Today's Promises

by S. R. Grey

  A centipede takes off as I quietly say to Jaynie, “The hole I dug is still here.”

  “It was always a good hiding spot,” she replies.

  “It was.”

  I carefully place the knife in a hole that’s about two feet deep.

  I then toss in the bloodied towel and quickly replace the concrete slab.

  Standing, I turn to Jaynie and say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Jaynie

  I have so many mixed feelings regarding what Flynn and I did in the barn at the Lowry house. Planting evidence would surely land us in jail, if we are ever caught.

  Hopefully, though, our plan will go off without a hitch.

  “When should we call Detective Silver?” I ask as soon as we return to Lawrence. “I’m just ready for this thing to end.”

  We’re trudging up the stairs to our rented room, but the hour is late.

  Flynn stops on the step above me. He turns to me in the darkness, his face cast in the long shadows of the stairwell. Even in the dark, it’s clear he’s also struggling with what we did.

  Closing his eyes, he leans back against the wall in the narrow corridor. “I don’t know, Jaynie… Soon, I guess.”

  He seems exhausted, though I suspect it’s the effect of the mental toll that comes from what we had to do to stay safe from Allison. I wish I could bear more of his burden. I hate that he wouldn’t allow me to be more directly involved with the planting of the knife and towel. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that by accompanying him every step of the way, even if I didn’t handle the evidence directly, I’d still go to prison.

  I think Flynn’s coming to grips with that fact right now. And that’s another reason why he’s hurting.

  I reach out and close my hand around his forearm. Well, I do this as best as I can. His arms are strong these days and corded with muscles.

  “Hey,” I begin, squeezing in what I hope is a comforting way. “We did the right thing.”

  Opening his eyes, he peers down at me. “Did we, though?”

  “Yes, Flynn,” I say insistently. “You know it was the only thing we could do. We were backed into a corner.”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “So what’s really bothering you?”

  He lets out a little snort, like a laugh, but not. “Maybe the prospect of watching you get carted off to prison has me a little down, yeah?”

  I start caressing his arm. “Hey, come on. What’s done is done. Should we go back to Forsaken and dig up the knife? Do you want to go throw it away? If we do that, you know what happens next. Allison walks free.”

  “No way is that happening,” he says, suddenly adamant and ferocious.

  There’s my guy.

  “Yes, exactly, Flynn.” I nod and nod. “That’s exactly why what happened had to happen. We did what we had to do.” I’m more fervent than ever as I add, “I believe in what we did. We had no other option. Nothing was ever uncovered in the excavation and the case is about to be closed, right?” He nods, and I finish with, “This is justice for Debbie, Flynn. And protection for me and you.”

  Suddenly pulling me up to him, he holds on to me so tightly that I soon can no longer discern if it’s my heartbeat or his that pumping so strongly between us.

  “Shh, shh, everything will be okay,” I murmur. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Whether I’m uttering that statement for Flynn’s benefit, or for my own, I don’t know.

  But just like our indistinguishable heartbeats, it doesn’t matter. What Flynn does for himself he also does for me. And what I do for me will always ultimately be for him.

  We work this way, we live this way, we love this way—together, always, as one.

  Flynn

  Jaynie is still set on calling Detective Silver basically as soon as we step in our room. But I want to wait.

  “Just until tomorrow,” I clarify.

  “Why? Now is as good a time as any.”

  “Look…” I blow out a breath. “It’s late. If we call him now, it looks really suspicious.”

  Hands resting on her hips, she questions, “And just how does it look suspicious? I thought we were going with the story that we happened to be in Forsaken today and decided to stop up at the property to look around for evidence one final time. He knows we don’t want this case closed.”

  I turn away, mumbling, “He’s going to be pissed we didn’t inform him first.”

  Jaynie comes over to stand in front of me, so I have no choice but to deal with her insistence that we call Silver now.

  “Listen,” she says. “We’re telling him it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, right?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Okay, so we explain that that’s why we had no time to call him.” She pauses, like she’s thinking it over. Then she adds, “Better yet, you know how the cell service is up there, right?”

  “Yeah, shitty,” I reply.

  “Very shitty. So it’s believable when we say we wanted to call, but there was no service. We have those crappy pay-as-you-go phones as it is. It’s a good story, Flynn.”

  I take a seat on our bed and run my fingers through my hair. Why am I so hell-bent on putting off this call to the detective?

  Do I have a good reason?

  You bet your ass I do.

  As soon as we make the call, there’ll be no turning back. And if Detective Silver figures out that we planted the phony evidence, we are fucked.

  Jaynie included.

  Hell, I should have made her stay back here in Lawrence. I should’ve done this on my own.

  “We’re waiting till tomorrow,” I state firmly.

  When Jaynie sees there’s no changing my mind, she releases a long sigh, effectively giving up. “Fine, Flynn. We’ll do it your way.”

  Jaynie

  We make the call to Detective Silver the next day, just like Flynn wants.

