The Second Chance Café

by Alison Kent

  “I’d love to,” Dolly said as she stood. “And to hear more about your plans. Ten’s told me some, but he doesn’t have answers to half my questions.”

  Speaking of questions…“The day I put my ad in the Courant, Jessa bragged on your cooking. But she didn’t tell me anything about your experience.”

  “That would be because I don’t really have any,” Dolly said, her laugh self-deprecating but not the least bit nervous. “Unless nearly four decades of family holidays and church socials and being in charge of monthly book club and bunco potlucks counts. I can provide plenty of references for my cooking skills, but I’ve never cooked in a commercial kitchen. I hope that’s not a problem. I should’ve thought to ask about that before wasting your time, but Jessa did say this was going to be a small enterprise.”

  “It is going to be small, and you’re not wasting my time. And I meant to have an application for you to fill out, but I’ve been running in circles all week.”

  They moved into the kitchen, Dolly walking around the island and taking it all in. “I love this kitchen so much. I was always envious of the pantry space May had. And the food stores. Lordy. The woman never met a fruit or vegetable she couldn’t make into soup or jelly or just can to have on hand. Sometimes she put up enough to last to the next the growing season. And talk about a woman who could cook.”

  A rush of emotion caught Kaylie unawares. May had used food for so many things besides nourishment. She’d taught life lessons to the kids in her care every time they’d come into the kitchen, and done so without their realizing it. It was easy to look back now and see that, but at the time, all Kaylie knew was snack time meant sitting at the island and listening to May talk.

  Clearing her throat, she said, “I have no imagination when it comes to casseroles. And I want to use as much fresh produce and local ingredients as I can.”

  “Oh, I can definitely help you with that. Whether you hire me or not. I belong to a farm co-op and can put you in touch with dairy farmers for your cheese and milk, all organic. The same with eggs and free-range chicken. Peggy Butters, who owns the bakery, has any herb you could possibly want. You have got to taste her rosemary-olive bread. Heaven. Absolute heaven.”

  Kaylie wondered…“Do you happen to know Indiana Keller?”

  “Ten’s sister? Well, yes, but I haven’t heard her name in ages.”

  “I got the feeling they don’t stay in touch.”

  “Ten’s not in touch with any of his family to speak of. As far as I know, his parents are still in Round Rock. Indiana lives near Buda, I believe. I’m not sure anyone knows where Dakota is. Not even Manny.”

  “Manny?” Kaylie hadn’t heard the name before.

  “Manuel Balleza. He was Dakota’s parole officer. He and Ten are still fairly close.”

  Parole officer. Obviously the events that had kept the two brothers from going into business together were matters of the law. She wondered why Ten hadn’t told her. If it had slipped his mind or he’d thought it unimportant. Or if he’d hidden it from her. On purpose.

  “Why did you ask about Indiana?” Dolly asked after Kaylie’s silence had gone on too long to ignore.

  “I’d like to put in a garden and be able to supply what I can of my own produce. I asked Ten if he knew of someone who I might hire to do the heavy lifting.”

  “And he mentioned his sister? That’s really odd. She’s the perfect choice. Don’t get me wrong. But there are others in the area I would’ve expected him to think of first.”

  Kaylie wanted to ask the other woman why Ten’s recommending his sister was such a surprise, but she realized the answer might lead to others she wanted, others that Ten might not want her to know. It was best if she asked him herself. And she would.

  Not about his reasons for giving her his sister’s name as a suitable prospect, but why he’d remained friends with his brother’s PO. And why he hadn’t told her Dakota was an excon. Especially when he knew her history with the law.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Leaving the parlor and heading for the back of the house and his truck, Ten found Kaylie standing in the dining room, one arm across her middle, the hand of the other in a fist tapping her chin. A row of artwork in stark white frames sat on the floor propped against the longest wall. He knew she’d decided to paint the eating areas to reflect the four seasons, and from what he could tell, the pictures she was staring at were season-based as well.

