Promises to Keep

by Susan Crandall

  He rubbed his hand over his face. His heart ached. He’d wanted so much more for his children. After listening to people whisper behind their backs as kids, he’d wanted the rest of their lives to be humiliation-free. Molly had thrown it all away, without a word to the rest of her family.

  Against his will, worry sprouted in his mind. What if something was wrong? He’d assumed, after their uneasy parting, that Molly was simply avoiding him.

  Maybe he’d call Lily later and see if she knew what was going on.

  He poked around in the storeroom until he was pretty sure Brownie had gone on his way. When he returned to the bar, Faye was leaning against the counter talking to a man Benny didn’t recognize. Faye was laughing; must be a friendly guy. Friendly or not, at least his presence would put off Faye from coming after him about Molly.

  Faye motioned Benny to them. “Benny, this is Dean Coletta. He works for that magazine you like . . . the . . . the—”

  “Report,” the man said, rising from his bar stool to shake Benny’s hand.

  Benny shook his hand. “Benny Boudreau.” He eyed the new-looking scar on the reporter’s neck. “I remember seeing your name. You’ve been doing the stuff on the Middle East, right?”

  In fact, Benny was very familiar with Coletta’s work. Benny had gotten into the habit of keeping track of what was happening around the world while his son, Luke, had been an army Ranger. Coletta always seemed to be smack-dab in the middle of the most volatile location on the planet. Which was also the most likely spot for Luke to be deployed. Benny always felt a little closer to his son when reading Coletta’s articles.

  Dean gave a half-smile and a curt nod. “I’m working on something different right now.” He rubbed his chin. “Boudreau? Now that’s an unusual name. Are there a lot of Boudreaus in this neck of the woods?”

  Faye answered for Benny. “Just Benny and his young ’uns. Course everybody’s married or moved off.”

  Benny didn’t bother to correct her; Molly was back—and wasn’t married, a fact which pained him daily.

  Dean smiled and leaned back on his stool. He directed his next question to Benny. “How many children? Faye here makes it sound like you have a tribe.” He chuckled.

  Benny shook his head. “Nope. Lily lives here. Luke is living in Mississippi. He used to be an army Ranger. You two would probably have a lot to talk about.”

  “A Ranger. Really? When?” Dean asked.

  Benny was glad to talk about Luke. “Well, he went to the army when he was nineteen. Rangers came ’bout a year later. Last year he was injured in a chopper crash—I suppose he Rangered for around fifteen years. I wonder if you two were ever in the same place at the same time.”

  “It’s likely.” Then Dean said, “So just a daughter and a son, then?”

  Benny nodded and mopped an imaginary spill on the bar.

  Faye cleared her throat.

  Benny ignored her.

  Faye said, “Benny’s forgettin’ that his baby just moved back here from Boston.”

  Benny clenched the towel in his fist to keep from smacking her. This stranger didn’t need to hear how his brilliant daughter had thrown away her respectability.

  “Boston! Bet you’re glad to have her back.”

  Benny stopped wiping the bar. “How’d you know my baby is a girl?”

  Dean sat straighter and tilted his head, looking slightly curious himself. “I didn’t. I guess it’s just when someone refers to an adult as ‘baby’ I think of a woman.” He paused. When Benny didn’t offer more, he said, “Is ‘baby’ a he or a she?”

  Faye chirped, “Oh, baby’s a girl all right. In fact—”

  Benny interrupted her before she had all of the dirty laundry out in the front yard. “I heard the delivery truck in back. Go take care of it for me, will you?”

  Faye pressed her lips together and snorted. “All right.”

  He felt her angry glare on him as she walked to the kitchen.

  Dean asked, “Why did your daughter decide to move back?”

  Benny lifted a shoulder. “Who knows why kids do anything?”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize she was still a kid. How old is she?”

  “Twenty-nine.” Benny turned to check the stock in the cooler behind him.

