Keep This Promise

by Willow Winters

  “She’s just finding her feet at Columbia and wrapped up in her own little world right now.” I came around to her side, lowering to my haunches to smile reassuringly up at her. “Lorna loves you best of all, Skye. She’s just not very good at showing it sometimes.”

  Skye nodded, sniffling. “I just miss her. Sometimes I wonder if I miss her, or if I miss the kid she used to be. When we’d dance around the apartment and she’d look at me like I was Wonder Woman.” She glanced away in apparent embarrassment. “Kids grow up, I guess. They start to see reality and it’s a bitter disappointment, huh?”

  “No, you know it’s not like that with Lorna,” I chided. “You are not a disappointment. Skye, you gave me a home. A family. You gave Lorna and Jamie the home they deserved and opportunities they never would’ve had without you. They know that. You are the best big sister anyone could ask for. And the best big sister I never even dreamed I’d one day have.”

  Her eyes widened with hope.

  “You’re just human. And we make mistakes. But no matter how many times you need it, I will be here to hold your hand. That’s what you do for the people you love.”

  More tears slipped down Skye’s cheeks as she reached out to clasp my face in her hands. “What did I ever do to deserve you, kid?”

  “We deserve each other.”

  “Do you mean it? You’ll be there, no matter what?”

  “Absolutely.” A thought occurred to me and I stood, crossing the room to my phone. “I think we need a little pick-me-up.” I scrolled through Spotify and found the track I wanted.

  “The Whole of the Moon” by the Waterboys played.

  Skye gave me a sad smile but didn’t get to her feet.

  “Come on.” I danced into the middle of the room. “It’ll make you feel better!”

  With a huff of laughter, Skye got to her feet. I grabbed her hand and forced her into a twirl. It took a verse and chorus, but soon we danced energetically around the room, shouting the lyrics at each other.

  When the song ended, we collapsed on the couch laughing, and I felt some uneasiness shift off my chest. Rolling my head to the side, I smiled at Skye.

  Her return smile was filled with love, but still a lot of melancholy.

  “I think I’m going to see if I can get time off work,” she said, her voice soft in the now-quiet room. “I need a real break. I’ve always wanted to go back to Monterey after we shot there during season four of The Sorcerer. Maybe I could rent a place for a few weeks. I was even”—she shot me an embarrassed grin—“thinking I could try screenwriting.”

  Excited that Skye was talking about things that would give her focus and direction, I nodded eagerly. “That sounds amazing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

  She patted my knee. “Thanks, kid.”

  “What are your plans today?”

  “You got time to grab some lunch?”

  “Absolutely.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon in town, eating out and window shopping. I texted Jamie that everything was good and wished him luck at his meet. I sent him a snap of me and Skye trying on ridiculous hats. He replied with three words: “I love you.”

  Skye saw and rolled her eyes. “Sometimes, I can’t even believe Jamie is the same person when he’s around you. You know,” she said, sighing a little shakily, “I used to worry that you guys were a little too intense. But now I envy you.” She squeezed my hand. “What you two have is miraculous. Never let go of it.”

  “I have no intention of letting go,” I promised.

  By the time we returned home, it was evening, and Skye looked exhausted. I knew she was having a harder time than she let on, so when she excused herself for an early night, I understood. I curled up on the sofa with my laptop and worked on my paper.

  Sunlight bursting through the windows woke me the next morning. I realized I’d fallen asleep on the couch. After I showered, I decided to see if Skye was awake and whether she wanted breakfast. I wasn’t the best cook, but I was getting better, and I wanted this weekend to be a good one for my pseudo-big sister.

  I could bring her a little breakfast in bed if it would cheer her up.

  There was no reply when I knocked on her door, so I pushed it open and called out her name.

  Seeing her lying above the duvet in the dim light of the room, my pulse raced.

  “Skye?”

  No response.

  “Skye.” I was a little louder.

  Not even a twitch.

  I searched for the light switch and heard it click a millisecond before light flooded the room.

  Skye was sprawled across the top of the bed, her arm dangling over the side.

  There was something unnervingly still about her.

  Fear climbed up my legs, making my knees shake. “Skye?”

  Somehow, I forced myself to come unstuck from the door, and I almost stumbled into the bed as I neared it. My attention caught on the pill bottle by her bedside table before returning to her.

  Her chest wasn’t moving.

  “Skye?” I grabbed her, the fear now terror as I felt how cold she was. How stiff. I sobbed. “Skye!” I cried, shaking her.

  But she wouldn’t wake up.

  She wouldn’t wake up!

  “SKYE!”

  * * *

  “Ms. Doe,” the police officer’s voice brought me back into the hospital corridor. “Would you like us to make the call for you?”

  I shook my head. It hurt to move it. “No.”

  I fumbled with the phone in my hand and swiped the edge of the screen for my speed-dial numbers.

  What did I tell him?

  “I don’t know what to tell him,” I muttered under my breath.

  It wasn’t deliberate.

  I knew that. I knew that, even though we wouldn’t get the coroner’s report for days.

  She’d been making plans for her future. It wasn’t deliberate.

