The Promise He Made Her

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The dog barked. She nearly dropped the pound of ground beef she’d been reaching for, and, glancing out the window, saw Sam throwing a stick he must have found in the woods. Watched as the big red dog bounded after it, landing both front paws on it before picking it up with its mouth and running it back to him.

  Sam wasn’t an ounce overweight, but he was a big guy... Lean and muscled in all the right places.

  Right. She looked away. Found the package in her hand. Sam was a meat kind of guy. She had one meat dish in her repertoire. Meat loaf. Her mother used to make it at least once a week. It had been her father’s favorite. And Bloom’s, too. Something they had had in common. Back then she hadn’t been able to discern why that meant so much to her—to be like either of her parents.

  Back then she hadn’t known that there’d been an invisible wall between them. One erected when she was two and made her first long-distance phone call without help. Her parents had been astonished. And then frightened at what that meant. They were common folks of average intelligence, living simple lives. Seeking no more than a good farmer could expect when he shared a moderate-size farm with his brother.

  They went to church socials. Liked to watch game shows on television. They went to bed early and were up before the roosters crowed.

  All things, they’d determined, that would be a waste for a genius child. She was meant to be more.

  More what, she still wasn’t sure.

  But one thing she knew: more, in their eyes, meant more than they could handle. With them her potential would be wasted, and to good farming people, waste of any kind was criminal.

  When she was four they’d had her tested.

  And when she was six, they’d pulled her out of local school.

  Bloom had hated that. She hadn’t said anything, though. Mostly because her mother had been so adamant, certain it was the right thing to do. Bloom, like most girls, adored her mother and trusted her to know what was right.

  She still loved her mother’s meat loaf.

  And Ken had insisted that any time they had meat he’d cook it on the grill. He never even so much as scrambled an egg in the kitchen, but he fancied himself grill master of the universe.

  Smiling at the ridiculous verbiage she’d just come up with, she pulled out onions, Worcestershire sauce, bread crumbs, oatmeal, ketchup, barbecue sauce, brown sugar and one egg. Her mother had also added a can of green beans, but Ken had put his foot down at that, challenging her to find a single recipe for meat loaf that called for green beans.

  When she’d been unable to do so, she’d reluctantly changed her recipe. On a whim, she checked the cupboard where she’d seen some canned vegetables the night before. Found two cans of French style green beans and opened one.

  She had a feeling Sam Larson wouldn’t complain. If he was even planning to eat with her.

  Either way, meat loaf sounded good to her all of a sudden.

  In less than an hour, her ex-husband would be processed and in the car that would transfer him back into society.

  A free man.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE’D PLANNED ON keeping Lucy outside. After being cooped up in one room all day, being out in the fresh air would be good for her. She wasn’t too bad as a watch dog, either. Not that Randolph, the officer watching the property, wasn’t perfectly competent.

  He’d been inside less than five minutes and was already antsy. He’d had to stop himself from automatically reaching above the stove for the bottle of scotch he knew would be there, thinking one shot with water might be just the ticket to get him through the hours ahead.

  Sam was a loner by choice. And his home had been a sanctuary to him.

  Pausing now and then to talk to him, Bloom was busy putting various ingredients in the big plastic bowl he used for popcorn. It held three microwave bags’ worth, which was just about what it took to get him and Lucy through a movie.

  “They got anything stronger to drink in this place?” he asked when she lifted a bottle of water to her lips.

  She looked good in the kitchen. Damned good. Not as good as she’d looked coming out of her office toward him that afternoon, focusing on him so intently he’d embarrassed himself and had had to close his jacket.

  Not one to be so instantly affected by a woman, the circumstance didn’t sit well with him. Nor was it going to get in his way.

  The job came first. Always.

  “There’s a selection of things above the stove,” she told him, pointing. “It looks like they’ve been opened, but I guess, since they’re here, they’re free for the using, right? Which reminds me, I want to buy my own groceries. There’s no way the county needs to pay to feed me while I’m here. I’d be buying my own stuff if I were home.”

  “Fine.” There were some points that just made sense. He poured some scotch and asked her if she wanted any. It didn’t surprise him when she shook her head. He didn’t suppose she’d purposely cloud her mind with artificial substances after being unknowingly drugged for years.

  She was chopping onions. With a knife. He wanted to tell her where the handheld chopper was. But stopped himself.

  He’d taken a couple of sips when he heard Lucy’s first whine. A warning. She stood at the door, her back paws on the concrete and her front paws up as high as she could reach. She was peering in the window at him.

  He turned away and took another sip, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to leave her out there.

  “You can bring her in,” Bloom said. “When I was little we had a golden Lab.” She was grinning. “I remember running out to the apple tree with her. First one there got the ones on the ground.”

  “Why would you want apples that had fallen on the ground?”

  “My dad and I used to have gushing contests.”

  “Gushing contests?” Lucy’s whine startled him. He’d actually forgotten that he’d been about to let her in.

