The Second Chance Café (Hope Springs, #1) (32 page)

“Kaylie—”

But Kaylie pushed on. “My mother could’ve found me if she’d wanted to after her release. She would’ve had access to my foster-care records. She could’ve asked questions of my caseworker, followed whatever trail was there, found me in Hope Springs, or even later in Austin. But she didn’t.”

Except there was another option. “Maybe she did. Maybe she realized you were settled and happy, and left again.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Kaylie asked, the green of her eyes so sad.

“It depends on what she was thinking, I guess.” And that was something Kaylie might never know. “That she’d done enough damage and didn’t want to make things worse. Or maybe she talked to Winton and May, and they thought it best that you not see her.”

Kaylie shook her head. “I just don’t get it. She got out of prison, and she was in the wind. As if she never existed. As if she wanted to erase everything of her previous life. Part of me thinks I should respect that and let things go.” She paused, lined up the napkins at her side, then pushed them and the conversation away. “But you didn’t come here for all this.”

“It’s okay. But yes. The reason I came here is this.” She handed Kaylie the shopping bag she’d set beside her, watching the other woman’s face light up as she reached in and unwrapped the scarf.

“Oh, this is gorgeous,” she said, her eyes going wide. “But…this isn’t the scarf you talked about in Gruene at the Gristmill. When we came up with the coconut and caramel brownies.”

“I haven’t done that one yet. I thought about it before Easter, and wanted to get started, but I was standing in the shed with my dad, looking at all the yarn I had to work with, and these colors made me think of you.”

Kaylie brought the scarf to her face, breathed it in, rubbed it against her cheek, then, laughing, she hurriedly looped it around her neck. “Is this right?”

“Here.” Luna adjusted the drape and the cowl, straightened the fringe, and pulled free strands of hair Kaylie had caught in the wrap. “There. It’s perfect. You should see your eyes. Such a beautiful green.”

“Like salad? This makes me think of salad. And of my trees. And the garden. I love it.” She pushed onto her knees, grabbing Luna in a hug. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” Luna said, hugging her back as tears fell. “I hope you think only good things when you wear it.”

“I
don’t know why I didn’t have the movers bring this stuff to Hope Springs when they delivered the big pieces to the house last week.” Kaylie shoved what she thought should be the final box of her things into the bed of Mitch’s truck. “I guess I just needed to be the last one here, to say good-bye.”

“Makes sense.” Mitch pushed his own box farther toward the cab. “You’ve lived here a long time.”

“Ten years. In Austin, anyway. Five in this place.” She looked back at the sidewalk winding to her door through tiny squares of mulched flower beds and monkey grass. Poor Magoo, cooped up for two years with only a daily leashed walk and the occasional weekend trip to the dog park. “You’d think it would feel more like home than it does.”

“What’s the saying? Home is where the heart is?” Mitch used a foot on the bumper to vault himself onto the tailgate, moving into the bed to snug the boxes close. “I guess the house in Hope Springs was more home to you.”

“It was. It is.” She shrugged, moving out of the way as he jumped down. “It’s hard to explain why.”

He slammed the tailgate shut. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I know, but I think about it a lot. Wondering why it’s meant so much to me. And it’s more than the house. It’s all the years with Winton and May.” She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and turned for the condo. “It’s where I found out what it means to have a family.”

Mitch was quiet as they walked back to her place, his hands shoved in his pockets, his gaze cast down. And then Kaylie realized what she’d said.

She reached for his arm, stopping him, giving a squeeze before letting him go. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I know from some things Luna has mentioned that you haven’t seen your family for a very long time.”

“Don’t apologize. It is what it is,” he said, and started walking. “And I was lucky enough to find a family with Harry and Julietta. It’s not exactly the same, but I can’t complain. They’re good people, the Meadowses. Luna’s a peach.”

“I’m so glad I met her. And her parents. They throw a mean egg hunt and barbecue.”

A smile appeared and softened Mitch’s features. “Did she tell you it’s always been her favorite holiday? More so than her birthday or Christmas?”

“Really? Do you know why?”

He laughed as they went inside to walk through her condo one last time. “I don’t. I just know how excited she gets when it’s time to have the children hunt the eggs.”

“She told me this morning she spends a good hour hiding them.”

“It’s a wonder they all get found. I think she draws a map.”

“Good for her.”

“I keep telling her she’ll be the Easter envy of all the mothers,” he said, heading into the kitchen. “She keeps telling me she’s not having kids.”

Kaylie mulled that over as she checked inside cabinets and the top corners of closets and behind doors. She’d honestly never thought about having kids, which made sense since she’d honestly never thought about getting married. She knew a lot of women raised children on their own, but doing so wasn’t an option for her. Living alone with her mother wasn’t what had taught her that. She’d learned her lesson from her time living with Winton and May.

“Is it hard saying good-bye to this place?” Mitch asked on their way to his truck.

“Not the condo, no,” she said, climbing into her seat as he double-checked the tailgate before taking his place behind the wheel. “Drive three blocks west and make a right. I’ll show you the hard part.” He did, and less than a half mile later she gave him directions again, pointing to the curb in front of the Sweet Spot. “Pull over right here.”

Mitch eased the truck into place, shifted into park, and shut off the engine, staring along with her at the frosting-pink awning with the chocolate-colored polka dots shading the bakery’s front door. “This was yours?”

“For almost five years. I baked the best brownies in town, bar none, and that’s not a pun, or an exaggeration,” she said, making the long-running joke one last time. “But then I know what you think about my brownies.”

