Chapter 2 #3
The little coffee shop was hopping when he pulled into the parking lot in his truck, and he felt that same twinge of apprehension as he made his way to the door.
Once inside, the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee and homemade cinnamon buns gripped him, and his mouth watered.
A quick glance around didn’t yield any results, at least not until someone waved at him from a back corner of the building.
He strode toward the woman and was pleasantly surprised.
If anything, she was slimmer and more fit than her picture had let on.
Her hair glittered, and her eyes were a shade of blue that made him think of the cobalt-colored bottles wine came in sometimes.
As he neared the table, she stood and smiled. “Hi, Kyle?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am! And you must be Dorinda,” he said, extending a hand.
She took it, then laid the other over the top of their clasped hands.
That small gesture made him feel welcome and safe.
“It’s good to meet you,” he said, holding her chair so she could sit back down.
Once she was seated, he took the chair across from her.
“This place smells great,” he said, his mouth still watering.
“They have a great single-estate roast, and they told me they have fresh blueberry turnovers this morning,” she said, still smiling. “And by the way, you should really change your profile pic. It doesn’t do you justice.”
“Thanks! I could say the same for you. I’ve had a couple of these meetups that, well, they weren’t quite what I expected, to put it politely,” Kyle told her.
“I know what you mean. Old pictures and the like,” she said, and Kyle nodded. “I don’t really want an entire blueberry turnover, but would you share one with me?”
“Sure!” This is going great! Kyle told himself. She was pretty, far prettier than her picture, and she had a killer smile. “So you’re a nurse?”
“Yeah. I work over at Fort Campbell at the Army base. Pediatrics,” she said just as the server stepped up to their table. Once their order was taken, she said, “And you farm?”
“Yes, ma’am. Two thousand acres, our family farm.”
“What kinds of crops?”
Kyle loved answering questions about the farm, so he launched into their practices.
“I raise corn, soybeans, milo, and winter wheat. We talked about trying some cotton, but it just takes so much out of the soil that I decided against it. I’m really thinking about trying some industrial hemp since the state okayed that. ”
“I don’t know anything about that. What exactly is it used for?” Dorinda asked. That made Kyle very happy. She seemed eager to learn about farming and the farm itself, and in between bites of turnover she peppered him with questions about equipment, fertilizer, crop rotation, and the like.
“Sure you’ve never farmed before?” he asked, laughing.
“No, but I had an uncle who farmed about three thousand acres and I loved going out there. There was a creek that ran through the property, and he put a tire swing out over it. We—my brother and I—used to love going out there for the summer. It was so much—”
“Renee?” a voice from behind them asked. Dorinda’s face blanched white. She spun toward it, her face a mask, and Kyle was completely thrown.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“Following your cheating ass,” the man’s voice said. Kyle turned to find himself face-to-face with a very large, very angry man.
In a deputy sheriff’s uniform.
Awww, hell, this is bad. This is really, really bad, he told himself as he stood. “And who the hell are you?” the man asked him.
“My name is Kyle. I don’t know what’s going on here, but—”
“Oh, I can tell you what’s going on here! She’s—”
“Brad, I can explain every—”
“YOU! Shut your lying mouth!” the man bellowed. “And YOU,” he yelled at Kyle, “get your ass outside and be prepared to have it kicked from here to Clarksville!”
“Look, sir, I don’t know what’s going on here, but—” Kyle tried to say, but the man interrupted him.
“I know what’s going on here! Cheating whore!” the man named Brad shouted.
Kyle tried again. “Sir, there’s no cause for language like that. It’s really not—”
“I’ll tell you what there’s cause for! I should run your ass in for marital interference, that’s what I should do!” he screamed at Kyle.
Kyle spun to look at Dorinda. “You’re … you’re married?”
“I-I-I-I can explain,” she stuttered, her face going from white to bright red.
“Is that true?” he asked her again, watching her eyes.
