Dana Corbit - Homecoming at Hickory Ridge

She bristled that his guess was close to being on target. “If you were a danger, you wouldn’t be working at my church.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one. But you still want to know.”

After a few seconds under his stare, so intense he could have been studying the capillaries beneath her skin instead of its surface, she shrugged. “I’m curious. But don’t tell me…unless you want to.”

Kyle picked up his coffee and swirled it around, though he hadn’t put anything in it that would require stirring.

“It’s a matter of public record, but I’ll save you the trouble of hunting it down. Felonious assault. Felony possession of stolen property. Felony possession of a firearm.” He ticked off his charges on his fingers as if he were used to repeating them. “The first two are five-year felonies, served concurrently, but the last one came with a mandatory two-year sentence.”

“You were in prison five years?”

“No. Just the mandatory two, plus another one for good measure. I’m on probation now, so if I mess up, I get to head back to the lovely Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer.”

“You’re not planning to go back, right?”

“Nah. Three squares a day were good, but—” He quit his joke mid punch line, becoming serious. “No, I don’t want to go back. Ever.”

“Is there a story that goes along with those charges?” She hoped it was a mitigating story. The thought of Kyle holding a gun wasn’t making her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

He studied her for several seconds and then shook his head. “There is, but it’s a long one. Another time.”

Julia nodded, pleased he’d opened up to her as much as he had. He might have wanted to say more, but they didn’t know each other well. She would solve that problem by getting to know him better, even if he did make her nervous.

She was relieved when he changed the subject and asked about her sister.

“Did you two grow up in Milford?”

“Charity did. With her mother.”

“You’re half sisters?”

Julia couldn’t help smiling as her sister’s image filtered into her thoughts. “If you’d met her, you would have wondered about that. We have different mothers. We look a little alike, but in our hair and coloring, Charity’s as light as I am dark.”

“Like my brother and me, huh?”

He was trying to be funny, but his words rang flat in her ears. He’d made several comments like that today, seeming to wield self-deprecating humor like a shield. It bothered her that he thought he needed to protect himself from her judgments.

When Julia didn’t make another joke at his expense, as he seemed to expect, he leaned forward. “You were saying about your sister…”

“I was in college before I ever learned that my father had an ex-wife and another daughter.”

The surprise in his eyes reflected some of the shock she’d felt when her father had first told her. She couldn’t begin to describe the sense of betrayal that accompanied the revelation.

“That had to be a shock,” he said. “Your mom didn’t tell you, either?”

Julia shook her head. “She always knew, but she thought it was Dad’s place to tell me. Mom had already been gone a few years—complications from diabetes—when he finally did tell me.”

“That’s tough. You must have been furious with your dad for keeping the truth from you.”

“Sure, I was at first. As mad as Charity, though she had more reasons to be angry. Dad hadn’t fought harder to find her when her mother had disappeared with her. Charity’s mother even told her that her father was dead, so she had that lie to deal with, as well.”

Kyle shook his head. “How does anyone get past that?”

“With God’s help, we can get over anything, don’t you think? Besides, everyone deserves forgiveness. Everyone deserves a second chance. I’m just glad we all started to heal before it was too late.”

“Too late?” His eyes widened as if he could already guess the answer.

“Five years ago, just a year after Charity located Dad, he passed away. But at least they had the chance to get to know each other. I got to know my sister, too. We attended Charity and Rick’s wedding together, and Dad was so proud.”

“How’d he…”

“The doctors said it was a heart attack, but I think it was from a broken heart. He never got over losing Mom.”

Kyle shook his head, an incredulous expression on his face. “And here I figured your life was downright—”

“Perfect?” she finished for him. “Nobody’s life is that. God allows us all to experience trials, but He gives us the strength to survive and even thrive.”

He grinned at her. “Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re a bit Pollyanna?”

“I prefer to think I’m an optimist.”

“Okay, an optimist. Still, your life hasn’t been the stuff of a Frank Capra movie. How did you keep that positive attitude?”

“I haven’t always had one, especially on those dark days. Like when Mom’s blood sugar was so out of whack that an ambulance was always in our driveway. We prayed constantly, but there was nothing any of us could do for her.”

His understanding gaze unsettled her, as if he’d heard more than she’d said out loud. She didn’t like being that transparent. She wondered if Kyle could see how conflicted she’d always felt over her mother’s illness—helpless to take her mother’s pain away, sometimes resentful of the burden her mother’s disease had placed on the family and guilt-ridden over her resentment.

“Well, as you said, God helped you to survive—no, thrive.”

He smiled as he said the last word. The wariness that she’d seen in his hazel eyes the other night had been replaced by warmth so pervasive that her cheeks heated under his study. Did he like what he’d seen? Did he find her pretty? It shouldn’t matter what he thought, but there was no denying that it did. Butterflies seemed to continually take off and land on runways inside her belly.