  For the look of the café, she’d been consulting with an interior designer from Austin. He hadn’t told her he’d heard gossip of hurt feelings from Maxine Mickels, the one and only local decorator, but the Austin designer had worked with Kaylie on the Sweet Spot, so it made sense for her to use someone she knew. Her renovations had already poured a ton of cash into the Hope Springs economy. The locals couldn’t expect her to keep all her money in town.

  “If you’re trying to sneak up on me, you’re not doing a very good job.”

  And here he’d thought he was doing a great one. “I was trying not to bother you. I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “You’re not bothering me. I’m bothering me.” She sounded grumpy or pouty or both, and he was rethinking his decision to use the back door.

  Now he was stuck. “How so?”

  “I can’t decide which of these pictures I like. Or if I like any of them.”

  He was not going to get into the middle of this. “I like all of them.”

  “You’re no help.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, fighting a grin as he crossed the room behind her, heading for the kitchen and escape. No good could come of his having an opinion.

  “I interviewed Dolly yesterday.”

  “Yeah?” He stopped, shook his head, and shoved his hands to his hips. She obviously had something on her mind. He’d learned that about her. She didn’t say anything without a very good reason. Even though sometimes it took her a while to get there. “How’d that go?”

  “Fine. I’d forgotten that she was Rick Breeze’s mother. I mean, the Rick I knew in school, not the Rick married to Jessa.”

  He walked closer. “That’s not the first time you’ve mentioned forgetting something from your time here.”

  She shrugged. “A survival mechanism, I suppose.”

  “Is that your diagnosis or your therapist’s?”

  This time, her glare spoke for her.

  “That was a joke, Kaylie.”

  “It wasn’t a very funny one.” And she obviously wasn’t in a very funny mood. “I hardly need a professional to explain my issues. I’m well aware of how screwed up my life has been.”

  O…kay. “We’re all screwed up one way or another. I think as long as we recognize it, we’re doing okay.”

  “Dolly said something else,” she said, deftly changing the subject.

  Uh-oh. Here we go. “Should I be worried? Has Dolly been spilling all my dark and dirty secrets?”

  “Is there a reason you didn’t tell me your brother spent time in prison?”

  She was still looking at the pictures when she asked, so he couldn’t get anything from the look on her face. He came to stand beside her, stared down at what he thought was summer heatedly staring back. “Dolly told you that?”

  “Inadvertently, so don’t think she was gossiping about you.”

  “I don’t see how else it could’ve come up.”

  “She mentioned Manny, and I asked who he was.”

  “Why would Manny come up in conversation?”

  “It was innocent. I promise. We were talking about my plans for a garden. I asked if she knew your sister. The conversation progressed from there, the way conversations do.” She waved a hand as if frustrated at the distraction, and turned to face him. “But that’s not the point.”

  “Maybe not to you,” he said, and moved his attention to the autumn leaves falling. “You’re not the one being talked about behind your back. And this isn’t the first time you’ve admitted doing it.”

  “Ten. Why didn’t y
ou tell me about Dakota?” she asked, backing away, arms crossed, defensive.

  Was she throwing up a wall because he’d kissed her? Or because she didn’t like him calling her on the gossip she denied? Either way, his answer remained the same, and he glanced to the picture where winter was coming. “I didn’t tell you about Dakota because who he is and where he’s been aren’t relevant to this job.”

  “It’s relevant to me.”

  “I don’t see how,” he said, glancing off spring as he turned to her.

  Her expression was a mixture of things, but betrayal most of all. “After what I told you about my mother? Don’t you think I might want to know?”

  “Why? Your mother went to prison for drugs, and for putting you in danger. My brother went to prison for…” He paused, realizing that for the first time in his life he was going to admit to a much larger truth than the facts he’d stuck with all this time. Facts were easy. Facts got the job done. Facts came without emotions attached. “Dakota did something I should’ve done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He did not want to talk about this. Not to anyone. Not to Kaylie at all. And yet the way she’d been so open about her own past, which far out-tragedied his, made sharing this particular event less a wrenching of his gut than he’d been bracing for.

