Promises to Keep

by Rose Marie Ferris

  "No," she affirmed.

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth to keep from crying out her pleasure as his thumb stroked over the sensitive tip of a nipple. Her hands had crept up his chest to his shoulders and now she wound her arms around his neck. She was trembling, and her eyes were alight with passion as she pulled his head down and lifted her mouth to his. They kissed lovingly, lingeringly, but with a certain sweet restraint; each of them purposely forestalling the final rapture in order to savor it all the more. And when the kiss had ended, Garth buried his face in her hair.

  "Have you any idea how much I've wanted to wake up in the morning and find you in my arms?" he asked roughly. "How I've wanted to see your hair spread out on the pillow beside me? I'd like to wrap myself in it. I'd like to wrap you in it—see you wear it like a satin cape."

  As he spoke he twined a shining skein of her hair around his fingers and let it fall across her face. He repeated this ritual with another strand and another, running his fingers through her hair to loosen it and fan it out until a fine veil of it covered her face. No sooner had he finished arranging it when he parted it to kiss her through the gauzy curtain, and for a long entrancing interlude the silence in the room was disturbed only by whispered words and muted cries of love.

  When Julie awoke for the second time that morning, the chinook had set in from the southwest and the sky was a clear, windswept blue. Already the temperature had moderated and the snow was melting. A cadential drumming sound marked the rapid thaw as the runoff from the roof of the house overflowed the gutters and dripped from the eaves. Shafts of sunshine were deflected by the remaining snow and poured with blinding intensity through the windows to gather in shimmering pools of light on the walls and ceiling of the bedroom.

  She opened her eyes slowly and saw that Garth was still beside her. He was lying with his head braced by one hand and it was apparent that he had been watching her. It made her feel peculiarly defenseless to think of him studying her while she slept.

  As if he'd read her thoughts he smiled, as brilliantly as the light in the room, as warmly as the balmy breeze. He bent over her and brushed the off-center dimple in her chin with his lips.

  "I've been wondering how you happened to come by that scar," he explained softly. "Did you injure yourself in one of your childhood adventures?"

  Julie's smile froze, half formed. Her breath caught in her throat when she corrected him, "It's not a scar, it's a cleft!" Her sleep-husky voice was edged with surprising vehemence, and its harshness startled her. She inhaled deeply, trying to regain her composure before she ventured uncertainly, "Or maybe it's some kind of birthmark. But so far as I know, I've always had it."

  "No, Julie." Garth shook his head. "You didn't have it when you were a little girl."

  He ran the edge of his thumb along it and as he traced it she could visualize the tiny crescentic indentation. His brows were drawn together as he puzzled over it.

  "I asked you about it once before and you changed the subject. You were uneasy then too. It's nothing to be self-conscious about, you know," he reassured her. "It adds character to your face and, if anything, it's endearing."

  "I'm not uneasy, dammit!" She jerked her chin away from his touch. "And I'm not self-conscious about it because it isn't a scar!"

  Calmly Garth tried to reason with her. "If you'd look at it closely—"

  "Please," she moaned. She hid the mark from him with her hand. A fine tremor started at the tips of her fingers and quickly became less localized until she was shaking all over. "Please! Can't you just forget it?"

  Garth was baffled by Julie's reaction. One minute she had been unnecessarily agitated and the next she had gone absolutely inert. Thinking to comfort her, he raised his hand to smooth the tumbled cloud of hair back from her forehead but when Julie caught sight of a blur of motion from the corner of her eye, she flinched and reflexively threw her arm in front of her face as though she were warding off a blow. Her eyes were wide and glazed, and she stared up at him fixedly before she rolled away from him and simultaneously curled her body into a tight knot of misery.

  Garth was stunned. "My God, Julie!" he exclaimed crossly. "You're behaving as if I'd made a habit of beating you. After last night, don't you know I would never intentionally do anything to harm you? What's gotten into you?"

  "I don't know," she replied dully. "I'm terribly sorry."