  Seated cross-legged on the floor of our room, facing one another, the morning light slants in through the window, illuminating the side of Flynn’s head and making his sandy hair appear golden. He’s stunning to me. Even the little crescent-shaped scar beneath his right eye, that gift from his asshole father, doesn’t detract from his hotness factor.

  He smiles over at me. “Here goes nothing,” he says.

  “Or everything,” I reply, my own smile dying on my lips as the seriousness of what we’re about to do sinks in.

  Blowing out a breath, Flynn hits the speaker on the phone and dials the detective’s number.

  Thirty seconds later, he’s sharing the story we devised.

  Flynn lays out what we came up with—that we stopped by the property on a whim, to check one final time for evidence. He adds that we tried to call the detective, but didn’t have any service.

  “We were in the work barn,” Flynn continues, his voice a little strained, but only detectable by me since I know him so well. “Cell service is never any good on the property, especially in the barn. Anyway, while we were there, I remembered an old hiding place where I used to stash food.”

  I can hear the detective loud and clear on speaker when he clears his throat, already not pleased with our taking things into our own hands. “Where is this hiding place, exactly?” he asks gruffly.

  “On the floor,” Flynn says. “Or, more like, in the floor, in the ground itself. It’s a place I dug out, under a big concrete slab that came loose.”

  He goes on, explaining to the detective how he lifted the loose slab yesterday and started to dig, far deeper than where he used to hide food. “And that’s when I uncovered what looked like a bloody towel,” he finishes.

  “A bloody towel, huh?” The detective sounds wary, if you ask me.

  But Flynn forges on. “Yes, a bloody towel. And when I looked at it more closely, I could make out the outline of what looked like it could be a knife underneath. I didn’t want to dig any deeper, though, and taint potential evidence. I just filled in the hole, and then Jaynie and I left the premises.”
>
  The detective is mad as hell, at first. He lets us know it too. “That was trespassing, what you two did. Do you realize that?”

  “Yes, we know,” we utter simultaneously.

  “You aren’t supposed to go searching around up on that property, not alone, and not now or ever. I told you to call me if you thought of anything else.”

  We apologize, again and again, and finally the detective calms down. He even goes so far as to grudgingly admit that it actually may be a good thing we found something to further the case.

  “The Debbie Canfield files are about to be closed for good,” he informs us. “I estimate they’ll be asking me to wrap things up by the end of this week. It would’ve been sooner, but these things always seem to get bogged down in red tape.”

  “The case won’t be closed now that there’s potential new evidence, right?” Flynn asks. “They can’t do that after what we found.”

  “Perhaps not,” the detective responds. “But I must tell you that a bloody towel doesn’t mean much, nor does a knife. At least, not without a DNA match to back those things up.”

  My gaze meets Flynn, and I nod.

  He then asks the detective, “You’ll send this stuff to a lab for testing, right?” His eyes never leave mine.

  “Yes,” Silver confirms. “Whatever we find will be analyzed for evidence.”

  Flynn and I let out a collective sigh of relief, knowing that the blood will be a match to Debbie Canfield.

  I muster up the courage to ask a question of my own. “Detective Silver, when do you think you’ll go to the property to check out what we found?”

  He hesitates, like he’s pondering, and, at last, he says, “Well, today is Sunday and most everyone is off. I’d prefer to take a full forensics team up with me since you mentioned possible blood.” I hear the detective flipping through pages of what I assume is his planner. “Tomorrow I’m testifying on another case,” he murmurs. “That’ll take up most of the day.” More page-flipping and then, “Tuesday looks good.”

  “Tuesday,” I echo.

  “Is it too much to ask for you to keep us updated?” Flynn wants to know.

  “I always do,” the detective reminds us.

  “Yeah, yeah, you do,” Flynn says, his voice a little guilty-sounding. “And, uh, thanks for that.”

  “No problem.”

  The call comes to an end.

  “What do we do now?” I ask Flynn.

  “We wait.”

  I’m off from work on Monday. Flynn takes the bus and leaves the car with me. I need the car for a good reason, one he and I have discussed at length…and one I feel is high time I get a move on.

  I finally made an appointment with a career counselor over at the local community college, and she has me scheduled in for ten this morning.

  At the meeting, things go better than expected. I end up leaving the school filled with hope that my dream of someday helping kids in a meaningful way may truly become a reality. Armed with course schedules for the fall semester, I climb into the car. After I deposit my packet of info on the passenger seat, I send a quick text to Flynn.

  Hey, just got out of my meeting at the school. It went really well! The career counselor told me if I take my core courses here at the community college, everything should transfer to a four-year school, no problem. That’d be perfect, since even with aid we’ll still have loans. This way, we’ll save a lot.

  Flynn texts back: Babe, I am so happy for you. I knew you could do it. And I believe in you for the steps ahead of you too. You’re going to be a star student, and someday you’ll become to the kids you help what you already are to me—a saving grace.

  You’re sweet, I text back. I love you so much.

  I love you too, Jaynie-bird.

  Smiling, I set the phone on the passenger seat and start the car. I’m all set to return to our rented room, but as I start driving my joyful feeling wanes. I’m bothered by a troubling thought, a thought that started as a nagging concern, but is now a full-blown worry.