  Coletta didn’t take the hint; he asked, “What does she do?”

  “Doctor.”

  “Really! You must be proud.”

  “I’m proud she stayed with it—glad she’s a doctor.” Benny didn’t look at Coletta.

  “What brought her back here?” Coletta asked.

  “Benny! You must be hearin’ things. There’s no truck back there.” Faye bustled back behind the bar.

  Benny grunted. Maybe he’d turn the tables on this nosey reporter. He had a few questions that could be asked; like what in the hell was Coletta doing here on the outside of nowhere? Did he get injured while over there working among those fanatical extremists that acted like the Middle East was the Wild West? That scar on the man’s neck sure looked like a gunshot wound. If Coletta was going to start digging around in Benny’s sandbox, two could play at that game.

  He was actually a little disappointed when Faye took the conversation in a different direction. But at least it wasn’t about “baby.” “Dean said he’s looking for a place to stay for a few weeks. I told him that a lot of the lake cottages are empty this time of year—be better than driving all the way to the interstate to stay in a motel.”

  Benny couldn’t help himself. He asked in a suspicious tone, “Why would a man like you want to hang around here?”

  Dean didn’t seem to notice the tone. He answered as easy as you please. “I’m working on a piece of Americana right now. I’m spending time in various small towns around the country, trying to get a feel for real life—you know, more in depth than just driving through, asking a few questions and taking a few pictures.”

  Faye was nearly hopping up and down. “Isn’t it exciting?” She splayed her well-manicured hand over her heart and sounded breathless. “Our little town in that famous magazine?”

  Benny wanted to tell her all of that red-headed enthusiasm would be better spent checking the stockroom than thinking this was going to make her some sort of celebrity. But he held his tongue.

  She went on in a rush, “Earlier, I was telling Dean he should check with Brian Mitchell. Sometimes he lets folks use his lake house.” She faced Coletta again. “He’s got a real estate business right on the square—you can’t miss it. If he doesn’t want to rent his house, he’ll be the one to find you someplace else.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” Dean pushed himself away from the bar. “I appreciate the information.”

  Faye was grinning like an idiot as the man headed toward the door. “Come back sometime. We serve the best steaks in town.” Then she added, “Everybody comes here. It’d be a good place to do interviews.”

  He paused before going out and looked over his shoulder. Benny thought he saw something bordering on unfriendliness in his previously guileless eyes. But it could have been Benny’s own aggravation with Faye coloring his perception.

  Coletta said, “I’m sure I’ll be back real soon.” Then he was gone.

  Benny ignored Faye’s excited chatter after the man left. It just didn’t make sense to him that a man with a journalistic reputation like Dean Coletta was going to spend weeks sitting around a bunch of nowhere towns—even if he had been shot in the neck.

  As Dean left the Crossing House, he had the distinct impression that Benny Boudreau had a problem with his youngest child. Well, Dean had a couple of issues to clear up with the woman, too. He just wasn’t sure how to best go about it yet. He couldn’t jump the gun and scare her off. Dr. Boudreau’s flight from Boston had shown just how big of a risk that was. Maybe Daddy knew more about why she’d come home than he’d let on; there was definitely something about her that he didn’t want anyone to know. Did that something have to do with Julie’s death?

  But, Dean thought, she
hadn’t been “Julie” in Boston. She’d been Sarah, Sarah Morgan. Why? Why had she disappeared from her life in New York and invented a new identity for herself? Had she been hiding from someone? If so, Dean hadn’t been able to unearth who that someone could have been. Her life in New York, by all accounts, had been independent, productive, and well-balanced. She had a small circle of friends, who appeared baffled by her disappearance.

  But that disappearance had been months before she’d been killed, making an abduction unlikely. Paired with the false ID and the fact that she seemed to have been moving freely around Boston, kidnapping seemed totally out of the realm of possibility.

