The Promise Girls

by Marie Bostwick

  Joanie didn’t buy it. She’d already figured out that choosing happiness was harder than it looked, no matter who you are. It was a trick she was still trying to learn. Asher showed her how.

  After so many years devoting herself entirely to her music, Joanie went a little crazy after she moved to Seattle, going through several short-lived and mostly unhealthy romantic relationships with a series of boyfriends—Steve, Vincent, Mark, and two different Jeffs. But Asher was her friend.

  When she told him about the house she’d bought, a fixer-upper that some said ought to be a tear-down, the only house she could afford in Capitol Hill, Asher offered to help. When she said thanks, but she couldn’t afford him, Asher said he’d work for food. But he warned her that he liked to eat. A lot.

  Every Saturday, Asher showed up with his tools and spent the day working on the house while Joanie cooked. Around four, he’d clean up his mess and sit down to eat. If Joanie had a date that night, she’d sit and watch him, saving her appetite for later. If she was between boyfriends, they’d eat together.

  They went on like that for close to a year. And then Meg moved to Seattle. Joanie had never seen that kind of chemistry between two people. You could have lit up a city with the sparks that flew.

  Two weeks later, Asher and Meg were engaged. They wanted to get married immediately, but Joanie talked them into waiting a month so she could pull together a proper wedding for them. They didn’t have many friends, so Joanie walked door-to-door, introducing herself to the neighbors and inviting them to the wedding. They all showed up—Mr. and Mrs. Teasdale, Allison and Will Gold, Bruce Lydell and Thomas Gray, Jeanne and Sam McCullough—everybody. They brought gifts, too, even though Joanie had told them not to.

  It was a lovely little wedding, if she did say so herself.

  When Asher and Meg returned from their honeymoon they moved into the bungalow with Joanie. That’s when she told them she was pregnant and planned to raise the baby on her own. She didn’t say anything before the wedding because she didn’t want her news to overshadow their big day. Soon, Meg was pregnant too. The babies were born just ten weeks apart.

  For three years, they lived together as one big family. Joanie loved having them there and was happy that Walt had a man in his life. It was one of the best times of her life. But the house was definitely crowded and she knew they couldn’t live like that indefinitely. When Meg and Asher found a 1700-square-foot rambler in Wedgewood at a price they could afford, they snapped it up. It wasn’t a pretty house, but there was plenty of room and the lot was fairly big for the area. Asher figured he could fix it up. As it turned out, he didn’t have time.

  When the house caught fire it went up so fast that they were lucky to get out with their lives. They lost everything. That’s when Joanie really saw what Asher was made of, even more than she had before.

  Meg, Asher, and Trina, now five years old, moved back into the bungalow. They didn’t have enough insurance to replace the house or buy a new one. For a week, they seemed a little shell-shocked, uncertain about what to do. One day Joanie was roused before dawn by the sound of someone rattling around in the kitchen. She went downstairs and found Asher standing at the stove, making bacon and pancakes and whistling.

  “I figured it out,” he said when he spotted her in the doorway. “We’re going to build smaller. But better. Much better!”

  And that was it, the disaster took Asher’s business in an entirely new direction, placed him squarely in the forefront of the Not So Big house movement, and helped him find his true calling in life.

  Asher kept his business small, never taking on more work than he could supervise personally, with Meg keeping the books and managing the office. Most of his work was custom, houses of 800 square feet or less. But he also built tiny houses on trailer platforms like the one he’d constructed for Avery. He did these in his spare time and on spec, beginning a new one as soon as he found a buyer for his current project. Asher and Meg earned enough to live modestly, but not more. They seemed to be fine with that.

  Asher didn’t talk about his childhood back in Spokane much, but when he did he spoke of a loving and gentle mother he adored and an angry father who used religion as a yardstick to show his son how far he fell short. Asher’s faith in organized religion had been shaken by his experiences, but he still kept a plaque on the wall of his workshop with a Bible verse from 1 Thessalonians, “Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands.”