  "You're forgiven," he declared. "But with or without your help, I'm going to get to the bottom of this. And soon. So consider this fair warning. I'm not going to rest until I know all the answers."

  Julie was relieved to hear the gentleness underlying the steely determination in Garth's voice. Even as she had offered her stilted apology, she had been aware of its inadequacy. She was horrified by the knowledge that he'd spoken the truth. For some reason, when she'd glimpsed his hand coming toward her face she had thought he intended to strike her.

  Shortly before one o'clock that afternoon, the mailman delivered a package to Garth, and when Julie took her place at the lunch table a few minutes after the hour, there was a square jeweler's box by her plate. She looked around the table and saw that Garth, Dan, and Jessie were watching her expectantly.

  "Is this for me?" she asked.

  "Yes," Garth replied evenly. "I telephoned Rupert the other night and asked him to locate it and send it on for you airmail special."

  "But why? What is it?"

  "Why not open it and find out," Dan said dryly.

  Julie fingered the parcel gingerly before she picked it up. As she held it in her palm, she sensed that the others were waiting with bated breath for her to open it. As for her, she felt the same reluctance she'd experienced when Garth had told her to look at the envelope of newspaper articles. She told herself that this time she wouldn't allow herself to indulge in silly forebodings. She squared her shoulders resolutely and without further hesitation she flipped the box open.

  After a cursory glance at the ring the box contained, she concentrated on the floral border on her plate. The ring was a marquise-cut yellow diamond in a heavily baroque setting, and she felt an odd aversion to it. Her initial impulse was to simply close the case and cast it away. She looked at the ring again. It was obviously an antique and it occurred to her that Garth might have presented it to her as a wedding or engagement gift; perhaps it was an heirloom that he'd handed down in keeping with family tradition. She forced herself to inspect the ring more closely and grudgingly admitted that, although she would not have chosen the stone or the setting for herself, it was really quite a lovely piece of jewelry.

  There was a fine gold chain looped through the band, and the ring slid of its own weight to the center when she lifted it out of the box. She let it swing freely, admiring the way the facets of the jewel trapped the sunlight. The stone sparkled at her. It almost seemed to be winking just at her—as if they were coconspirators—as it spun this way and that on its thin golden chain. It had a mesmerizing effect. Much as she wanted to, she couldn't tear her eyes away from it.

  By the time she recognized what was happening to her, before she realized that she could identify the ring and why it was familiar, it was too late.

  Time and place began to recede and Julie turned appealingly toward Garth. It was as if she were viewing him through the wrong end of a telescope. He seemed far away—too far away to help her. She was powerless to stem the flow of memories that rushed in. They created an additional obstacle between them, and she sagged into her chair as she shouldered the insupportable burden of the past.

  When at last the disorienting feeling began to ebb, she felt the chain cutting into her hand. Automatically she slipped it over her head and the ring dropped inside the open collar of her blouse to settle in an icy weight between her breasts.

  "I remember," she said numbly. She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. "I remember… everything." Her lips, her face, all of her, was stiff and cold. She had remembered, and it was not to be borne.

  She pus
hed her chair away from the table so quickly, it fell over with a clatter that brought Buck running from his spot by the living room fireplace. Distressed as she was, Julie recorded this fact, but she did not stop to pat the shepherd, to tell him that she was all right. She was not all right.

  Garth had risen to his feet, too, and as he followed Julie from the kitchen Jessie suggested uncertainly, "Maybe you'd better let her be by herself for a little while."

  He ignored this well intentioned advice and when he heard the front door close behind Julie, he lengthened his stride. Stopping only to grab a couple of coats from the hall closet, he, too, left the house. He kept Julie in sight without attempting to overtake her as she wandered down the lane and crossed the highway to find the path to the river.

