Page 257 of When a Soul Cries

I lowered my eyes to the paperwork, pretending to straighten the pages while she collected herself. When I looked up again, her eyes were wet.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

And I meant it.

I made a copy of the signed paperwork for her, clipped the originals together, and slipped them into the folder assigned to her unit. When I walked her toward the front of the leasing office, she held her copy against her chest like it was something precious.

Maybe it was.

A home was never just a home when you knew what it felt like not to have one.

After she left, I stood near the tall front windows for a moment and looked out at Eastview.

The community looked completely different now that families had moved in. Cars filled the parking spaces in front of the rows of two-story townhomes. A woman pushed a stroller down one sidewalk while two kids raced each other on scooters farther away. Near another building, a man was unloading groceries while a little boy kept trying to grab bags that were clearly too heavy for him.

People were living here.

Actually building lives here.

And somehow, I was one of them.

“Sol?”

I turned toward one of my coworkers behind the front desk.

“You entered Carter’s final documents?”

“Doing it now.”

“Perfect.”

I headed back into my office, dropped into my chair, and finished uploading everything. Once the file showed complete, I moved her folder into the finished stack and stretched my arms above my head.

For the first time all afternoon, I had a second to breathe.

If somebody had shown me this version of my life a couple of months ago, I would’ve thought they had the wrong woman.

I had a job I actually liked. A safe home for my daughter. Reliable transportation. Childcare. Money in my bank account that wasn’t already promised to five different bills.

Stability.

That word still felt strange.

For so long, everything had been about making it to the next thing. Payday. Rent. Groceries. Another shift. Another week. Making sure Halo had what she needed while pretending I wasn’t scared to death about everything I couldn’t afford.

Now I could think farther than Friday.

My gaze wandered through the window toward the parking lot, and the second I spotted my Mercedes, a smile pulled at my mouth.

That damn car.

Roman Devereaux had lost his mind.

I still remembered staring at the keys in my hand when he gave them to me, then at the car, then back at him because I genuinely thought there had been some kind of misunderstanding. At first, I thought he was joking. Then I thought maybe it belonged to him and he was letting me borrow it.

When I realized the car was actually mine, I’d damn near thrown the keys back at him.