  Asher lived by those words. He was a good and decent man. Joanie hadn’t met many of those.

  Asher reached into his carpenter’s apron for the final nail, hammered it in, and pulled out his earbuds. “What do you think?” he asked. “Tomorrow, I’ll hook up the water pump, bring in some furniture, and we’ll be all set.”

  “It’s nice. But . . . are you really planning on having Meg live out here? Why?”

  Asher slid backward to the eave of the tiny house and climbed down the ladder. “The psychologist at the hospital said I ought to go slow, give Meg a chance to get to know me again. Then I was thinking, she might feel nervous about sharing a room right off. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather we were in the same bed, but I don’t want to rush her.”

  Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, he said, “You know, maybe this will all turn out for the best. We hadn’t been getting along too well. But I bet you knew that already.”

  Joanie didn’t say anything. Asher snorted out a short laugh.

  “That obvious, eh? Well, fair enough. Anyway, a part of me thinks that this really is a chance for us to start over, get to the bottom of whatever was bothering her and get our marriage back on track. Be happy again, the way we were before.”

  * * *

  It was hot up on the roof and Asher was thirsty, so they went in the house to get something to drink. Joanie was surprised by what she saw inside.

  A pair of muddy work boots was lying in the entryway. Unfolded laundry lay mounded on the sofa. Though there were two beautiful built-in bookcases flanking both sides of the ceramic-faced fireplace, half a dozen books lay scattered haphazardly on the floor. Plates, cups, and glasses, some holding the remains of partially consumed food or beverages, were sitting on the coffee and side tables.

  Joanie closed the front door, stirring the air. A dust bunny emerged from under a chair and tumbled across the wood floor like sagebrush rolling down a windswept plain. The house wasn’t filthy, just untidy. In a larger space it wouldn’t have given the impression of things being such a mess, but in such a small room . . . Joanie picked up two plates and a coffee cup and carried them to the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Asher said, sounding embarrassed. He grabbed two glasses from a side table and followed her. “We’ve been at the hospital so much . . . I was going to get to it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Joanie turned on the faucet to rinse dried ketchup from one of the plates. “That’s why I came over, to see if I could help.”

  Joanie got a clean glass from the cupboard and opened the refrigerator, searching for a pitcher of filtered water. Inside she found a partly empty six-pack of beer.

  Asher didn’t drink anymore. He’d never been much of a drinker but, after his mother died, right before Meg moved to Seattle, he’d shown up on Joanie’s doorstep with a case of beer and a buzz on. She sat up with him into the wee hours, listening to him talk and watching him drink, finally putting him to bed in the guest room. The next morning, humiliated by his behavior, unable to remember much of what happened, and wincing from the mother of all hangovers, Asher vowed to stop drinking. Apart from the occasional brew on the Fourth of July or at a football game, he kept that vow.

  Joanie pulled the six-pack from the refrigerator and looked at him.

  “I had some beer,” he said, shrugging but clearly embarrassed. “It’s not that I can’t drink, you know. It’s just that I don’t.”

  “I know. I’m just worried about you.
You don’t normally have two beers in a year. Now you’re having four in a week?”

  “Ten,” he admitted. “That’s my second six-pack. It’s hard to sleep without Meg next to me. A couple of beers before bed helps. You’re right. Throw it out.”

  Joanie poured the beer down the drain, set the empty bottles on the counter, and handed Asher a glass of water. He gulped it down.

  “I brought dinner.”

  Asher wiped water from his lips. “Lasagna?”

  Joanie smiled. Everybody loved her lasagna. She was famous for it. “I thought we could all eat together. Why don’t you go and shower while I set the table?”

  Joanie shooed Asher away to the bathroom, then turned on the oven. Walt was only about half-finished with the lawn. She had plenty of time to tidy the house and prepare the meal. She made a loop around the house, gathering up the abandoned dishes. The dining room table was covered with bills, invoices, ledgers, and unopened mail. Asher must have tried to tackle the paperwork himself. He hadn’t gotten very far.