  All signs pointed to the fact that the baby she’d delivered shortly before her death was the key. But how? She had been a professional woman, working in a benign research laboratory that specialized in commercial foods. She’d been far from destitute, and certainly of an age that a pregnancy wouldn’t have to be hidden—not from a progressive-thinking family like theirs.

  That thought stopped him cold. There was no family. He and Julie had been all there was left. And now it was just him.

  He’d never seen shortcomings in the way they had been raised. But now he’d begun to trip in the pitfalls. Both he and Julie had been brought up to be self-sufficient, to make their mistakes and learn from them. They’d been close growing up, but as adults, even though he still thought of them as close, the reality was they rarely communicated. They were both busy with their lives, satisfied with the occasional telephone conversation and the sporadic holiday spent in the same city.

  Now he realized he didn’t know the woman his sister had become at all.

  Had Julie decided to give her baby up for adoption, then changed her mind? He knew there were women desperate enough to commit murder for a child. Or had she been the victim of a black market baby organization?

  Molly Boudreau could be the missing link in either case. He was an investigative reporter; and he was going to put his talents to work in a way he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams.

  It had taken four long weeks before Molly was able to close her eyes at night without the unremitting fear that someone was going to crash through her door, murder her, and take Nicholas. The first night she’d spent in her new house, she hadn’t slept at all. Every windblown leaf, every scrape of a branch on that blustery night had sent shivers down her spine and a cold stab of panic into her heart. During the subsequent nights, she’d been able to doze, but had been plagued with nightmares in which Nicholas was raised in an environment of lawlessness and cruelty. Over and over she saw the sweet infant mature to be a merciless killer like his father.

  She had done all that was physically possible to foster a sense of safety and security in her new home. All of the bedrooms in the house were on the first floor, the gabled second story given over to one huge dormered room that hadn’t been used in decades, judging from the finish-worn floor and fifties-era wallpaper. In her more optimistic moments, she thought that it would one day make a good playroom. But these days her optimism came only in microscopic doses. More often she stayed inside, double checked window latches and door locks, kept an eye on dark windows at night, and slept with a baseball bat she’d borrowed from her nephew, Riley, under her bed. Nicholas’s crib remained in her bedroom where she could hear any noise he—or any intruder near him—might make.

  On the morning that marked the beginning of her fifth week in Glens Crossing, she awakened realizing she’d slept the night through. As she opened her eyes and saw the sun had risen, she bolted out of bed, certain that she’d slept through Nicholas’s cry.

  But Nicholas slept peacefully, his precious pink mouth blowing tiny bubbles with every exhaled breath.

  As the tension left her body, she looked upon the baby and realized how much he’d grown. It made her see just how quickly time was passing. Day after day went by, dominated by dread and fear, her life drifting in limbo. It had to stop—or they would both become emotionally crippled.

  After so many weeks, odds were that if the father was going to hunt her down, he’d have done so by now. With that thought, the fear that had been ever present but diminishing, shrank to a manageable size. It was time to forge ahead. She needed work. Nicholas needed to be around other people. She’d been in hiding long enough. No one had come after her. She hadn’t heard from Detective McMurray after that first unsettling conversation.

  It was time to stick her head back out of her burrow and begin to build a life. A family life for Nicholas.

  He was hers, now and forever. She wanted him to grow up with the security of community as well as in the comfort of her love.

  That thought stopped her midbreath. She did love Nicholas. No longer did her feelings revolve around a promise, an obligation. She loved this child, would fight tooth and nail if anyone tried to take him away, would be devastated if she lost him.

  Well, if that’s the case, you’d damn well better get yourself in a position to support him.

  At ten o’clock, she called Boston General and told them she was resigning. Her conversation with her boss, Dr. Hannigan, was anything but what she expected.

  He said, “I’m not surprised.”

  “Really?” How could he not be surprised? She certainly was.

  “I know you’ve kept an Indiana license.”