  He moved to the kitchen door, leaned the back of his head against the frame, and looked up at the dining room’s ceiling, where the new tracks for the lighting ran east to west. “Dakota’s two years older than me. I was a sophomore when he was a senior, and that year, over spring break, a friend of mine came and stayed with us.”

  “The friend you mentioned before. Who turned out to be not much of one.”

  “Yeah. Him. His parents had planned a family vacation, but he didn’t want to go. My folks said he could spend the week at our house, and he took full advantage of every minute he was there.”

  “Advantage of your parents? Of you?” She paused. “Of your sister?”

  He ground his jaw, thinking of Indiana, how he’d failed her, and how much better things had been since he’d decided to pay for that crime by removing himself from the family circle and making sure he never failed them again. “He tried. One night when my parents had gone out to some…saving the planet benefit rescue dinner thing. Indy fought him off, and used my dad’s shotgun to force him out of the house.”

  He sensed Kaylie’s eyes widening, heard her sharp intake of breath before she asked, “And you didn’t know? Or hear?”

  “Indy’s room was downstairs. Mine was up. So was Dakota’s. We were playing video games in his, and had the sound system maxed out. We couldn’t hear anything but what was coming through the speakers.”

  “Did your sister tell you? After he was gone?”

  He shook his head. “I finally realized Robby hadn’t come back with the pizzas he’d gone to get out of the oven. I went downstairs, found Indiana sitting at the table with the gun. I ran back for Dakota, and she told us what had happened. Made us swear not to tell our folks.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want them to know?”

  “Our parents were…” Flakes? Crunchy hippies? Parents in name only? “Our mother would’ve flipped out, tried to calm everyone with lavender oil and magnets. Our father would’ve wanted to start a campaign to bring Robby to justice, rather than let a lawyer and the cops handle things quietly.”

  “So you and your brother agreed not to say anything. To anyone.”

  “We didn’t really discuss it. Things just went down that way. I looked at Dakota, basically telling him it was up to him. He nodded, didn’t say a word. Just dug his keys from his pocket and left the house.”

  “To hunt Robby down.”

  Ten nodded. “He found him at a local arcade. Went after him with the baseball bat he kept in his car. Then because he was eighteen and a legal adult and refused to tell the cops why he’d beaten Robby to a pulp, Dakota went to prison for aggravated assault.”

  Kaylie’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I can see why Robby wouldn’t admit what he’d done and risk charges, but why didn’t Dakota say something?”

  He pushed off the doorframe then, crossed his arms, and looked back at the paintings. “He was protecting Indy. He’d promised her. She didn’t want anyone to know. He took the fall so she wouldn’t have to finish school being that girl. The one Robby Hunt tried to rape.”

  “Oh, Ten.” Her voice was soft, her hand at her mouth hiding most of it.

  “He did his time. We stayed in touch. When he was paroled, I tried to get him to come work for me. I wanted to pick up where we’d left off. Keller Brothers Construction. He wasn’t having it. Once he was free of Manny and had his life back, or most of it anyway, he left. I don’t have a clue where he is. Haven’t heard from him in years. Wouldn’t know where to look for him.”

  “But you’re still in contact with Manny, right? Would he know?”

  “Dolly tell you that, too? About Manny?”

  “She said the two of you had become friends.”

  “We did. We still are.” No reason to hedge. “When Dakota wouldn’t come work with me, I felt like I needed to do something. I don’t know. It sounds dumb, but I thought if I couldn’t help him, maybe I could help others. So Manny would send me parolees who had construction backgrounds, or had done similar manual labor. I’d take them on, give them a leg up with the jump back into the real world.”

