For most of my life, I believed my mother had chosen a homeless man over her own daughter. Even after she passed away, I continued bringing food to Victor only because I had given her my word. But the moment he showed me her missing locket, I realized she had never been hiding kindness from me.
The day after my mother’s funeral, the homeless man who had lived behind our house disappeared.
Throughout most of my childhood, Victor stayed behind our small rental home in a shelter built from tarps and scraps of wood. Every single day, my mother made sure he had something to eat.
When I returned carrying the meal she had begged me to bring him, I found Victor standing beside a black SUV wearing a clean coat and holding my mother’s silver locket.
The same locket she claimed she had lost when I was eight years old.
Victor had lived behind our little rental.
“I thought you couldn’t come, Fiona,” he said.
The container nearly slipped from my hands.
“Victor? How?”
Without his beard, he looked much older. His eyes were red and exhausted.
