A Promise to Keep Read online

  “Yeah. You still need to get your pitch in to Snead.”

  “There’s no guarantee Snead’s going to get the estate.”

  “With no will, it’s a foregone conclusion.” He shoved the books onto the mantel next to the radio. “And you still have a job to do.”

  “I don’t need the reminder,” she assured him. She rubbed a hand down her bare arm. From the other room, they could hear the faint sounds of Eleanor moving about. “If you want to get out of here, I—I can stay. You know. With Eleanor.”

  He inhaled and shoved his fingers through his hair. Because he did need to check the stock again.

  And April obviously recognized it, because she got a set look on her face. “Just go. At least do what you need to do.”

  “Babies have been dropping,” he said, feeling stupid at the strange need to justify himself. “Favorite spot this year seems to be at the hook.”

  She raised her brows.

  “It’s a bend in the creek near the spot they’ve been grazing. Can’t see it from here. Has one of the prettiest views you’ll ever see.”

  “I noticed it from up on Otis’s ridge. How do you even get down there?”

  “Trail. Can’t even get the utility truck down it from up here—too narrow. Rufus manages ’cause he’s used to it. Once you’re down, it’s a pretty spot. I could take you there sometime if you want.” He damned himself for the words as soon as he spoke them.

  But the pleased surprise in her eyes overruled even that. “Really?”

  He shrugged. “Long as you’re up for a hike,” he warned. “Don’t know how Rufus would take to being ridden double. Otis used to have another horse, but she died of old age a while back. He wasn’t riding anymore, so he didn’t bother replacing her.”

  “I could bring up a ride from the C,” she suggested. “Plenty of horses there. Guess you know that.”

  He shrugged yet again. “Whatever.”

  He looked past her to see Eleanor move from the bedroom into the bathroom. “I don’t think it’s going to take her too long.” They could hear the squeak of the cupboard door over the washer and dryer being opened. “Here.” He grabbed the books again from the mantel and held them out. “If you’re serious.”

  “Is this your subtle way of sending me on my way?”

  “Is it working?”

  Her lips twitched and she took the books from him.

  “There’s going to be a fine for them being late. I’ll get you—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Too bad Otis won’t be here to see the new library when it finally gets underway.”

  “Didn’t know one was in the works.”

  “Mmm.” She looked at the spines. “Are you sure this is all of them?”

  “I have a couple more out back.”

  She gestured. “Let’s get them, then.” She followed him through the kitchen and out the back door. But she stopped there, waiting for him to retrieve his books from the bunkhouse, as if she didn’t want to go in herself.

  Just as well.

  He flipped the woven blanket across the disheveled mattress anyway, then grabbed the books and carried them back to her, adding them to the pile in her arms. “Thanks.”

  “Glad to help.” Her gaze skated across his face. “You’re sure you’re okay? You know, with all that?” She jerked her red head in the direction of the house behind her.

  He actually felt a smile. “Baby, I have survived a lot worse than this. But I appreciate the effort.”

  She smiled, too, though he thought it looked a little shaky around the edges. “Okay, then.” She started down the hill toward the road but looked back at him. Her hair streamed out from behind her and the yellow dress fluttered around her knees. “Be in touch soon.”

  He wondered if he was going to have that image of her in his head for the rest of his days. It could keep company with the last words Tanya had ever said to him.

  What is the point of you?

  He ruthlessly closed off the memory. “If it’s to report how things go with Snead, I’ll pass.”

  She squinted a little in the sunlight. “I meant about seeing the creek.”

  He nodded. Feeling that smile return. “Sure. Yeah.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then smiled, too, as if relieved, and turned again to head for the road.

  He watched until she was out of sight.

  Then he looked up toward the ridge. “I hear you laughing, old man.”

  He heard Eleanor call his name and he turned to go back inside.

  But the smile he felt stayed in place.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The fines total up to $21.50,” the library worker told April the next morning.

  Twenty-some dollars wasn’t going to break her, she knew, but still. The last time she’d paid a library fine, it had been in the neighborhood of three bucks. “How overdue are the books?” She unzipped her wallet, pulling out the cash.

  The girl sitting behind the desk checked her computer. “Five weeks.” She took the money and tucked it in her drawer, returning April’s change. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t bother paying their fines, though. We have to suspend their borrowing privileges. One of these days, it’s going to take a credit check before someone can get a library card.” She extended a colorful flyer. “We’re having a sale on paperbacks for Memorial Day, if you’re interested. Anything we raise goes toward the new building project.”

  April took the flyer and folded it in half. She still needed to deliver Gage’s latest donation. “Do you know how much has been raised yet?”

  “Heard they’re halfway to the goal.” The girl didn’t look much older than a teen as she leaned forward conspiratorially. “I bet you that Templeton lady just donates the rest. That’s what she did with the hospital, you know. Donated all the money to have it built.”

  “No, she damn well didn’t,” a cantankerous voice said loud enough to make April cringe. “We built that hospital through sweat and hard work while that Templeton lady was fifteen hundred miles away, sitting in her ivory tower sipping tea and judging everyone who didn’t meet her standards.”