  Twenty minutes later, Asher had yet to reappear. Joanie went looking for him and found him lying facedown on the bed, snoring softly. She decided to let him sleep a little longer.

  A delicious smell of meat and melting mozzarella was coming from the oven. Joanie couldn’t set the table while it was still covered with papers. She pulled up a chair and got to work, separating papers into more or less logical groupings before placing them into labeled file folders so Asher would be able to find what he was looking for.

  She went through the mail, throwing out the junk. Near the bottom of the stack she found an envelope from the hospital, probably a bill. Judging from its thickness, it was a big one. She held it in her hands, trying to make up her mind.

  Under normal circumstances, she’d never dream of opening an envelope that wasn’t addressed to her, not even junk mail. But these were not normal circumstances. Meg couldn’t remember who her husband was, let alone advise him. Asher was exhausted and under so much stress, trying to juggle all of his work and Meg’s too. She wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

  Joanie turned toward the kitchen. The sight of those empty beer bottles sitting on the counter made up her mind for her. She slipped her fingertip beneath the flap, tore the top, and took out the hospital bill, flipping through multiple pages until she found what she was looking for, the total.

  She gasped, refocused her eyes, recalculated the part owed after insurance, hoping that she’d miscounted the zeros. She hadn’t.

  “Thirty-three thousand dollars,” she breathed, so shocked that her hushed tone might have been mistaken for reverence.

  The bill slipped from her fingers, sheets of white paper covered with numbers dropped and scattered over the floor like a fall of dried leaves.

  Joanie stood up, tiptoed down the hall, and opened the bedroom door a crack. Asher was lying on his side now with his knees to his chest and his fisted hands tucked under his chin, curled up like a comma. She closed the door and stood with her back to it, eyes cast toward the ceiling, wracking her brain for a way to raise thirty-three thousand dollars quickly. Nothing even remotely feasible came to mind.

  At first.

  She’d have to get the others to sign off on it—her sisters as well as Asher. After all, it involved him too. It might take some persuading, but she knew that, in the end, she could get them to agree.

  There was no other way. None. If there were, she wouldn’t even be considering this. But she had to. She’d seen all the red ink in those ledgers. She couldn’t sit by and watch Meg and Asher lose their business, possibly even their home. Not if there was anything she could do to prevent it.

  She owed it to Meg. And Asher. She owed it to everybody.

  Chapter 15

  “He’s not picking up,” Lynn said. “Hang on. Let me see if I can find him.”

  Lynn jogged down the short hallway that led to Hal’s office. She twisted the doorknob and found it locked. “Hal?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got a call. I tried to transfer it in, but it kept bouncing back to me.”

  “I’m not taking calls right now. I’ve got a meeting with Larry Ketcher in two hours and I need to have the treatment ready.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Lynn laid her head sideways against the door so she could hear him better. “But, trust me, this is someone you’re going to want to talk to.”

  She heard a grumbling, the shuffling of footsteps on carpeting, and stood back. The door opened. Hal looked as annoyed as he sounded.

  “Who?”

  “Joanie Promise wants to know if it’s too late to say yes to the documentary.”

  Hal took in a sharp breath. “Really?”

  Lynn tipped her head to one side. “That depends. She has conditions. But I figured that her coming to you is a good sign. Maybe she was playing hard to get before.”

  Hal shook his head. “She’s not like that.”

  Lynn didn’t know how Hal could be so sure of that, but this wasn’t the time to argue. Joanie was still on hold.

  “Well, I thought maybe if you talked to her—”

  “What kind of conditions?” he asked, cutting her off.

  “Unreasonable ones. She wants thirty thousand dollars.” Lynn rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, fine. Put her through.”

  “Hal? We can’t afford to pay her,” she said in a doubtful voice, seeking confirmation. “Not thirty thousand dollars. Not anything like that.”

