Page 27 of When a Soul Cries

That was the part I hated admitting.

The girl who could read everybody else had allowed one man to make her doubt what she saw with her own eyes.

The end came on a Friday afternoon. Trell had called me from a gas station, claiming my electricity had been shut off and he needed four hundred dollars to get it restored before I came home. I was embarrassed, thinking I had somehow missed the bill, so I sent it without checking.

When I got home, every light in my apartment was on.

The power had never been disconnected.

I called him eleven times. No answer.

Later that night, I found a hotel receipt tucked inside the pocket of a hoodie he had left on my bathroom floor. The room had been paid for less than an hour after I sent him the money.

I drove to the hotel with that receipt balled in my fist.

Trell opened the door wearing nothing but basketball shorts. A woman stood behind him in one of my T-shirts—the oversized black one I slept in when I missed my grandmother.

I don’t remember everything I said. I do remember the woman locking herself in the bathroom. I remember Trell stepping into the hallway and telling me to stop acting crazy. Then he leaned close enough for me to smell my own toothpaste on his breath and said the cruelest thing he could think of.

“Ain’t nobody else ever stayed for you. You really think you can do better than me?”

He had listened to every story I’d trusted him with and saved the sharpest pieces for a weapon.

I didn’t cry in front of him.

I smiled.

Then I went home, packed everything he owned into black trash bags, and left them beside the dumpster before the sprinklers came on. I changed my locks that same night.

Trell spent months trying to come back. New numbers. Fake pages. Flowers without a name on the card, as if another man had ever been cheap enough to send gas-station roses with the price sticker still attached.

I never let him inside again.

After Trell, I dated when I felt like it, but nobody got a drawer. Nobody got a key. Nobody got enough of me to know where to place the knife.

Sol was the only person who had ever made it past all my locks without trying to pick them.

She didn’t love me because I was useful. She didn’t need me to be funny, loud, pretty, or strong every second. She knew when my attitude was really hurt feelings wearing lip gloss. She knew I hated being alone on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death, even though I pretended it was just another day.

And she showed up.

Every time.

That was why, when it came to Sol and Halo, there was nothing to think about. They were the family I chose—and the family that chose me back.

I climbed behind the wheel and started the car. Before pulling out, I called Halo’s pediatrician, explained the fever, and followed the nurse’s instructions. They could see her in less than an hour.

“You hear that, Lo-Lo?” I glanced at her through the rearview mirror. “We about to go see the doctor, and then Auntie’s taking you home. Your mama will be there as soon as she gets off.”

Halo didn’t answer. She had already fallen asleep, her cheeks flushed and one little hand curled beside her face.

I turned the music down until it was barely a whisper and eased out of the parking lot much slower than I had entered it.

For most of my life, I had believed family was whoever blood forced you to tolerate.

Sol taught me different.

Family was the person who answered at two in the morning. The one who believed your story the first time. The one who made space when there wasn’t any. Family was showing up before somebody had to ask twice.