  “Hell with going home,” I mutter as I make a turn to the road that leads out of Lawrence and toward Forsaken.

  “You better hurry,” I prod myself when I’m halfway to my destination.

  I’m tapping the steering wheel like Flynn does when he’s uneasy. Damn, I need to haul ass to the Lowry property if I’m going to be successful in saving the man I love.

  See, I have to do something before I can even think of saving kids like me and Flynn. I need to save us, first. And that means I cannot allow Flynn to sacrifice his future to save mine. Not now that the future we dreamed of is within our grasp.

  “We can’t fuck this up,” I whisper, hitting the gas.

  I drive toward the work barn on the Lowry property, while there’s still time to fix the mess we made. I need to get rid of that planted evidence as soon as possible. And that means I must get to it before the detective does, which is supposed to be tomorrow.

  If Allison ends up released in a month, then so be it. The cost to keep her in prison is just too high. If we’re caught, Flynn will be put away, just like his father. Damn, he could even end up in the same prison as his dad. And that would surely kill him.

  I hit the gas.

  Flynn

  I’m so happy for Jaynie, going after her dreams like this. There was a time when she could barely deal with people. She was that broken by the system. But finally she’s strong enough that she actually feels she can help the kids society casts aside.

  I’m interrupted from my reverie when the foreman yells at me. “Get a move on, O’Neill. You’re on the clock. Daydream on your own damn time.”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply.

  He then sends me over to work in another area of the apartments we’re building.

  Fine, I can use the walk over to think about my own future.

  I’ve been thinking about what I want to do, career-wise, a lot lately anyway. Working construction is all fine and good while I’m young and strong, but what will happen when I get older? I could always hope for a promotion to foreman, which would involve more overseeing. But even if that comes to pass, there’s still the weather to factor in. Here in this part of the country construction is not really a year-round gig. At least, not a steady one. In the summer, like now, work is plentiful. But come winter, it’s a whole new ballgame.

  Sure, there are projects here and there, but it’s not always something one can depend on. And that’s not going to cut it. I need consistent, reliable employment if I’m serious about building a future with Jaynie.

  And I am. More than anything else in my life, I want to do that.

  But what sort of employment would I best be suited for?

  When I think back to my time at the Lowry house, I have to admit that for all the bad times there were a few good ones. Meeting Jaynie is certainly at the top of that list, as well as forging what I know will always be lifelong relationships with Mandy and the twins.

  The twins… I think about the time I spent with them, specifically their home-schooling. We older kids were responsible for teaching Cody and Callie all their school subjects, and we did a good job. I, however, was especially adept at helping Cody. He has difficulties learning in traditional ways, but that never mattered to me. I was always coming up with creative methods to teach him what he needed to learn.

  Like this one time with math. Cody couldn’t figure out how to count. I enlisted Jaynie and together we used craft materials—different colored wooden dowels, to be specific—to help Cody learn to add.

  Maybe I could take some college classes myself, just like Jaynie plans to do.

  Maybe I could become a teacher.

  Hell, I think I’d really like that.

  With a newfound purpose in my step, I stride to the new work area, only to discover all the other workers have stopped for lunch.

  Sighing, I take a seat on a huge cement block, away from the other guys. I open my brown bag and pull out the creation I made this morning before I lef
t the sandwich shop. But just as I’m about to bite into tasty roast beef and cheddar on five-grain bread, my masterpiece, my cell buzzes.

  It has to be Jaynie, so I place my sandwich on the crinkled bag and answer the phone, all without checking to see who the caller actually is.

  “Hey, babe,” I say without pause.

  “Um…” Shit, not Jaynie. “It’s Detective Silver,” the voice on the other end informs me. “This is Flynn O’Neill, yes?”

  “Yes. It’s me.” I clear my throat, my cheeks warming at my silly misstep. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Clearly.”

  There’s humor in the detective’s voice, and I can’t help but chuckle myself. But then, as always, he gets down to business.

  “I called today to give you a head’s up on the Canfield case, just like I promised I would.”

  “Hey, I appreciate that,” I say. “So, what’s up?”

  “My court date for today was postponed,” Detective Silver informs me. “So, it looks like I may have some extra time on my hands. I was thinking of driving up to the Lowry property to check out your lead on that potential new evidence.”

  “Whoa, that’s great.” I blow out a breath, both nervous and excited. I want the detective to find the planted evidence, sure, but I can’t help but worry a little that he’ll realize it’s manufactured. “So you’re heading up there, like, right now?” I croak out.

  “Yes,” he replies. “Though this is too last-minute for me to get a forensics team together. Still, I can take some photos and cordon off the area. I’ll get another patrolman posted up there to stay the night. I had one on duty last night, but he’s off today.”

  My voice cracks as I ask, “You had a patrolman on duty up there?”

  “Absolutely. We wouldn’t want to take a chance on vandals getting to the evidence you told me about before the authorities do, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” I murmur.

  Shit. This is it. There’s no turning back. I should call Jaynie to let her know the ball is rolling.