  “Squire,” Gloria chastised. “Shh.”

  His voice didn’t get louder, but it got a whole lot colder. “Don’t you shush me, woman.”

  April quickly folded the flyer and shoved it in her purse along with her wallet and smiled apologetically at the library aide before she turned and tucked one arm through each of her grandparents’. She was pretty sure Gloria had suggested they go to the library with her to help prove to Squire how badly a new one was needed.

  “Let’s just get over to Ruby’s,” she said as she tried to hurry them toward the door. “You promised me cinnamon rolls and I don’t want to get there too late. You know they’re almost always all gone by ten.”

  But neither Gloria nor Squire seemed inclined to cooperate.

  They’d needed to be in town anyway—Squire on town council business and Gloria for her volunteer shift at the hospital where she’d once been a nurse. Gloria had suggested breakfast at the diner when they’d learned April was heading to the library.

  But now, Squire had planted the tip of his hickory walking stick as though he didn’t plan to go another inch.

  And Gloria, arms akimbo, was glaring up at him. “You’re impossible.” Her tone was as hot as the glint in her eyes. “You can’t let a simple comment pass without exploding with self-righteousness.”

  “That woman—”

  “Stop! Just stop.” Gloria’s hand slashed the air. “This fixation you have against Vivian Templeton is out of hand, Squire! It was more than sixty years ago!” She didn’t seem to care that they were drawing attention any more than Squire did. “And you behave as though it was just yesterday. I am fed up. You want to work yourself into a stroke or a heart attack? Is that what you want?” She
jabbed her finger into his chest. “Well?”

  “I want you to stop poking me like I’m that bread dough you make,” he said through his teeth. “And I don’t give a flying damn how long ago it was. You want to take that woman’s side over mine? Is that the kind of wife I have?”

  “Is that the kind of husband I have?” She waved her arms. “I want peace, you stubborn fool. Vivian Templeton is in this town to stay and no amount of you cussing and fussing about it is going to change that.”

  “Fool, am I?” Squire looked so incensed that April took a concerned step toward him but she froze under the slice of icy blue he cut her way. “Maybe after all these years, you’re thinking you want a taste of something different! Someone more your age!”

  Gloria reared back. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I know you’ve been meeting up with Tom Hook. You think I’m blind as well as old?”

  Gloria’s hand flashed out. The slap she gave Squire sounded loud in the hushed silence of the library.

  April inhaled sharply, but no air seemed to come with it.

  Her grandparents glared at one another for a moment that seemed to stretch into painful eternity.

  Gloria was the first to look away. She shook her head. “Squire, I don’t even know what to say to you now.” Her voice was husky. “That you could even think—” She broke off again. She looked at April. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  Then she gave Squire a final angry look and stormed out of the library.

  Her grandfather’s knuckles were white around his walking stick.

  “Squire.” She tentatively touched his arm. “Grandpa, you have to go after her.”

  His eyes were like flint. The imprint of her grandmother’s hand looked red against his flexing jaw. “Do I?”

  She gaped, feeling helpless.

  Then she felt her knees weaken with relief when he strode out of the library, using the walking stick more to whack the door as he went through than as any real support.

  She hurried out the door herself and then her knees didn’t feel relieved at all.

  Because Squire had not followed Gloria.

  Her grandparents had gone in entirely separate directions.

  On the street only fifty feet away, a bus was letting off a horde of chattering preschoolers, who were being ushered toward the library by a handful of adults.

  She leaned against the side of the building, shoving her fingers through her hair and closing her eyes. If only she’d told her grandparents that she’d meet them at Ruby’s. Or if she’d just come to the library after Ruby’s. They’d all come in separate vehicles anyway because they were going separate ways after the diner.

  Now, separate had taken on a whole new meaning.

  “April?”

  Her eyes flew open and she stared at Jed, who was walking up the sidewalk. “What’re you doing here?”

  He lifted one hand and she realized he was carrying a book. Another library book. “Found it under Otis’s bed. Are you all right? You look like you’re about to be sick.”

  She wiped her hand over her face. She wasn’t sure he wasn’t right. “M-my—” She had to clear her throat. “My grandparents just had a...a horrible argument.”

  She bent forward from her waist, lowering her head. All she needed to cap the morning was to vomit her brains out on the grass outside the town library in front of Jed and a bunch of little kids.

  His hand touched her shoulder. Slid over her back.

  She was grateful that he didn’t offer up the usual platitudes.

  “She slapped him,” she whispered. “I bet she’s never slapped anyone in her life. And he, God, he just—” She closed her eyes. Remembering the photograph she’d taken of her grandmother looking like a million dollars, standing and laughing at Vivian’s fund-raiser party alongside Tom Hook. Thank God she’d never shown it to Squire.

  “Come on.” Jed’s hand reached her waist just as the first of the kids reached the library door. “Let’s get you out of here at least.”