  “You put the apples on the concrete and then jump on them to see who could make the gushes go the farthest.”

  Turning his head slightly, he studied her from a different angle. He was pretty sure she was pulling his leg, but...

  “Your father taught you that game?” It didn’t hurt to play along. Worst that could happen was that she’d laugh out loud.

  “Uh-huh.” She was taking off her rings and placing them on the windowsill. “He and his brother made it up as kids.” She frowned. “That was before they found out how smart I was and decided that the game was a waste of my talents.”

  “A waste of your talents?” And had to add, “Sounds like you were having fun.”

  “I was.”

  Lucy’s whines were no longer as easy to ignore. Especially accompanied by the scratching. Sam leaned one hand on the counter, watching her. “So what did you do with them for fun after that? That didn’t waste your talents?”

  “Nothing with him. He fixed up this old house on the property for me, cleaned it and put in some furniture...made it like my own playhouse, and I’d go there and read. He bought me any book I wanted. That was fun.”

  Remembering all of the years of hanging out with his old man, Sam couldn’t see how being alone instead would have seemed like fun. But the arrangement seemed to make some kind of sense to her. She’d shoved her hand down into the bowl and was mixing all of the ingredients together. Not at all sure what took onion, green beans and oatmeal—three of the things he’d noted going into the bowl—he would have continued to watch her, but Lucy barked.

  A very definite warning.

  Not of danger, but the girl was growing impatient with him. He was in her home and she had a right to be there with him.

  Praying that the two women got along, Sam opened the front door.

  * * *

  BLOOM STOOD AT the counter, continuing what she was doing, when the
dog ran straight to her.

  She braced herself for a jump, but instead, Lucy sniffed her ankles, shoved her nose slightly under the hem of Bloom’s navy blue skirt before walking around to the other side of her and repeating the process.

  Seemingly satisfied, she made it to Sam in one bound and put her paws up to his chest level, pawing the air and barking. As Bloom formed a mound with her meat mixture, she tried not to stare as Sam held his fists up and then moved them back and forth as the dog’s paws hit them.

  She was grinning again, though, as she put the meat in the glass pan she’d already prepared, and washed her hands. Then she turned.

  “You taught your dog to box?” she asked, feeling...good.

  It didn’t seem possible, the hour that Ken was due to be free, but...she didn’t lie to herself. She’d made that pact two years before, when she’d gotten her mind back and been able to see that she’d been partially to blame for having lost full lucidity to begin with.

  The drugs were none of her doing. And hideously wrong. But she’d known that Ken’s jealousy, of her with other men and of her intelligence, was beyond the scope of rational. Or normal.

  She’d made allowances. Excuses. And when she could no longer do either of those, she’d told herself that this action or that, by itself, wasn’t enough to lose a good marriage over.

  She’d lied to herself. Which had allowed him to live out the lie he’d perpetuated.

  The dog dropped her front paws to the floor and went off toward the hall. Like she had a purpose. Most likely exploring, Bloom thought, remembering a few more bits and pieces of her life with Madge. She had no idea how old the Lab had been. She’d been around before Bloom was born.

  And had died sometime within the first year after she’d been shipped away. She’d been six. And had thought that Madge had died of sadness. Like she’d thought she might do.

  Her father had purchased another Lab before Bloom had come home for break, but it hadn’t been the same...

  “She taught me to box,” Sam said, finally answering her question as he picked up his mostly full glass of scotch and watched his dog smell the corners of the room. “She’d bat at me and more times than not catch my face. I put up my hands in self-defense.”

  The oven sounded its preheated beep and Bloom put the meat in.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Yeah, I know. Strange name for a dog. But it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw her. You know, Lucille Ball. She was before our time, but who hasn’t heard of...”

  “I used to watch I Love Lucy every night.”

  He sipped. She stood.

  “Besides, I don’t think it’s strange. My dog’s name was Madge.”

  “When you were growing up?”

  “When I was little, yes.”

  “Why Madge?”

  “My mother named her. After the lady on the Palmolive commercial, she always said. I never saw the commercial, but...”

  “Ha!” Sam let out. And, glass in hand, walked over to the wall of DVDs behind the flat-screen TV. Lucy joined him, wagging her tail as he picked out a DVD without really even looking at the more than two hundred choices, flipped a couple of buttons, slid a disc into the Blu-ray player, picked up a remote, pushed a couple more buttons and said, “Watch.”

  She was watching.

  And wondering how he knew...well, not how to work everything with such efficiency...guys seemed to have a knack for that, but...

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the video’s caption. One hundred and one of TV’s best commercials, she read. Stood silently while he scrolled.

  And then watched as a beautician, Madge, she was called, while in the process of giving a woman a manicure, told her she was “soaking in it”—referring to the deep green dishwashing liquid that was visible.

  Bloom’s throat closed up as a wave of homesickness washed over her so acutely she almost had to sit down. She hadn’t missed her mother like that in...two decades. Not since she’d figured out that she wasn’t going to get to go back home no matter what and just had to find a way to make the best of things.