  Jamie picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey, Doe, I’m just about to race, can I call you back?”

  “Jamie.” His name came out on a sob.

  He was silent a moment, then his voice was frantic as he asked me what was wrong.

  “You need to come home,” I cried. “Jamie, you need to come home.”

  “You’re scaring the shit out of me. What’s going on?”

  I took in a shuddering breath that caused something to rattle audibly from inside me. “Skye … I’m so sorry. Baby, Skye is gone. She … she died, Jamie. She’s dead.”

  Chapter 11

  JANE

  Eighteen years old

  * * *

  Gazing out the window, I watched as Lorna hugged Jamie goodbye.

  I’d stayed inside the house because my ex-best friend had made it clear my presence was not appreciated.

  The last ten days had been a blur. I wish I could say that grief had numbed me to any other emotion, but I couldn’t. Anger played center stage. Anger at Skye. At Lorna.

  And mostly at myself.

  I didn’t want to be angry at Skye.

  She hadn’t meant to go away.

  Waiting five days for the coroner’s report was the most excruciating wait of our lives. Jamie was a mess. Despite the way he clung to me through the night, there was this mile-high wall around him I couldn’t scale. I understood that no matter how we all might be in agony together, grieving was a solitary journey. No one else could do it for you. Though someone might mourn at your side, that didn’t mean they were mourning the same way you were.

  I knew Jamie.

  I knew he was a writhing ball of devastation, loss, anger, and guilt. Moreover, for those five days, there was the terror. That maybe it hadn’t been an accident. That someone we loved was in extreme pain, and we didn’t look deep enough below the surface to clue in.

  During those days, I clung to one of my last conversations with Skye, and Jamie made me repeat it word for word over and over again, finding solace in
it. His sister had been making plans for the future, that much was certain.

  It had been an accident.

  Raiding her bathroom, we found pills that substantiated that belief.

  And the coroner’s report corroborated my gut feeling.

  Skye had gotten her hands on a friend’s prescription medication. We hadn’t known it, but she was taking two different antianxiety meds. That day she’d not only taken those meds, she’d taken painkillers, and something to help her sleep. She died of acute intoxication. An accidental overdose.

  There were days as I pondered a future of never seeing her again that I wondered if I could survive the physical sorrow crushing my chest. Then I’d look at Jamie, his face drawn, dark circles under his eyes, those beautiful eyes dim—the light gone out—and my suffering would increase by a million as I took on his. I wished I could bear the weight of this loss for the both of us. Knowing I never could devastated me.

  The powerlessness was almost as agonizing as the grief.

  Through it, I had my own guilt. I’d convinced Jamie that Skye was okay. However, if she was taking antianxiety meds, then she wasn’t okay. He’d known something was wrong, and I convinced him not to push her.

  We were also plagued by the paparazzi that camped outside our house for days and hounded us to and from the funeral.

  Today was the first day they hadn’t shown up.

  I couldn’t bear to look at the internet to see what they were saying about Skye. Through the messages of love and grief, there would be gossip about her addiction and speculation over her death. There was no point reading all of that. It would be like picking at a fresh wound.

  Watching Lorna lower herself into the cab, I felt relieved to see her go.

  From the moment she’d flown in, she’d treated me with a cold fury. Three nights after her arrival, she got drunk and told me I was to blame for the distance between her and Skye before she died. That she wished she’d never brought me into her life.

  It was hard to shut those words out.

  If it hadn’t been for Jamie, I might never have bothered trying to.

  But he needed me.

  Although Lorna clung to him at the funeral and made it clear she didn’t want me in their space, Jamie needed me. He wouldn’t sit in the front pew until Lorna moved to his other side to let me in.

  The day Skye died, Jamie got a flight home and I met him at the morgue. He wanted to go in alone. When he came out, he collapsed at my feet, and I held him while he sobbed deep, wrenching cries that I could still hear in my head when I closed my eyes.

  That was the last time he cried.

  Until the funeral.

  Lorna organized everything. The place was packed with friends, celebrities, and industry people. I was barely aware of them or those who approached Lorna and Jamie to offer condolences. Despite the ill feeling she had toward me, I was proud of Lorna as she stood up in front of the congregation and delivered a beautiful memorial to a sister who had changed her life to look after her and Jamie. It was a relief to hear Lorna speak of Skye’s drive to give her and her brother a future they never would’ve had without her.

  I hoped Skye was somewhere listening, finally realizing how much she’d meant to us all. And to the little sister she thought didn’t look up to her anymore. Lorna’s voice broke a few times, but she got through that speech in a way I wasn’t sure I could have.

  As Skye was taken away for cremation, a video overhead played clips of her through the years. Photos and home-video shots. The Waterboys’ “The Whole of the Moon” played over the footage.

  I wanted to be strong for Jamie. To hold back my tears, but I couldn’t. His grip on my hand tightened and I felt his shoulder shake against mine. I looked at him and saw the tears rolling silently down his face as he stared up at the memorial.

  I broke.

  Because he was broken.

  And I knew it was a wound that would never fully heal.

  I couldn’t help him.

  So, I just held on tighter and laid my head on his shoulder. He gripped at my arm, keeping me as close as he could as I attempted to absorb some of his grief.