“Well, um, yeah, it’s—”
“No. Just no.” Kyle stepped backwards away from the table and turned his attention to Brad. “I’m so, so sorry. I met her on a dating site. I had no idea she was married, really. None at all. This is the first time I’ve met her, so nothing’s gone on, I swear. I just—”
“You need to get the hell out of here, that’s what you need to do. I’ll take care of this. My wife,” the man said, spitting out the last word, “has a habit of looking elsewhere. It’s not the first time I’ve caught her, but it’ll be the last, I promise you that.”
Kyle didn’t know what to do. He was afraid for the woman’s safety, Dorinda or Renee or whatever her name was, but that wasn’t his to handle.
He hated leaving her there with her angry husband, but he also hated the thought of his face meeting that guy’s fist, especially since he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I’m going, but I’d advise you to be careful, sir.
You have a shop full of witnesses here, and if you hurt—”
“You mind your own business, fella, and get outta here,” the deputy growled.
Kyle gave him a respectful nod but didn’t even glance at the woman again. Once he was safely in his truck in the parking lot, he called nine-one-one. A dispatcher answered, “Christian County Nine-One-One. What is your emergency?”
“There’s a disturbance at Josie’s Coffee Corner involving a woman and her husband, and he’s a Montgomery County deputy sheriff. You should really send some people down here to diffuse the situation,” Kyle told the dispatcher.
“Yes, sir. We’ve got two cars en route,” she assured him.
Kyle drove across the street and parked in the parking lot of a building that had once housed a car parts store, watching carefully.
He could see the two people inside Josie’s still arguing, and at least once it looked like the deputy had hit her.
People were leaving in droves, afraid to stay, and he watched car after car jet out of the parking lot.
But in a couple of minutes, two sheriff’s department cruisers from Christian County roared up in front of the building.
Four deputies exited the cars and entered.
In minutes, they’d pulled both the woman and her husband out the front door and put him in handcuffs.
Seconds later, an ambulance pulled up, and Kyle knew then that she’d be taken care of properly.
What would happen after she got home, he couldn’t imagine.
And he wouldn’t be there to see that, so there was nothing he could do about it.
The drive home was strange. A married woman had put herself on that dating site as widowed, and he began to wonder how many people did that. That in itself was frightening, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue using the site or not if that happened often.
When he got home, he decided he’d call Connie and tell her what had happened. “Hey, little bro, how’s it going?”
“You won’t believe me when I tell you,” Kyle said, then launched into the story.
To his surprise, Connie was laughing hysterically when he finished. “Oh, god, that’s an awesome story!” she cackled.
“Awesome? A woman used me to try to cheat on her husband. I don’t think that’s awesome,” Kyle muttered in disbelief. How could she think that?
“Honey, you can’t be responsible for everything done by other people.”
“Yeah, but I was!”
Connie chuckled on the other end of the phone. “No, you weren’t. You had no idea; you couldn’t have. She was purposely deceiving everybody, and that’s not your fault.”
“I just feel so bad. And that last one …” he said, trailing off.
“She’s just a bitch. You don’t need that in your life, somebody tearing you down to make themselves feel better.
I bet if you knew the truth, you’d find out her farming isn’t going all that well and she used belittling you to make herself seem more important.
Shake it off, Kyle. You’ll find the right person.
You’ve just got to keep looking until you find her,” Connie said.
Kyle wasn’t convinced. He’d never dreamed it would be that hard to find someone to date.
Weren’t there any decent women out there?
Anywhere? And why couldn’t he seem to find them?
Connie broke into his thoughts when she said, “Just promise me you won’t give up.
Kiss another frog, Kyle. You never know … ”
A long sigh escaped his lips before he said, “Okay. I’ll keep trying, I promise.” He meant it, but that was one promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.
After poring through page after page of profiles, Kyle found a promising one.
The woman lived in Adams, Tennessee, between Clarksville and Nashville off I-24.
That wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t right next door, but it wasn’t far either.
He liked the things she said on the site, so he sent her a message, and she sent one back a couple of hours later.
They made arrangements to meet at the McDonald’s at the exit there because it was the only place Kyle really knew in Adams.