KENDRA PLAYED WITH HER MORNING OATMEAL, HER MIND CYCLING through the day—the day she’d planned for months. Right now, ten in the morning Eastern time, she’d be finishing breakfast with her bridal party, a limo waiting to whisk them to a day spa for massages, manicures, and pedicures. Afterward they’d return to the hotel suite to dress, and a hairstylist and makeup artist would make them gorgeous.
She tried another spoonful, and the oatmeal mushroomed in her mouth, making her gag. She didn’t know if it was a chemo effect or the nausea that came with any conscious thought of Derek. She swallowed anyway. Gaining strength was the most important thing, or something like that. Lance had given her a pep talk yesterday on food and nutrition during a forced trip to the grocery store. She’d promised to eat well during those times she could eat. And this morning she’d awakened feeling decent, unfortunately. She’d half hoped to feel cruddy as an excuse to sleep through the day.
One more spoonful.
The door to the lower level opened as she put it to her mouth.
“There you go!” Lance was grinning. “Go ’head and eat that oatmeal with your bad self.”
Kendra scowled. “I hate this stuff.”
“That’s okay,” Lance said. “You don’t have to love it—”
“—for it to work for you.” Kendra fake-smiled at him.
“Hey, I’m just glad you’re listening.”
She watched Lance pull out his camera equipment on the kitchen table. “You’ve got a shoot this morning?”
“Later today.” He glanced at her. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay, actually. Why?”
“I thought it’d be fun if we had a photography tutorial.”
“We who?”
“You and me.”
“Why?”
Lance was attaching a different lens to his camera. “You said you wanted to know.”
“I said I never learned how to use that one camera.”
“Which means you wanted to know.” He wiped the lens with a cloth. “Plus you clearly like taking pictures. The shelves in your room are full of them.”
“I was definitely the one always taking pictures with my little point-and-shoot,” she said, “going way back to elementary.”
“The point-and-shoot is cool,” he said. “Extremely basic, but cool.” He smiled and shrugged. “If you don’t want a tutorial, that’s fine. Thought it’d be something nice to do today.”
She eyed him. “You’re not slick. You’re trying to help again.”
“Help with what?”
“To get my mind off the would-be wedding.”
His mouth dropped. “Today was the day?”
A laugh bubbled inside her. “Okay, Mr. Alexander, I admit I’ve always wanted to go deeper with photography. I just never had time.” She pushed the last of her oatmeal aside and stood, surveying the gadgets. “The question is, what kind of teacher are you?”
“You’ll get to the point where the first thing you’ll notice in any setting is the lighting,” Lance was saying.
An hour into the tutorial, Kendra had found a notepad to jot things down, surprised at how much she was learning.
“Look at the light in here,” Lance said. “Describe it.”
Kendra lifted her eyes, looking around the living room. “Let’s see . . . all the light is coming from the big picture window, diffused by the sheer white window covering.”
He nodded. “The bright sun outdoors is filtered through those sheers, which makes for perfect pictures. No harsh shadows.” He grabbed her hand. “Come stand over here by the piano.” He began focusing the camera.
“You’re not taking my picture, are you? I’m not camera ready.”
He kept fiddling with his settings. “Do you want to focus on learning or on looking cute?”
She made a face at him and heard a click. “You didn’t!”
He brought the camera to her and showed her. “Look at the way the light falls on that face you gave me. Perfect.”
“So wait, though.” Kendra looked closely at it. “It’s not just the lighting. How’d you get it to look like that?”
“Remember the triangle I drew for you with exposure, aperture, and speed?”
Kendra looked back at her notes, nodding.
“You’ll get to where you have a feel for what the aperture should be in certain lighting, or what the speed should be, to get the look you want.”
He backed up, adjusted the settings, and took another, then showed her. “See how there’re more shadows in this one? You’ll learn as you play with the settings. The key is to stay away from automatic mode.”
“But automatic mode is my friend.” Kendra pouted. “I don’t have to fuss with any settings in automatic.”