  I wanted to offer the same to Lorna. I tried to.

  But as I held out my arms to her afterward, she cut me a dark look and brushed past.

  Two days later, we took Skye’s ashes to Santa Monica and poured them into the ocean. Lorna threw a fit when Jamie told her I’d be attending the private moment. As though I hadn’t been a part of their family for years. Jamie had no patience for Lorna’s antics normally, so to say he was on a knife’s edge was an understatement.

  I’d never heard him roar at anyone the way he roared at Lorna that day.

  She burst into tears, apologized to him, and didn’t say another word about me coming.

  The three of us said a silent goodbye to Skye.

  Lorna never spoke to me again.

  So, yes, I was relieved to see her go. My fragile heart could not take the tension between us.

  Jamie returned to the house and enveloped me in his arms. He buried his head in my neck, his embrace tight and reassuring—even though I knew it was me he sought the reassurance from.

  I kissed his shoulder and caressed his back, trying to soothe him.

  After a while, he lifted his head. Beneath the unbearable sadness was a resigned weariness.

  The previous night, we’d discussed giving up the house. We couldn’t afford the rent on our own, so we’d need to find a smaller apartment. That meant packing.

  Lorna packed up the things she’d left behind when she left for college and still wanted to keep. She said we could donate everything else.

  That wasn’t our concern. The concern was that it meant going through Skye’s things and deciding what to keep and what to donate.

  Lorna didn’t want to do it, and I didn’t want Jamie to have to do it, so I’d volunteered.

  And since I was not looking forward to it, I wanted to get it over with.

  “The guys dropped off the boxes.” Jamie pointed to the dining room where I’d already spotted the pile of packing boxes. His teammates had been a huge support to him through this whole nightmare, and I would never forget them for it. “I’ll get started down here.”

  The house came furnished, so we didn’t have to worry about moving furniture, just knickknacks and clothing.

  “Remember, we need to donate a lot. We won’t be able to take it all with us. I’ll go upstairs and get started.”

  Sorrow rippled over his expression before he got control of it. Nodding, he pressed a hard kiss to my lips, murmured a hoarse “thank you,” and moved to the kitchen to get started in there.

  Carrying a few boxes upstairs with me, I hesitated outside Skye’s bedroom door.

  We hadn’t gone in since we raided her bathroom for clues to her death.

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I threw back my shoulders and soldiered into the room. Dropping the boxes, I flicked the light switch.

  The room smelled like her. Like the Gucci perfume she wore.

  Tears clouded my eyes and I took a deep breath, letting out a shaky exhale. Memories of finding her on her bed played over in my head. All the time.

  I’d never be rid of them.

  I knew it.

  And I’d have to find a way to live with their permanent residence in my head.

  Fighting down the nausea, I started in the bathroom. Most of everything in there could be thrown out. From there I moved on to her shoes and clothes. I tried to numb myself. To not associate any of the items with memories as I created donation boxes filled with her beautiful things.

  Along the top of her closet were trinket boxes, hatboxes, and jewelry boxes. I pulled them all out and started going through them. I was there a few hours, putting aside items I thought Lorna might want to keep.

  Pulling over the stool from Skye’s dresser, I stepped up onto it to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the closet and found a large shoebox buried at the back. It was much too h
eavy to have shoes inside.

  Dragging it down, its weight caused it to spill from my hands, and journals fell out, slamming to the carpet one after the other.

  As I stared at them in surprise, I heard Jamie call upstairs to ask if I was okay.

  I called back my affirmative and lowered to my knees, reaching for the leather-bound journals. There were eight of them. They were thick. And as I flicked open the pages, I saw they were all filled with Skye’s handwriting.

  She’d kept diaries.

  I had no idea.

  I glanced at the door, wondering what I should do.

  I shouldn’t read them. I should take them to Jamie and ask him what he wanted to do with them.

  Instead, I tremored with adrenaline. Inside these diaries were possible answers. Why was Skye on antianxiety meds? What drove her to alcohol and drugs? Was it a genetic predisposition toward addiction, or was there another reason?

  That roiling sensation moved through my gut—the one you get when you know you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing—as I fumbled through the diaries, trying to find the most recent entry.

  Her last entry was days before her death.

  What I discovered had me tearing through the diaries, traveling back through her words to four and a half years ago.

  The entry was dated November, my freshman year of high school.

  Her writing was messier in this entry. Instead of the beautiful, cursive handwriting in most of her entries, here it was spiky and frantic. It was a detailed entry of how she’d gone to a meeting with the powerful Hollywood producer Foster Steadman. How he’d tried to coerce her into sex in exchange for advancing her career. How she’d said no.

  And how he’d taken what he wanted anyway and raped her on the floor of his office.

  Tears poured out of me and I tried to stifle sobs as I read on through the diaries, reading her pain and violation and shame through the months. How small and disgusted she’d felt by her own silence. The fear of losing her career if she spoke up. Losing the money she needed to take care of Lorna and Jamie. How she was repulsed anytime she looked in the mirror and that alcohol and cocaine made her forget for a little while.