  He saw the gears in her head grinding, wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Do you have any ex-cons working for you now?”

  He nodded.

  “Will? Is that why he’s been out of pocket for a while? Because he’s been in prison?”

  He nodded again.

  “What did he do?”

  This time he shook his head. “That’s his story to share. Or not.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this.” She came for him then, pushed at his shoulder to turn him toward her. “Don’t you think that you should have? Before you brought him into my house?”

  Fear was in her face, and anger, disbelief. And the knife and the blood and her mother. “I don’t hire violent criminals, Kaylie. And I don’t hire junkies or dealers. I hire guys who found themselves on the wrong side of the law for doing the right thing.”

  “You think Dakota taking a baseball bat to another kid was the right thing? Because that sounds pretty violent to me.”

  “Indy was a minor. Robby was not. Dakota did what he thought he had to do. What I should’ve done.”

  “What if he’d killed him?” she asked, her voice rising.

  “Then he’d still be in prison.” Where I should’ve been.

  “What if you’d killed him?”

  “I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you.”

  She buried her face in her hands, shook it off, her whole body shuddering. “I’m having trouble getting my head around any of this. I don’t understand why you didn’t call the cops.”

  “Calling the cops would’ve turned Indy’s life upside down.”

  “And losing her brothers didn’t? One going to prison, one just…going away?”

  This time he spun on her, advancing, the actions of his past rising like a tsunami behind him. “You don’t think I haven’t thought about that a million times since? Wondering what we were thinking, taking matters into our own hands? We were kids who’d pretty much raised ourselves. We didn’t have much of a bar to use to measure our behavior.”

  “But your parents—”

  “Our parents weren’t exactly candidates for any parenting awards.” Funny how he and Kaylie had that in common, and yet nothing about their situations growing up was similar at all. “We loved them, they loved us, but they had trouble keeping even one foot in reality.”

  “They put a roof over our head, then spent most of their time out of the country, or at least out of town. They fed us and clothed us, then did the same for kids living in poverty all over the world. We had the material things we needed to thrive, but we
didn’t have the emotional guidance that probably would’ve kept Dakota out of prison, and helped Indy deal with what had happened…”

  “And kept you at home,” she finished for him because she knew him that well. “Do your parents still not know what happened?”

  He shook his head. “Why tell them now? They’re happy. Their oldest is out of prison. All three of their kids are now responsible adults. They can continue to pretend everything in their life is fine.”

  “Do they know where Dakota is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because you don’t talk to them. Or to your sister.”

  “I called Indy about your garden. Left her a message.”

  “Like I said.” She gave him a knowing look. “I realize my aversion to anything that smacks of wrongdoing comes from a very personal place. I’m probably way too sensitive—”

  “With good reason.”

  “Maybe. And I probably need to work on that. But in the meantime, please don’t keep things from me. Not things like…this.”

  “Kaylie, listen to me. I’m never on a job long, and the parolees I hire aren’t at any one location more than a few days. Will may be the exception, but that’s the usual rule. I do what I can to help them fit in. I don’t take them on jobs with kids, no matter what their crime, but that’s my decision. And I clear everything through Manny first. They’re good men who made bad choices. Hard for me to write them off for that when I would’ve done worse if my brother hadn’t.”

  “Would you have? Really?”

  Had he learned to hide that side of himself so well that she didn’t think he had it in him? Or was she asking something else, wanting to know if he was someone she needed to fear, someone dangerous, someone unbalanced, like the woman who’d slit her wrists in front of her five-year-old daughter?

  “Yeah. I would have. Dakota just got there first.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  By the time lunch rolled around on Friday, Kaylie had already interviewed four applicants for the cook’s position. Each had potential, but none clicked with the same compatibility Dolly had. And none came close to measuring up to Mitch and his ideas. Talking to Dolly was as comfortable as talking to May. Talking to Mitch, well, he was a lot like Ten, though she would never tell either man that because of those very similar natures.