Page 14 of Kandie Shoppe

Instead of responding I take a sip swallowing the fragrant brew relishing the burn that will hopefully keep me from asking any more stupid questions.

“If you want more of a breakfast, you are going to have to come by the bakery. We have a breakfast menu now for the people who work the morning shift at the Creative Chaos plant. We also get the night shift people when they get off at seven a.m.” Moving around her small kitchen, she puts away the milk and chocolate she uses for her mocha.

I just watch her allowing myself just to be this close as she quietly sets things to rights. She takes pride in her space in all that’s she managed to do on her own. It’s in the way she puts her things away. Like she cherishes everything she touches because she knows how hard she had to work to get it. Not only that. She lost not only things but people. Her folks loved her. Kerania was her best friend. Her nightmare showed me in such a visceral way that though she manages, she’s still not over what happened. I know in a lot of ways I’m not. Yet, her broken cry will be with me for a long time, if not forever.

She doesn’t rush me as I finish the coffee in a matter of seconds. Going over to her farm sink, I wash out my mug, setting it on the rack to dry.

“Ready?” The sweetness of her voice hits me square in my solar plexus. This woman. Her very presence makes me feel useless. How the fuck she still makes me feel like this, I can’t fathom. Staying away all these years was supposed to mean exorcising Kandie Love from my spirit. Still, I see how fucking hopeless that is when I stand in her barely thousand foot loft, getting lost in her dark mahogany eyes and wanting to lose myself in her gorgeous curves.

No other choice but to follow her out of her loft, I head down to my truck as she gives me a jaunty wave before she heads around front to the open her bakery for the day.

From the start, I never had a fucking chance.

(Ten YearsAgo)

“What doyou want as your welcome home gift?” Mom asks, taking the corner to the city center where there seems to be some type of county festival. She already told me that she had to take over from Deputy Davies, who she’d promised the weekend off before I told her I was coming on a surprise leave. It wasn’t a surprise, but when my plans fell through with Monica, my sometimes fucktoy, who decided she wanted to settle down with some rich guy in Madrid instead of going to Tokyo with me, I decided to come home for the first time since I graduated from high school.

“Nothing, little lady. Being here with you is enough,” I say, realizing for the first time it’s true. It took me a long time to get over her addiction — well, not over it, but able to process and understand it more.

Some people couldn’t withstand heartbreak. It’s no different from me abandoning her after my father died. I couldn’t wait to be free of this place, the memories, the hate. The day of graduation, I enlisted and within a month, I shipped out. As soon as I proved myself ready, I earned my spot with Seal Team Three. Dad had been an Army Ranger, so I knew a little about the elite team I joined. Still, nothing could prepare me for the shit I’ve seen — I’ve done in the name of my country.

“If you’re not too tired to come to the festival, I know people would love to see you.” She glances over at me with hope shining in her eyes.

Biting back a groan, I say, “Sure.”

Big Love Park, ironically named after a man who killed a bunch of people, is full of families buying goods and enjoying the annual Spring Festival.

“Well, I’ll be darned, Marlene, you’ve been keeping a secret,” comes the light voice of Mama-Pete. She cranes her head up, looking at me. “Looking just like your daddy, God rest his handsome soul. Don’t he look just like Hezekiah, Pa?” She turns to the elderly gentleman of equal indeterminable age.

“Um, he sho do.” Pa-Pete comes over from the barbeque he’s tending. Standing at attention, he gives me a salute. “Well, alright then, young man.” His eyes shine with a solemnity that only someone with shared experience knows.

“You look hungry.” Mama-Pete tsks, moving behind her husband to pile a plate up with food for me.

“Even if I wasn’t hungry, I wouldn’t pass up a meal from y’all,” I say, taking the food and sweet tea from her hands.

“Well, you and your mom are welcome to come by anytime.” Giving me a little wink, she adds, “She’s been doing a real good job. Best sheriff we’ve ever had besides Hezekiah.”

My throat tightens hearing the praise for my dad. I knew he was a good man, but it wasn’t until he died trying to save the kids from Bishop Smith’s cult along with their granddaughter and three more brave men, did I realize the extent of all the good he’d done for this community.

We’d been inundated with stories of my dad. I think that was one of the reasons Mom finally got the strength to get sober. I was too young to take the reins as the sheriff, so she stepped in until they could have an election. The only thing was, there never seemed to be one. The election seemed to always be on the back burner for the city council. When I realized they — the Shelbys -- were pulling the strings just biding their time so they could press me into service as the sheriff, I took it upon myself to leave. Asfar as I’m concerned, the debt my father owed to his lineage was paid ten times over when he gave his life for it. He died so that I could be free. He never wanted this life for me.

“Now don’t go grumbling when he eats you out of house and home come Sunday,” Mom chides, taking a plate and iced tea of her own.

“Like we ain’t used to feeding giants. I expect you next Sunday, Ulysses,” Mama-Pete calls behind us as we take our seats at a picnic table.

We dig in. “If I wasn’t so stuffed I’d asked for more,” I tell Mom, eyeing the plate that’s wiped clean of the mac-and-cheese, ribs, potato salad, baked beans, and collard greens.

“I know.” She pats her tummy. “I won’t be chasing anyone anytime soon.”

“Since when have you ever chased anyone?” I ask, knowing good and well Shelby-Love doesn’t have crime like that.

“You’d be surprised,” she says, waving me off. “You mingle. I have to go protect and serve.”

“I got it.” Rising, I take the empty plates heading over to the trash.

Pride replaces the pain that’s been riding me for years since Daddy died. Mom has found solace in her community. They rallied around her in a way I was unequipped to at sixteen after watching that building fall around my father, crushing him and his colleagues to death.

At least we had a body to bury. Kerania was nothing but ashes. The state had to bring in the FBI to test the minute evidence of her remains. People talked for the longest time about how Kandie maintained that her sister wasn’t dead, that she could still feel her spirit up until the day she was shown the incontrovertible evidence that Kerania was in fact gone. I wasn’t there, but Mom said that was the most heart-wrenching thing she’d ever seen. After her sister was finally buried, Kandieseemed to take on more of her own personality, or maybe hers was finally free to blossom, since she was no longer under the shadow of her twin sister. Regardless, the hellion heroine has laid terror on the town of Shelby-Love ever since. Our own wild child taking her grief out on everything and everyone.

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