  She stumbled occasionally as she traversed the rough terrain of the trail, for she walked as if she were in a trance, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It was obvious she was wrestling with a problem so tormenting that she felt compelled to try and run away from it—as she had been, Garth now realized, when she'd left California. He wished she would cry. He wanted to stop her, take her in his arms and tell her to let it all out—ail the sorrow, all the fear—but he held himself in check.

  His better judgment overruled his desire to shield her from whatever nameless terrors were driving her. For the time being, he didn't think she was prepared to bid farewell to the events of the past that were responsible for her despair. But, Garth thought, when she was ready—this time, please God—he would be there for her.

  It was only the river bisecting the trail that stopped Julie's flight. When she reached it, she dropped down to sit on the bank with her legs tucked under her. Garth had thought she was oblivious to his presence, but she wasn't. She had known all along that he was following her.

  She touched the scar on her chin. "Had you guessed my grandmother gave me this?" she asked in a cracked whisper. "Is that why you questioned me about it this morning?"

  "No, Julie," Garth answered slowly. "I didn't figure that out until I saw the way the ring affected you. Then I noticed how the shape of it matches the scar."

  She was holding the stone as if it were some sort of talisman and she visibly relaxed when he made his reply. He moved from his position slightly behind her to sit by her side.

  "You knew this was her ring though?"

  "Yes, you'd told me it was Elizabeth's. I remarked on the fact that you always wore it and you said it was a keepsake she'd given you."

  Julie nodded as he confirmed her recollections. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. "I remember," she said tonelessly. "But I didn't tell you she gave it to me as a reminder of a promise I'd made her."

  "No, you didn't. I assumed it had come to you after she died."

  It was chilly by the river and she was shivering. She let go of the ring to cross her arms over her breasts, and Garth draped the smaller of the jackets over her shoulders before he shrugged into the other one.

  "Thank you." She observed the nicety by rote, like a polite child well coached in etiquette. "Would you like me to tell you about it?" she asked.

  "Only if you want to."

  "I think that you, of all people, are entitled to an explanation."

  "Maybe so," he said quietly, "but if that's your only reason for telling me, I'd rather you'd just forget it. Sometimes it's better not to rake over the past."

  "No!" she objected adamantly. She turned to look at him, weighing his sincerity. When he risked taking her hand in his, she did not pull away. "I—I want to tell you," she added hesitantly. "I think I have to tell you." She briefly returned the pressure of his fingers before she withdrew her hand to touch the mark on her chin.

  "This happened when I was fifteen," she said. "We had a terrible row over my plans to go away to school in Eugene, Oregon, where I could get special training in gymnastics."

  Garth nodded. "I've heard of the school."

  "Looking back, I don't know why I didn't foresee how upsetting this would be to Grandmother." Julie sighed deeply. "I knew she shouldn't become unduly excited. She'd had a stroke about two years before, and her doctor placed special emphasis on the need for her to remain calm."

  "The scholarship must have meant a lot to you."

  "At the time it meant the whole world. It was my way out. It was a passport to a new life, a different life than the one my grandmother had mapped out for me." Her hand clenched convulsively about the ring. "I was so selfish that I never once stopped to consider how badly this would hurt Grandmother."

  "Julie," he reasoned earnestly, "it isn't selfish not to want to walk in someone else's shadow. It's a very natural inclination."

  She shook her head doubtfully. "You may be right about that," she admitted, "but once I saw how strenuously she opposed my leaving, I shouldn't have pursued the argument. And I said a terrible thing to her."

  Her voice was husky with unshed tears and she cleared her throat before she went on. "Grandmother told me I couldn't leave her because I was all she had. And I—I accused her of preferring it that way. I said, 'If you have no one else, it's your own choice.'"

  "From what Dan and Jessie have told me about her, it strikes me that you were only speaking the truth."

  "True or not, it was very wrong of me to say it," Julie firmly insisted. "Grandmother flew into a rage. She seemed to become a different person and she— she hit me. Twice. Like this." Her hand moved to slap the air in a forceful forehand-backhand gesture. Her voice was barely audible when she continued. "She was wearing the ring—she always did—and the stone caught me on the chin. She'd never struck me before and she couldn't have known how she might injure me."