  She straightened and blew out a long breath. “We were going to go to Ruby’s,” she told him as they walked around the swirling mass of children. “For breakfast.”

  He lifted a brow and she immediately shook her head. “No way. Not now.”

  His hand slid away from her waist but only to wrap around hers. “Somewhere else, then.”

  She realized he was heading toward his truck, where it was parked on the street. “But your book—”

  “It’s more than a month overdue. What’s another day?”

  What was another day?

  Feeling sick at heart, she climbed up onto the passenger seat after he’d opened the door and shoved aside a pile of clothes. “What’s all that,” she asked once he’d gotten behind the wheel.

  He glanced at the clothes. “Some of Otis’s stuff. Taking it to the donation place. Don’t know if it’s allowed—” he air-quoted the word “—or not and don’t care. Eleanor already said none of it would go to auction and I’ll be damned if I’ll leave it for Snead.”

  Her heart squeezed. She looked at him. “I should have asked. How did everything go after I left yesterday?”

  His brows pulled together in a quick frown. “Don’t worry about it. It was fine.” He put the truck in gear and waited for a slow-moving tractor to lumber past before pulling out onto the street. “What’d they argue about?”

  She told him. “I’ve never seen either one of them so angry. They have to get over it, right? I mean they’ve been together forever. People like them don’t...don’t—” She couldn’t even finish the untenable thought.

  His hand squeezed hers.

  But then he didn’t let go and return his hand to the wheel. He just kept his hand on hers. Right there, atop the console separating his seat from hers.

  Her chest ached anew and she looked out the window, not really caring all that much where they went. She wanted to ask him if he’d decided about taking the job at the Double-C. Only she wasn’t really sure she was ready to hear the answer. If he did take the job, it meant a possibility of running into him when she visited. If he didn’t, then it meant who knew what?

  Would he stay in Weaver?

  Would he leave altogether?

  “Heard that the court will be making a decision on the estate soon.”

  She startled. “This quickly?”

  “He died nearly a month ago. Once Snead inherits, you’d better be ready to act fast.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. “And what about you?”

  His hand finally moved back to the wheel as he turned off the main street, slowing to a stop behind a school bus that had its red lights flashing. “I sure as hell don’t have the money to buy it.” He shook his head. “Maybe once,” he murmured as the bus started moving ahead of them. “But those days are long gone.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “What happened, Jed? Really? Why did you end up here in Weaver at all, when you had a career—”

  “And a wife and two babies on the way?”

  She inhaled sharply. Babies. She mouthed the word soundlessly.

  His hands were wrapped tight around the steering wheel, reminding her too vividly of Squire’s grip on his walking stick and he was silent so long she was certain he wouldn’t say more.

  But then he did. In a flat tone that was all the more wrenching for its lack of emotion. “I had everything. And instead of tending to it all, I worried too much about getting more. And in the end, I lost everything that mattered.” His thumb started drumming the steering wheel. His focus straight ahead through the windshield. “It was a car accident. One stupid car accident like a hundred others just like it. She was on her cell phone. Texting.”

  “Oh, Jed.”

  His jaw canted. “She was four months along. Didn’t know it was twins until the autopsy.”
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br />   She pressed her lips together, choking down the dismay rising in her.

  “Eight years ago last March,” he said. “Feels like yesterday sometimes.” He turned the wheel again, and she realized he’d pulled into a small strip mall near Shop-World. He found a parking spot but didn’t turn off the engine. “She was texting me,” he said in that flat, emotionless tone. “Wanting to know why I’d missed her appointment at the obstetrician’s.” He finally looked at April. “Well?”

  It took her a moment to realize the glint in his eyes was challenge. “I’m sorry.” Her tongue felt thick. “I’m sorry for all that loss. That pain.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  She spread her hands. “I don’t know what—”

  “Working.” The word was clipped. “I was working. Trying to redeem myself from a career that was already in the gutter.”

  “Stop.” She closed her hands over the cords standing out in his forearm and squeezed.

  “Don’t want to hear it was my fault that she died? Maybe you’d rather hear about the kid born and raised on the wrong side of Chicago who dared to set his eye on the daughter of the man who paid his father to keep the hedges clipped and the pool clean—”

  She reached across the console and laid her palm against his jaw. “I know you loved her,” she said carefully. “And I’m sorry you lost her. Lost that future. And that is all I am saying.”

  She could feel the muscle in his jaw working beneath her palm. His eyes searched hers. “You’d be the first, then.”

  He exhaled and turned his head and her hand fell away. He gestured at the building in front of them. “Lunch counter in there. Not as good as Ruby’s but they’ve got decent coffee.” The corner of his lips jerked in a smile that wasn’t a smile, but neither was it a frown. “Maybe it’s the same as that egg stuff you made.”

  She let out a small chuckle and allowed her head to fall weakly for a moment, just a moment, to press against his hard shoulder. God help her, she was just going to keep falling for the man. And there was no hope whatsoever in a contest between her and the ghost he still loved.