Free Love Finds a Home by Kathryn Springer

marriage certificate, not blood. Jake and his best friend, Sean, had tormented the poor kid every chance they got, but Andy had never complained or tried to get back at him. Jake had thought of Sean as his brother, but when push came to shove, it had been Andy who hadn’t given up on him. It was his prayers that had pulled Jake out of the darkness.

    “There’s no such thing as too much time with my kids,” Andy said loyally. The thing was, Jake knew he meant it. “Are you on duty or off?”
    “Am I ever off duty?”
    “Should I get out my violin?” Andy paused. “Or my harp?”
    “Did you call just to harass me?” Jake laughed, the sound of his brother’s voice easing some of the tension that had settled in his shoulders after his visit to the library that morning.
    “As entertaining as that can be, I called because God brought your name up while I was praying today.”
    “What time was that?” Jake asked suspiciously.
    “This morning. About eleven o’clock.”
    Eleven o’clock. Roughly the same time he had gone to see Emma at the library.
    Was he being tag-teamed?
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really. So, are you going to tell me why?”
    Jake knew he could sum it up in two words. Emma Barlow. But he wasn’t sure what would happen if he trusted that kind of intel to his kid brother.
    That Emma had agreed—albeit reluctantly—to let him spend time with Jeremy on a trial basis had been nothing less than a miracle. Jake hadn’t been quite sure how he’d come up with the idea…until now.
    “Probably because I needed an extra dose of courage,” Jake admitted.
    “You?” Now it was Andy’s turn to laugh. “The undercover drug officer? The guy who walked into crack houses without a weapon? Made deals with the thugs whose pictures are on the bulletin board at the post office?”

    Compared to Jake’s newest assignment, his previous job still looked easier.
    “The church I’ve been attending started a mentoring ministry. I got drafted.”
    And even more specifically, requested. In spite of his misgivings, that had been the reason Jake hadn’t been able to say no.
    That and two matching pairs of wide, gray-blue eyes.
    “You? You’re going to be a mentor to a…kid?”
    “That’s usually who needs a mentor. Are you laughing?” Jake demanded.
    “No…” A series of muffled snorts followed the word.
    “Uh-huh.” Jake didn’t have to be in the same room as his brother to know he was rolling on the floor. “I tried to tell the pastor it was a bad idea.”
    “What are you talking about?” Andy sobered immediately. “It’s a great idea.”
    “You of all people should know that isn’t true. Some people could question my judgment. My ability to be a good influence.”
    On the other side of the line, Andy expelled a slow breath. “You have to let it go, Jake,” he said quietly. “No one saw the signs.”
    That wasn’t much of a consolation. “I should have seen it. Sean was my best friend.”
    That was the thing about dwelling in the shadows for so long. Eventually, they began to blur a person’s perspective. Wrong started to look like…right.
    “Sean made his choice. And if he’d had his way, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
    A shared memory weighted the silence that fell between them. Andy’s stricken face staring down at Jakewhen the paramedics wheeled him into the E.R. Both of them unsure if they’d ever see each other again.
    As often as Jake had brushed aside Andy’s faith or, even worse, poked fun at his brother for dropping out of medical school to attend the seminary instead, he hadn’t felt as if he could appeal to God for help the night of the drug bust. The only thing Jake could do was look into the cold eye of the gun pointed at him and apologize to God for being stubborn. Tell Him that he wished he would have taken time to know Him when he’d had the chance—that he would do things differently if he could.
    God hadn’t only heard his prayer, He had intervened