Homecoming at Hickory Ridge
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“So Hannah said you’re a teacher?” Kyle said.
“Yes. The kids are great. So excited to learn. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher.”
“It had to be great figuring out so early on what you wanted to be when you grew up.” He shrugged, a charming, boyish smile settling on his lips. “I’ve always been on the slow track in getting a clue.”
“But you’ve figured it out now, right?” She sounded like Miss Mary Sunshine, but his words made her uncomfortable, and she wanted to help him see the bright side.
“You mean, the job at the church? Helping build the prison ministry is fine work for now. A step in the right direction. But definitely not something I want to be doing forever. I don’t need the constant reminder.”
She nodded, trying to see the situation from his point of view. She could see how it might be important to him to leave prison life behind him, and no matter how much he wanted to give back, the ministry would trap him in the past.
“You have something else in mind? Maybe something at Lancaster Cadillac-Pontiac-GMC?”
“How’d you know?” he began, then shrugged.
He must have understood that information traveled quickly in churches, especially when someone was looking for it. Until today, Julia had never realized that Sam Lancaster, the owner of the Bloomfield Hills auto dealership who used to do his own TV commercials, was Brett’s dad, let alone Kyle’s.
“Dad has to retire sometime,” Kyle said. “And there’s something to be said for a job where you wear a suit and don’t have to get your hands dirty.”
“I don’t know. I think any job is fine as long as it’s good, honest work.”
She’d only meant to encourage Kyle in his present position, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to cram them all back inside. His tight expression told her he’d taken her comment the way she’d hoped he wouldn’t: as if he were a criminal who needed to find honest work.
“Well, are you going to ask? Or have you already heard?”
“Heard what?” she asked, though she could guess since she’d led them right to this topic. Charity had given her some details about the Lancaster family’s auto dealership and let her know that Kyle was twenty-eight, the youngest of Sam and Colleen Lancaster’s three children. Even Charity hadn’t known the specifics about Kyle’s conviction, though. Brett always had been tight-lipped about his brother’s incarceration.
Because Kyle crossed his arms and waited for her to give him a better answer, she gave up pretending she didn’t understand what he meant. “I haven’t heard.”
“You have to wonder. I might be a danger to society. A murderer? Or terrorist? You’re probably worried now whether you should have met me here.”
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?”