  Hal sat down at his desk and started shoving papers aside.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just put her through.”

  * * *

  Lynn wasn’t the sort of person who listened at keyholes. But the combination of Joanie Promise’s demands and that look on Hal’s face—as though he might actually agree to something so utterly impossible—had her worried. In the interest of protecting the company’s future and, by extension, her job, she felt compelled to try and eavesdrop on Hal’s conversation with Joanie.

  But Hal had an odd habit of turning his chair away from his desk and resting his feet flat on the opposite wall when he was involved in a long conversation. Lynn could hear only the low rumble of his voice punctuated by long silences when, she supposed, Joanie must be talking.

  After a few minutes she went back to her own desk and tried to work. Finally, Hal emerged from his office, loudly calling Lynn’s name as he walked down the hall. She jumped up from her desk and met him halfway.

  “You don’t need to yell. I’m right here. How’d it go?”

  She needn’t have asked; his face said it all. Hal Seeger had gotten his way.

  “We’re a go!” he said, smacking his fist into his palm. “But I want to get up to Seattle and start filming right away—end of next week if we can swing it. I don’t want to give her a chance to change her mind.

  “I need you to find me a cameraman and sound guy who’re willing to travel on short notice and can stay up there for a couple of months.”

  “What about Brian Lutz? He moved to Seattle last year.”

  “Perfect. Call and see if he’s available and if he knows of anybody local who can do the sound. Oh, and you’d better get in contact with the Laos. Tell them the project has gone back into development. And get hold of Larry Ketcher and postpone our meeting until the day after tomorrow. Better call Larry first.”

  “Hang on, hang on. I’m going to need to write this down,” she said, walking back to her desk. Hal followed her.

  “Don’t tell Larry why I want to postpone. Say I’m having some emergency dental work or something. That’ll buy me a couple of days to work up a new treatment. He was hot for the Lao project, but if I can pull together a good presentation, maybe I can get him to back The Promise Girls project instead.

  “Have you still got the old research? Pull that out for me, will you? Minerva’s book summary, that memo we did on the family history, all the interview clippings, all the editorials that came out after Minerva’s meltdown, any articles that
came out after the book was shelved—especially the ones with quotes from psychologists and child development experts.”

  Lynn scribbled furiously. “You want the video clips too?”

  “Yeah, all of them. I’ve already got the talk show clip, but they were on a lot of other shows. Anytime they stepped in front of a camera, I want the video.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I need a phone number for Gerhardt Boehm.”

  “And he is?”

  Hal rolled his eyes. “Don’t you listen to anything besides Pearl Jam?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Gerhardt Boehm—world-renowned concert pianist. He retired from touring in the seventies, but he taught Joanie and a lot of other musicians too. Some of them very, very famous. I think he lives in Pasadena. I need to interview him before I fly to Seattle.”

  Hal started heading back to his office, but then remembered something else.

  “And I’ll need some temporary housing in Seattle. Something clean, but cheap. We’ve got expenses of thirty grand to cover before we even start, so the production budget is going to be tight, especially if I can’t get Larry to back us.”

  “And if he won’t? Then what?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet. Call Deborah Munoz and ask her to come over here,” he said, striding down the hallway toward his office.

  “Your Realtor? Why?”

  “In case I have to sell the condo. If I can’t find anybody to back me, then I’ll back myself.”

  Lynn’s stomach hurt. She thought about the fifteen hundred dollars she’d just spent on a new refrigerator and the fact that she owed the IRS thirty-three hundred dollars.

  “Hal, maybe we should slow down and talk about this. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “Nope,” he said before closing his office door. “But I’m doing it anyway.”

  * * *

  Joanie and Allison stood in the bedroom, looking at the wall.

  This is it, Joanie thought to herself, the supreme compliment that one woman pays to another, trusting her girlfriend with the task of choosing what kind of room she’ll wake up in for months, probably years to come.