  Molly didn’t think he ever paid that much attention to her personal details. “Well, I applied when I took the boards,” she explained. “It was to make my Dad happy. I never really thought I’d come back.” She realized she needed this to sound like a logical move. “But with Dad’s health, I just can’t be that far away.”

  “Molly, you never belonged in the ER. It was just a matter of time before you saw it. You should be in a community where you can develop long-term relationships with your patients—use your specialty. You’ve got too much heart for this kind of work.”

  “You never mentioned that to me before.” In fact, he never said much to her at all.

  He gave a dry chuckle. “Think I’m crazy? I didn’t want to lose one of the best doctors I’ve got on staff.”

  Best doctors? He had never found fault with her work; but she’d never had any indication he thought she was performing exceptionally well, either. “Thank you, Dr. Hannigan. Just have custodial services box up the things in my locker.”

  “Will do. I’ll just have the boxes put in my office for now.” Then he added, “You are setting up a pediatric practice.”

  “Not right away. I’m going to do some hospital work until I get settled here—and see how Dad’s health is going.”

  “Damn shame. You belong in Peds. Don’t waste your talents, don’t get caught up in the routine.”

  “I’ll keep your advice in mind, doctor.”

  “Good luck.”

  As Molly hung up the phone, she felt a kind of restlessness she hadn’t experienced since arriving home; a need to work, to doctor. She had been so preoccupied with her predicament that she hadn’t noticed the longing that was growing in her heart.

  Now it was time to face the outside world. The only place she’d been since moving into her house was Lily’s. She didn’t like the idea of coming home to a house that had been unattended, allowing someone to slip inside and wait for her, any more than she liked the idea of parading around town setting gossiping tongues to wagging. She’d become quite skilled at avoiding going out. She’d repeatedly managed to finagle having Lily doing the little bit of shopping she needed by using one excuse or another; it was too cold to get Nicholas out, or “as long as you’re going to Kingston’s could you pick up . . . ?” Once she’d even stooped so low as to feign illness herself.

  Her relationship with her sister remained puzzling. Lily was cordial enough, but there was something bothering her that no amount of questioning could bring to the surface. And, to be perfectly honest, Molly had enough to deal with without coddling her sister out of a mood. If Lily had a problem with her, she’d better just come out and tell her what it was—
or get over it.

  As Molly put Nicholas in the car, she took a deep breath of crisp autumn air. The sun was shining; the sky was a clear, deep blue. The morning frost was gone in all but the shadiest of areas. It was a glorious day. A day of pumpkins and hayrides. Of hot apple cider and wiener roasts. It brought back simple pleasures that she didn’t even know she’d missed after leaving this small town. On a day like this, it was easy to leave her darkest fears behind her. A perfect day for a new start.

  As she’d arranged by phone, she stopped at Lily’s to drop Nicholas off before her appointment with human resources at Henderson County Hospital. After she’d shuttled the baby and all of his paraphernalia inside, she was surprised how difficult it was to leave him. In fact, at the last second, she turned back around in the doorway. Lily stood with Nicholas in her arms and a pottery dust smear on her cheek.

  Suddenly the beautiful day wasn’t enough to banish Molly’s fears. This farm was pretty isolated. Someone could easily sneak up the lane. They could snatch Nicholas and be gone, without anyone seeing. A cold fear gripped Molly’s stomach.

  She wanted to tell Lily to keep the doors locked and not answer if anyone knocked. But she could hardly say something like that without explanation. She’d sound as crazy as she felt at the moment.

  Instead, she said, “If you lay him down, be sure and prop him on his side.”

  “Right.”

  “His diaper probably needs changing.”

  “Okay.”

  “He wiggles out from under his blanket, so be sure and wrap him up when he naps.”

  Lily shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Really, Molly, I have done this before. And you’re only going to be gone an hour.”

  “Maybe I’ll just take him with me.”

  Lily raised a brow. “Don’t think I can handle it?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just . . . it’s the initial interview; I’ll only be in there a few minutes.”