  "I think you're letting her off the hook a little too easily," Garth said grimly.

  Julie rushed on as if he hadn't spoken. "When Grandmother saw what she'd done, she looked so very old and she just seemed to—to shrivel. That was when she had her second stroke, and I promised I would never leave her."

  "She gave you the ring then?"

  "Yes. As a reminder of my promise. As a reminder that I'd given it freely, without her asking me to do so."

  "No doubt she intended it as a reminder, but not of any promise you'd made." Garth cupped her cheeks with his hands and turned her to face him. "Oh, honey," he said softly, giving her a little shake, "can't you see that it was supposed to reinforce the guilt you felt because you held yourself accountable for her illness? And needlessly! I mean—my God!— she was in her seventies! It could have happened anyway, at any time."

  He saw a flicker of uncertainty in the still depths of her eyes. "I'd like to believe you, Garth," she said shakily, "but it happened then! And besides, that's not the whole story."

  Her throat worked with the sudden sharp stab of remorse that assailed her. Although she described only sketchily her final clash with Elizabeth Ayers, in her imagination she relived each painful detail of the battle.

  Elizabeth had always cautioned Julie that the day was bound to come when she would regret being so rebellious. More than once she'd somberly predicted, "If you don't overcome your recalcitrant attitude, young lady, one day you'll go against my wishes once too often. Then you, and you alone, will have to pay the penalty." The severe lines in her face would soften, and she would smile ingratiatingly as she asked, "Do you think I want to see that happen to my own sweet little girl?"

  Julie would hang her head and mumble, "No, Grandmother."

  She had come to Elizabeth a bewildered not quite five-year-old, and she had learned very quickly that it was forbidden to say anything in praise of her mother or father. As soon as she did, Elizabeth would stop acting the role of doting granny and become stern and cold.

  From a very early age Julie had recognized that this giving and withholding of love was a ploy designed to keep her in line, and she'd resented being subjected to it. Yet basically her grandmother was kind to her. Even some of the harshest rules she laid down were for Julie's own good, and if she was possessive and refused to give Julie per
mission to join in the activities of the other children, it was only because she loved her and was afraid of losing her. After all, as Elizabeth so often pointed out, they had no one but each other.

  It was not until she approached her teens that Julie consciously questioned this fundamental premise, around which her grandmother had structured her existence. She began to wonder whether Elizabeth had overprotected her out of a determination to keep her eternally Grandma's own sweet little girl.

  As if to prove her surmise, when Julie entered adolescence and her body started to ripen, Elizabeth sought to instill in her a sense of modesty that approached shame. And when Elizabeth's self-fulfilling prophecy that Julie would eventually defy her once too often came to pass, it seemed inevitable that it should involve a feeble attempt on Julie's part to exercise her newfound maturity by accepting a date with a boy.

  The boy in question, Tom Rush, was a year or so older than she. They had several classes together at school and their friendship had blossomed rather tenuously. He asked her out a number of times, but she adhered to her grandmother's interdict and made up excuses for declining his invitations. When he asked her to go to the Junior Prom with him, however, he made it clear that their friendship was at stake.

  Julie accepted, for she couldn't bear to nip the fragile bud of affection that had sprung up between them. She had very few friends of her own age and she was lonely. Since her grandmother's last stroke, she had almost no free time. She had to hurry home after school to be with Elizabeth, and her vacations and weekends were occupied with taking care of her grandmother as well, so Julie was unable to participate in ordinary teen-age socializing.

  She considered sneaking out to keep her date with Tom, but finally decided against it. It went against the grain not to be forthright, and she wasn't doing anything sinful. When the day of the prom arrived, she explained to Elizabeth, as one adult to another, where she was going that night. On the surface Elizabeth was surprisingly unmoved by the news. The showdown didn't come until Tom brought her home after the dance.