Return to Me by Deborah Pierson Dill

Author:Deborah Pierson Dill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Rose Publishing

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This would be Brent’s second night in his new home. He shifted his truck into park and cut off the engine. The evening sky was turning dusky as the sun prepared to set, and he cast an unseeing glance at it as he climbed the steps to the kitchen door.

He heaved a weary sigh. He’d probably come on too strong, been too preachy. He’d probably gone about it all wrong and made Audrey close her heart to him again when all he really wanted to do was help.

He realized after he returned home that something major was amiss in her life. He hadn’t been able to discern what it was until the night he’d stood on her front porch and confessed his faith to her. At that point he realized that she had grown cold toward God. But tonight he’d been surprised to discover the extent of her cynicism.

He pushed the door open and stepped into his dimly lit kitchen. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God anymore. It was more like she didn’t really trust Him. But it wasn’t even that really. He couldn’t completely define her attitude, mostly because she refused to discuss it. But she’d listened to him anyway, and even thanked him for coming to visit as he left.

Brent tossed his keys onto the counter as he shut the door. He opened the refrigerator to find that his mother had taken the cash he’d given her earlier and visited the grocery store. But apparently that wasn’t her only stop today. A case of beer sat on the middle shelf, already open, with a few missing. And the house smelled like smoke. New paint and cigarette smoke.

He sighed wearily, his fingers itching to grab a beer. The longer he stood there staring at the case the closer he came to reaching in and taking one. He reached out and touched one, then balled his hand into a fist and drew it back, feeling a stirring inside him, like a warm whisper, that had, until quite recently, been blessedly familiar in guiding his decisions. Now it quietly reminded him of that moment years ago when he quit drinking. An image of that drunk cowboy and his companion in the parking lot of a bar came clearly, as did the face of the stranger who read his mind. Then came the memory of the halogen lights in the Texaco parking lot just a couple of weeks ago. He’d won this battle then, and he could do it now.

Brent took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If he lost this struggle once it would be that much easier to lose it again the next time and the next, until he quit struggling altogether and began bringing home cases of beer and liquor.

He could lose yet another job, this house, and everything. Relying on his own meager strength could quickly leave him destitute and living out of his car as his mother had been, spending what little money he could acquire on alcohol and cigarettes, and worse.

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