“I’ve got a feeling they’re the best in more places than Hope Springs and Austin. I saw them in a shop in Gruene once.”

“And?”

“Oh, I didn’t buy any,” he said, laughing. “I thought about it, but mostly I wondered who this upstart was peddling desserts in my town.”

And now he was cooking for the upstart. A nice bit of poetic justice. “So Gruene’s
your
town, is it? From what I’ve heard, it’s not even its
own
town anymore.”

He smiled at that. “I’ve worked there longer than I was in the service. Hard to believe that much of my life has been spent in a place like this.”

“Where did you think you’d spend it?”

He stared straight ahead, one wrist draped over the steering wheel, his fingers tapping the dash. “With my family. Anywhere we wanted to go. But nowhere in any plans was I forty-seven and on my own.”

He did such a good job of hiding his pain, but it was there, this time, in his voice, the set of his shoulders, the tension weighing him down. “I’m sorry. Truly. No one should have to go through that.”

“You’re right. No one should.” After a moment of silence, he reached for the keys. “Ready to go?”

“I am,” she said as he started the engine. She’d been ready to go for years.

“I need to tell you something,” Mitch finally spit out as his truck hit speed outside of Austin. All day long the words had been clawing up his throat, screaming to get out, burning.

He’d swallowed them down repeatedly, waiting for the right time to say them, and now he was running out. He
had less than an hour to tell her his story. Less than an hour before losing her again.

“Okay.”

He heard the frown in her voice and could only imagine what she was anticipating. A change to the menu. A problem with the equipment in the kitchen. His resignation before they’d even opened the doors. “It’s not about Two Owls.”

“Okay,” she said again.

This time he heard curiosity, but something more. Suspicion. Trepidation. As if she were expecting bad news. Was this what it had always been like for her? Waiting for the roadrunner to drop an anvil on her head? To be swept out of one home and tossed like trash into another? How many times had she had to fall before she stopped looking for anything good?

His throat was swollen nearly shut, his heart racing. He took a deep breath and wiped first one palm and then the other on his thighs. “I’m not sure what all Luna’s told you about me. Not about our working together, but my life before that. Before I joined the service and met Harry.”

“Nothing, actually. And I know very little of what came after.”

One thing about Luna. She knew how to keep a confidence. Another deep breath, and he backhanded the sweat beaded above his lip. “I got into some trouble early in my life. With drugs. I thought I was holding things together. Most junkies do. But then I lost my job. I tried for months to find another. But there wasn’t anything to be found.”

She let that settle for several seconds, then asked, “What about your wife? Did she work?”

“We were never legally married. And she stayed home with our daughter. Said that was her job, though I told her I could be the at-home parent for a while.” He paused, took a breath, and wiped his palms again. “Her habit was worse than mine. Looking back, it’s pretty easy to see she didn’t want to work because she preferred stoned to sober.”

In the seat beside him, Kaylie tensed, her fingers flexing against her thigh. “I once knew someone who held the same view. Or so I’ve come with time to believe.”

Mitch turned his head, his gaze moving between his side mirror and the road. He swallowed hard, cursing Dawn for not being there when their little girl needed her. Cursing Ten Keller for making Kaylie revisit this part of her life. Cursing himself for listening to Luna. He should’ve stayed away from Hope Springs, let Kaylie find him.

The miles clicked by and the silence deepened and time continued to run out. He felt their lost years like a bottomless moat between them, too wide to cross safely, to deep to survive.

“Anyhow, one day I was standing in front of the pantry, my daughter in my arms, looking for something to feed her for lunch, and there was literally nothing but a can of Crisco in the house. It was the wake-up call I’d been needing. I had to find some way to provide for my family. So I enlisted. I was twenty-three. And I believed all the recruiter’s promises. Four years and an education on Uncle Sam’s dime.”

Again, she took her time digesting his words before asking, “But it didn’t work out?”

“I didn’t mind the service. I met Harry Meadows in boot camp, and we shipped out together, were given most of the same assignments. But, yeah, it was tough being away
from my kid. I called home, though it was rare if anyone answered. And I wrote letters, but no one wrote back. I figured I’d been dumped, and it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I’d already planned to file for custody of my girl, even though my odds weren’t good.”

Kaylie gave a sharp, knowing snort. “I’ve heard courts like mothers.”

He nodded, wondering if she’d started putting two and two together, wondering if he could finish before she got to the bottom line. “Problem was, my girl’s mother and I weren’t married. And I wasn’t listed on the birth certificate as the father. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time. We were together, and I knew what my responsibilities were. It’s just when I got my discharge and came home, I didn’t have any grounds to claim her from the state.”

“From the state?” she asked after at least a mile had passed, her tone level but the words shaking their way out of her mouth.

He pressed on, his hands shaking, too, his whole body stiff with dread. She had to be close to figuring it out, and he wanted to be facing her. He needed her to see his sorrow and his sincerity because he didn’t think any of it was coming out with his words. “After finding someone I didn’t know living in what I thought was my apartment, I learned from the manager some of what had happened. Then I went to the cops for the rest.”

“The cops?” she asked, half shriek, half whimper.

He nodded again, glanced in his rearview mirror, slowed to let an approaching car more easily pass. “My ex had tried to kill herself. No doubt she was wasted, or crashing after a really bad high. A neighbor heard my daughter crying. He
came in and got her out of there and called the cops. They took my ex to the hospital. She ended up in prison. And my daughter went into the system. I never saw her again. I had no rights, according to the state, so I hired a PI. But no dice.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, her voice tiny like a little girl’s, hollow and frightened and so afraid she’d done wrong.