  She was emotionally self-sufficient. Didn’t need Mom fixes like most girls.

  But Ken was out of jail. And gunning for her. Her. Bloom. Betty’s daughter.

  “Dinner’s going to be ready in about an hour,” she said, reaching for her phone. She walked down the hall, dialing before she could analyze her reasons for doing so.

  And waited for her mother to pick up. It wasn’t like Betty was going to have any wise advice for her. Or, more accurately, wouldn’t think it worth sharing. Because according to her, Bloom was so much smarter than she was.

  “Betty?” she said when she heard the click on the other end of the line.

  “Bloom?” Betty’s tone sounded as happy as it did every single time Bloom called. At least once a week. Not nearly often enough. “It’s not Sunday, dear. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, Betty, I’m fine. I just wanted to tell you, I saw the Madge commercial.” She needed to connect to the child she’d been before she’d been tested. Back when Betty had thought she knew more than Bloom did and protected her little girl from the bogeyman.

  Before she’d been intimidated by her daughter’s higher intelligence and had been afraid that her unschooled way of seeing the world wasn’t accurate. Had been afraid of dumbing Bloom down and making her less than she’d been born to be.

  And, Bloom figured out many years later, had been afraid of having her daughter think she was dumb.

  “You’re soaking in it,” Betty said, and chuckled. “Where on earth did you see it?”

  She’d called to tell her mother about Ken. To know that she wasn’t alone in her battle to be strong enough to beat him at his own game.

  “A...friend...has a DVD of old commercials,” she said, ad-libbing. In her mind, Betty might have been the mother she needed. In reality, the other woman wouldn’t understand that while Bloom’s intelligence made her mind work quickly, it didn’t mean she knew all the things that Betty had learned from living life.

  Things Bloom needed to hear.

  “That’s really cool,” Betty said, and Bloom could tell she was smiling. Which felt good. Betty letting her share something on an equal level, rather than constantly holding Bloom up on a higher shelf. “I’d like to have one of those.”

  She made a mental note to order one off the internet and have it shipped to the farm.

  And so it went. Betty told her about the no-peek chicken casserole they’d had for dinner. About the mushroom soup she’d made herself from mushrooms she’d canned. Talked about her father’s arthritis and how it was making it harder for him to tighten the cinch strap on his saddle. About how she worried he was going to slide right off that huge mare he still insisted on riding around the farm even though he had a perfectly good side by side.

  And she told Bloom that they were getting ready to watch Wheel of Fortune. Wishing that Bloom was there watching it with them, but knowing that she was where she needed to be, helping people who needed her.

  “I wish I was there, too, Betty,” she said, the child in her hoping that her mom would hear the need in her voice and offer to...do something. Come be with her. Give her some words of strength. Tell her how she’d handled the fear when Bloom’s father had been trampled by a bull several years before and they thought he might die.

  “Your father and I understand, though, Bloom. We know you do very important work and we’re so proud of you, sweetie. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, just this morning I was down at the vegetable market in town and I was telling Cora Sue how you helped women whose husbands abuse them. Cora Sue’s afraid that her daughter’s new boyfriend is the type to be a wife beater. I
told her that I’d have you send me a brochure of warning signs and the name of someone she could call if it ever came to that. Funny how you called tonight, out of the blue, right when I had a favor to ask...”

  Betty had a way of going on. Which had a tendency to irritate Bloom’s uncle. But not Carl. Bloom’s father seemed to tune out his wife’s chatter while still managing to hear pretty much everything she said.

  “I’ll get one out to you in the morning,” she said when she could break in. And then, when her mother asked again if she was okay, assured her that she was perfectly fine. That her life was business as usual. And waited while her mother put her father on.

  Turning at the end of the hallway, Bloom saw Sam in the living room.

  He was staring at her.

  She should never have called. Had no idea what she’d been thinking. Or why she hadn’t realized, with today’s technology, that she could have Googled that damned commercial and seen it years ago.

  If she’d thought of Madge even once in the past ten years she might have. So much of that part of her life had been cut off, shut away, because to remember, to long for what she’d needed from her parents, for the years lost, was pointless.

  Turning her back on the man who had a penchant for asking her questions no one else asked, she concentrated on listening to her father. His always slow speech was slower now, but he was still very much in charge of his portion of the world. A world he’d decided didn’t fit her. Or that she didn’t fit it.

  He asked how she was. She wanted to tell him the truth. That she was afraid.

  But she wasn’t going to let fear defeat her.

  She wanted to tell him about Ken. To think that if her father knew a man was after her, he’d load his gun and come save her.

  But she knew better than that, too.

  She almost told him that Ken was getting out of prison just so they’d know. But thought about how worried they would be, while feeling powerless and unable to help.

  She wanted his sage advice, but wasn’t even sure anymore if he had any. He’d certainly never shared any of it with her, that she could remember.