“Sure was,” I say with a smile.
“I told you you’re gonna make one hell of a lawyer with that kind of commitment,” Kevin says. “Listen, Samson. You listening?”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to email you the information for your parole officer today. You have seven days to check in with him. You’ll find your key under the rock to the right of the trash can.”
Samson glances at me and raises a brow. “What key?”
“The key to my mother’s house.”
Samson looks over his shoulder at Marjorie’s home. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, I know. My mother made me promise not to tell you until after you were released, which is why I instructed you to call me as soon as you got out. You follow instructions terribly. The deed is at my office, I can bring it by sometime this week. I tried to do what I could with the house, but life has been busy. It needs a lot of work.”
The look of disbelief on Samson’s face is something I wish I could take a picture. I’m sure the same look is splashed across my own face.
“Is this a joke?” Samson asks.
“No. You made some stupid mistakes but you also did a lot of good for a lot of people in that community. My mother being one of them. She thought you deserved to be able to call that place your home because she knew how much you loved it.”
Samson releases a trembling breath and then drops the phone in the sand. He pushes off the ground and walks away from his conversation with Kevin. He pauses near the water and grips the back of his neck.
I pick up the phone and wipe the sand off of it. “Can we call you back later, Kevin?”
“Is everything okay?”
I watch Samson as he struggles to absorb everything Kevin just told him. “Yeah. I think he just needs a while to process this.”
After ending the call, I walk over to Samson. I stand in front of him and lift my hands, wiping the tears away from his cheeks like he’s done for me so many times.
He shakes his head. “I don’t deserve that house, Beyah.”
I take his face in my hands and tilt it until his focus is on mine. “You’ve been punished enough. Accept all the good things life is throwing at you today.”
He blows out a quick breath and pulls me in tightly. I don’t let him hug me for long because I’m too excited to find that key. I grab his hand and pull him away from the beach.
“Come on, I want to see your house.”
We find the key exactly where Kevin said it would be. When Samson goes to insert it into the lock on the door, his hands are shaking. He has to pause for a moment and press his palms into the doorframe. “This can’t be real,” he whispers.
It’s dark when we walk inside, but I can see the layer of dust on the floors before he flips on a light. There’s a musty, salty smell to the place. But knowing Samson, those are things he’ll have fixed by tomorrow.
He touches everything as we walk through the house. The cabinets, the walls, the doorknobs, all of Marjorie’s furniture that’s still here. He goes into every room and sighs in all of them like he can’t believe this is his life.
I can’t believe it either.
Samson finally opens the door to the stairwell that leads to the roof access. I follow him up the stairs and onto the roof where he takes a seat. He spreads his legs and pats the area of space between them, wanting me to sit with him.
I lower myself to the roof and then lean back against Samson’s shoulder. He wraps his arms around me, and as beautiful as the view is from here, I squeeze my eyes shut because I’ve missed the feelings I have for him so much. More than I even knew.
I’ve gone so long trying not to feel them, I was starting to worry I no longer felt anything. But the feelings were never gone. They never left. I just forced everything to sleep so it wouldn’t hurt as much.
Every now and then, Samson shakes his head in total disbelief. I’ve known him to be a quiet person since I met him, but he’s never been this speechless around me. I love his reaction. I love getting to witness his life change for the better right before my eyes.
Look at us. Two lonely kids who slipped through all the cracks, but then climbed right back up to the top of the world.
Samson touches my face, urging me to tilt my head back so that I can see him. He’s looking at me in the way I saw him look at me so many times that summer—like I’m the most interesting thing on this peninsula.
He kisses me, then lowers his head and presses his lips to my shoulder. He rests his mouth against my skin for a while, as if he’s making up for all the years he couldn’t kiss me there. “I love you.”