“That’s me, a thriving lady,” she choked out.

As he continued to watch her, Kyle tilted his head forward and a lock of his unruly hair fell over his eye. The impulse to reach out and brush his hair aside surprised her so much that she glanced over his shoulder to break the connection. She grasped for the safety of their earlier subject.

“About surviving, I’ve been blessed to have Charity and Rick around. They’ve helped so much. You know how important it is to have the support of family—”

Julia stopped herself, but she could see from the way Kyle shifted that it was already too late. How could she have forgotten, even for a second, that Kyle didn’t have supportive family members like her sister and brother-in-law in his life? Kyle needed a friend—not a girlfriend—to help him readjust to his new life. They were here for that reason alone, and she needed to remember that.

“Yeah, I know.” He must have read the confusion in her gaze because he continued. “I had the most supportive parents who ever lived. Somebody should have given them a few medals for dealing with a son like me. But there’s only so many times parents can bail their kids out before they start losing enthusiasm for it.”

“Have you seen them since you’ve been…well…?”

“Out? No. They didn’t visit me on the inside, either.”

“That’s terrible!” Julia glanced around the coffee shop that had suddenly become quiet. At least the high school track stars had long since headed home, leaving only a few straggling customers sitting around the room. When she turned back to Kyle, he was shaking his head.

“Now don’t say that. I deserved worse for all I put them through. Even as a teenager, there wasn’t a party anywhere in Bloomfield Hills that I wasn’t smack in the center of. Partying, girls, joy rides in borrowed cars—you name it.

“Mom and Dad bailed me out each time, hoping it was only a phase. And I promised every time I would do better. After the last arrest, I guess I wore out my last second chance.”

“They gave up on you?”

“Wouldn’t you have?” He moved his paper coffee cup back and forth between his hands.

She mulled over it for a few seconds, but she had to admit the truth. “Probably.”

“Mom still wrote to me every week, but she told me she and Dad couldn’t bear to see me behind the glass.”

Julia sipped down the last of her coffee that had long since gone cold. It broke her heart to think his parents weren’t on his side, either. “Are you afraid you’ll never earn their respect again?”

“I don’t know—”

“You’ll do it. Don’t worry.”

At first he looked surprised by what she said, and then his gaze narrowed. “I have a lot to prove. To a lot of people. It’s something I have to do alone.”

Before she had a chance to answer, an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying the coffee shop was about to close. Julia glanced around, surprised to see that the other stragglers had left, leaving only them and a few staff members who looked anxious to get home.

Tossing their empty cups in a trash can, Kyle and Julia stepped out into the main part of the shopping center and started down the stairs toward the parking lot behind the building. After all the details of their lives they’d shared tonight, a strange silence settled between them. Was Kyle sorry he’d opened up to her?

After an awkward goodbye, they both climbed in their cars and pulled out of the lot. As Julia drove through the deserted streets toward her house, Kyle’s words filtered through her thoughts again. Yes, he did have something to prove, and from what she could tell, it would be a challenging job.

But he’d also said that proving himself was something he needed to do alone. And he could do it without help from anyone else. She could see that now. He seemed to have an inner strength she hadn’t recognized in him at first.

Yes, he could face this challenge alone just the way he’d been in his prison cell, but there was no reason he had to be. Alone, that is. He could take a friend along for the ride, and she was volunteering to embark on the journey. She could even help him repair the broken relationships with his family, too, if he only gave her the chance.

Kyle settled back on the well-worn plaid sofa and closed his eyes. Only that dated piece of furniture, a tiny television, a mismatched card table set and a mattress and box spring—all appreciated gifts from anonymous Hickory Ridge church members—filled his downtown studio apartment, and yet it still managed to look cramped.

“Bigger than a prison cell,” he mumbled, reminding himself to be grateful.

He wouldn’t have this tiny space and a door that opened at his will if he hadn’t received probation, and more than that, he wouldn’t have had a chance to close down the coffee shop with Julia Sims tonight. He should have been thrilled on both of those counts, particularly the part about sharing the evening with a beautiful woman. Yet a seed of discontent had been growing inside him from the moment they’d walked out of the coffee shop and he’d climbed inside his junker of a used car to drive to his apartment. He couldn’t explain it. They’d had a nice time together, even if he’d recklessly shared more with her than he’d told any of his fellow inmates in thirty-six months at Lapeer.

He should have known better, but something about Julia made him want to trust her in a way he hadn’t trusted anyone in a long time. Maybe it was the fact that her life wasn’t as picture-perfect as he’d first assumed. She’d had more than her share of pain, and yet Julia was still content with her life, even grateful for God’s blessings in it. If only he’d learned years ago to be content and appreciative.