“What happened?”

I shake my head. I can’t even say it out loud. “Just drive.”

My father grips his steering wheel until his knuckles are white. He starts the car and puts it in reverse. “I should have beat the shit out of him the night I pulled him off you in the shower.”

I don’t even try to explain that he wasn’t protecting me from Samson that night. Samson was helping me, but at this point, another explanation would be futile. I just go with a blanket statement. “He’s not a bad person, Dad.”

My father puts the car back in park. He faces me, his expression unyielding. “I don’t know where I went wrong as a father, but I did not raise a daughter who would defend a guy who lied to her the entire summer. You think he cares about you? He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

Is he serious?

Did he actually have the audacity to say he raised me?

I glare at him, my hand on the door handle. “You didn’t raise a daughter at all. If anyone is lying in this scenario, it’s you.” I open my door and get out of his car. There’s no way I want to be stuck with him all the way back to Bolivar Peninsula.

“Get back in the car, Beyah.”

“No. I’m calling Sara to come pick me up.” I sit down on the curb next to the car. My father gets out of the car while I pull out my phone. He kicks at the gravel and motions toward the car.

“Get in. I’ll take you home.”

I wipe tears from my eyes after I dial Sara’s number. “I’m not getting in your car. You can leave now.”

My father doesn’t leave. Sara agrees to come pick me up, but my father sits patiently in his car until she arrives.

TWENTY-EIGHT

It’s been an agonizing week with no news from Samson. Nothing at all. I’ve tried to visit him twice, but he refuses to see me now.

I have absolutely no way of communicating with him. All I have to cling to are the memories of the time we spent together, and I’m worried those will start to fade if I don’t at least get to hear his voice.

Am I really just expected to move on? Forget about him? Go to college like he didn’t force me to become a completely different, better version of myself this summer?

I stopped talking about Samson to anyone in this house. I don’t even want his name brought up because it just leads to arguments. I’ve barely left my room all week. I occupy my days with mindless TV shows and visits to Marjorie’s house. She’s the only one I’ll speak to about him. She’s the only one on my side.

I’ve been alternating between the two shirts that were in Samson’s backpack all week, but they no longer smell like him. They smell like me now, which is why I’m snuggled up to his backpack, watching a marathon of a British baking show.

I don’t know what to do with his things. I doubt he cares to keep toiletries, and there wasn’t anything of value in his backpack other than the poems his father wrote to him. But I don’t want to give them to Marjorie to get to him because I feel like they’re my last connection to him.

They might one day be the only excuse I have to get him to speak to me.

I’m going to have to move on at some point. I know this, but as long as I’m still here and he’s still in jail, I can’t focus on anything else.

I readjust the backpack in my arms to use it as a partial pillow, but something hard pokes at my temple. I open it up to see if I missed an item, but I see nothing. I move my hand around inside the backpack and find a zipper I didn’t catch before.

I immediately sit up and unzip it. I pull out a small, hard-bound notebook. It’s only about four inches in length. I flip it open and it’s full of names and addresses, and what look like grocery lists.

I flip through several pages, unable to make sense of any of it. But then I get to a page with Marjorie’s name and address on it.

Marjorie Naples

Date of stay: 02-04-15 to 02-08-15.

Ate $15 worth of food.

Repaired roof. Replaced two pieces of siding on north side of house damaged by wind.

There are several more names and addresses that follow Marjorie’s, but I need to know the significance of the dates. I pick up my phone and call her.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Beyah. Quick question. Are the dates February fourth to February eighth this year of any significance to you?”

Marjorie chews on that thought for a moment. “I’m almost positive those are the days I was in the hospital after my heart attack. Why?”

“Just something I found in Samson’s backpack. I’ll bring it over later so you can give it to Kevin.”

I tell her goodbye and end the call, then I start skimming through all the other things he’s written down. The most common address is the one next door for David Silver. There are several dates listed. Most of them between March and last week. Beneath David’s name is a list of repairs.

Tightened several loose slats on bedroom balcony railing. Replaced a broken fuse in the breaker box. Sealed leak in pipe in outdoor shower.

The lists go on. There are odd jobs he’s done for people, and how much he got paid for each job, which explains how he sometimes had money for things like dinner and tattoos. There are also lists of people he’s done work for that he didn’t take pay from.

Every day for the past seven months is accounted for. Every item of food he ate from someone’s refrigerator without their permission. Every repair he made to someone’s house. He’s been keeping track of all of it.

But why? Did he feel like repairing these properties for free was balancing out the fact that he was staying in them without permission?

Could this possibly be the proof the court needs to know he doesn’t deserve all the charges being brought against him?

I rush downstairs and find my father and Alana on the living room sofa. Sara and Marcos are together on the loveseat. They’re all watching Wheel of Fortune, but my father mutes it when he sees I’ve come downstairs for the first time today.

I hand the notebook to my father. “This belongs to Samson.” He takes the notebook from me and begins flipping through it. “It’s a detailed list of every place he’s stayed and how he repaid them.”

My father stands up, still flipping through the notebook.

“This could help him.” My voice is full of hope for the first time since he was arrested. “If we can prove he was trying to do the right thing, it could help his defense.”

My father sighs before he even makes it a few pages into the book. He closes it and hands it back to me. “It’s a detailed list of everything he’s done wrong. It’ll hurt him, not help him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Beyah, he’s only being charged on two counts of breaking and entering. If you take that to the police and show them how many more houses he broke into, they’re going to use it to add to his charges, not take away from them.” He looks frustrated as he takes a step closer to me. “Please let this go. You’re too young to let a guy you barely know consume your life like this. He messed up and he has to pay the consequences for that.”

Alana is standing now. She grips my father’s arm in support and says, “Your father is right, Beyah. There’s nothing you can do but move forward.”