“Nope, it’ll do all your thinking for you.” He smiled. “And you won’t learn a thing.”
Kendra felt herself losing energy and moved to the piano bench. “How did you learn all this, Lance?”
“Well, after I got out of prison—”
“Prison?”
“I told you it wasn’t pretty.” He sat across from her on the sofa. “After I got out I couldn’t find a job, but I was going to this weekly men’s discipleship gathering at Living Word.” His thoughts seemed to go back there. “Turned out one of the men was manager of a camera shop. They needed somebody to do odd jobs, run the printing machines, things like that. I ended up working there five years. They let me learn as much as I could soak up.”
“When did you know you had a passion for photography?”
“My first outdoor shoot. I know it sounds weird, but being in nature, capturing its beauty that way . . . It was like worship to me. God came alive.”
Kendra looked at him. Such a walking paradox. “So, can I ask . . . ?”
He focused on the camera. “Why I went to prison?”
She nodded.
“Short answer . . . drugs.”
“I know you like those short answers. How about the slightly longer answer?”
Lance took his time, absentmindedly moving the settings dial. “I didn’t grow up like this, Kendra.” His eyes took in the surroundings. “I grew up in the city, poor, with a mother who was hooked on drugs, so I had to take care of her and myself. When I got bused to Clayton for high school, a whole new world opened up. It was my ticket out. Saw myself going to college. I was gonna get a basketball scholarship.” He smiled faintly. “A few guys from my neighborhood went to Clayton, too, which means some of the neighborhood stuff came along as well. The day of that fight . . .”
Kendra waited, moved by this vulnerable side of Lance.
“It started because I found out Dewey, who was my boy, had sold my mother drugs. And he knew I was trying to help her get off them. So I approached him about it at school, and he said . . .” Lance’s voice faltered. He stared downward, then put his camera aside and stood at the window. “He said my mom begged him and offered to sleep with him for payment. And he slept with her. He slept with my mom. I just . . . I snapped.”
Kendra’s heart reacted at the emotion in his voice.
“I never talk about this.” Lance faced away from her still. “It’s too hard . . . you know? I’d rather people think I was a thug who got in a gang fight than know the real reason.” He paused several seconds. “I threw the first punch, the other guys jumped in, and Dewey kept at it, talking about my mom in front of everybody. With everything in me, I wanted to knock him out, but I didn’t see Mr. Magnetti jump in. When he fell to the ground . . .”
Lance blew out a sigh. “So . . . I got expelled. I was distraught, all hope of doing anything in life was gone . . . After a few months at the neighborhood school, I just said forget it. I became the person I said I’d never be—a drug dealer. Didn’t take long for trouble to escalate. Got shot—”
“Shot?”
Lance nodded. “Drug deal went bad. The bullet was actually meant for a friend of mine, but I jumped in the way because he’d just had a little baby and—”
Kendra couldn’t keep up. “What? You took a bullet for a friend? You were willing to die?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lance said. “My mind was so warped. I probably thought I was invincible. It wasn’t long before I had runins with the law.” He turned. “God was gracious. I could’ve gotten locked up for a long time, but I only did two and a half years, and that was mostly local jail time. That’s where I met Pastor Lyles.”
Kendra had so many questions. “What about your mom, Lance? How is she?”
He returned to the sofa with a sigh. “Mom’s in federal prison in Tallahassee.”
“Are you serious? Oh, Lance . . .”
“I just saw her last weekend,” he said. “It’s hard. But the crazy thing is she’s seeing God’s purpose in it. She’s off the drugs. And she’s living for the Lord. It’s amazing really.”
Kendra cocked her head, staring at him.
“What?” Lance said.
“I’m seeing why you’re so good at cooking and cleaning . . . and helping. You grew up doing it for your mom.”
“That’s true.”
Kendra watched his gaze fall again, the way it did whenever he spoke of his mother or his past. “Thank you,” she said.
“For?”
“For sharing all of that with me. I know it wasn’t easy.”
His gaze met hers. “Actually, for some reason, it was easier than I would’ve thought.”