Page 136 of Homecoming

“I’d love to, but I’m up to my eyeballs today. Rain check?”

“Absolutely. Let’s go see Dad.”

The door to Chuck’s office, located at the end of the hallway, was propped open, but Kara knocked anyway. “Anyone home?”

“Come in!” Chuck came around the desk to greet them both with hugs. “I’m so glad to see you here, sweetheart.”

“It’s nice to be here.”

Dan could tell by her expression that she meant that, and she wouldn’t have felt that way a week ago. That was a big relief to him. He’d feared the visit home would set her back, but he should’ve known better. His Kara was resilient and thrilled to see the people she loved and far more able now to rise above the people who’d hurt her than she’d been when she left this place.

“Let’s go on a tour and then grab some lunch,” Chuck said as he donned a maroon BBW jacket with a white logo on the chest. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving,” Kara said.

“Some things never change,” Chuck replied with a chuckle. “Keenan is in your old office.”

Kara ducked her head in to say hello to the youngest Ballard sibling, who looked ridiculously grown-up sitting behind the desk that’d once been hers.

“Is Dad taking you to lunch? Can I go?”

“No, you can’t go,” Chuck said. “This is Kara’s day, and you’ve soaked me for lunch twice this week already.”

“Fine,” Keenan said with an exaggerated pout. “Would it kill you to bring me something back?”

“We’ll see,” Chuck said. “He’s a bottomless pit, as always.”

“Like father, like son,” Kara said.

“I can’t even deny that.”

She greeted several other employees and introduced Dan.

All of them commented on his career and expressed their thanks for him helping Keith and Kirby.

Chuck led the way downstairs. “I’ll be back in a bit, Marilee.”

“Have a nice lunch. So great to see you, Kara and Dan.”

“You, too, Marilee.”

“We’ll start in the fabrication shop.” Chuck led them into one of the cavernous white buildings where hulls of a wide variety of shapes and sizes were under construction. “Over here, we have several of the open-air launches like Kara has on the island, moving into our thirty-two-foot, thirty-eight-foot and forty-four-foot picnic boats, which have become our most popular products. We can’t make them fast enough to meet the demand.”

“Sounds like a good problem to have,” Dan said.

“It is, most of the time. We’ve had a few cancellations since the boys were arrested, which is worrisome.”

A man with gray hair and wearing a BBW fleece jacket approached them. “Hey, Kara. It’s nice to see you.”

“Hi, Mark. This is my husband, Dan. Mark is one of our designers.”

Dan shook hands with him. “The boats are gorgeous.”

“Thanks. We’re proud of them.”

Everyone working in the shop—or so it seemed to Dan—came over to say hi to Kara and meet her husband, some of them hugging her like the old friends they were. The same thing happened in the wood shop, where Kirby’s coworkers said how much he was missed and that they hoped he’d be released soon, and again in the paint shop, her brother Kyle’s domain.

He gave Kara a quick hug and an even quicker nod to Dan, who’d last seen him at their wedding—including when he’d bailed him, Keith and Kieran out of the Gansett Island jail.

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