slipped from her fingers and clanged into the sink.

“Don’t say his name like that, Fiona. He needs help.”

I crossed my arms. I was cold, hungry, and cruel in the way wounded children sometimes are.

“Why? He’s just some man behind our house.”

Mom turned toward me, her face suddenly drained of color.

“No,” she said. “He isn’t just some man.”

“Then who is he?”

For a moment, I thought she was finally going to answer.

Instead, she pressed the warm container into my hands.

“Take him his food, hon.”

I stared at her.

“Maybe if you stopped feeding strangers, we wouldn’t live like this.”

Mom slammed her palm against the counter so hard that I jumped.

“Don’t you ever say that again. Do you hear me? You have no idea what that man gave up.”

“Gave up for who? You?”

Her body trembled.

Then she turned away.

“Take him his food, Fiona. This conversation is over.”

So I did.

Samuel sat near the fence, rubbing warmth back into his hands.

“Your mom make soup today?” he asked.

“Yeah. Chicken.”

A gentle smile appeared on his face.

“That’s her best one.”

“You don’t even know her.”

The smile disappeared entirely.

“I know her soup.”

For some reason, that made me dislike him even more.

The years went by, and eventually I moved out. Mom and I argued less because I stopped asking questions.

But Samuel never left.

Sometimes I noticed him repairing a loose porch step or stacking firewood after storms.

One year in high school, when my boots split apart, a secondhand pair mysteriously appeared beside my backpack.

“Where did these come from?” I asked.

“Church donation,” Mom answered too quickly.

I looked through the kitchen window.

Samuel was outside brushing snow from the steps.

None of it made sense to me.

Then cancer arrived and slowly shrank my mother.

Stephanie had once carried groceries in both hands and opened doors with her elbows. Near the end, her wrist bones showed beneath her skin.