Forever Promised (48 page)

Martin knocked once and then came in, probably because he remembered his own days there, and there wasn’t anything going on in the office that couldn’t be interrupted for a kid in need.

Shane stood up to offer the boy a hand and found himself pulled into a solid hug instead. He gave some back and squeezed Martin’s ribs until they cracked, and then released him, laughing a little from the enthusiasm.

“Wasn’t my fault,” Shane said mildly. “You started it.”

Martin smiled, and Shane hadn’t forgotten how that big white smile on his square black face could literally light up a room. “No, Shane. You started it. You think I don’t remember, but I do. I was a stupid kid and I did a stupid thing, and you and Mikhail made it better when I could have made it so much worse.”

Shane swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. “It was our pleasure,” he said honestly, and Martin’s smile faded.

“She was coming home,” he said softly, and Shane closed his eyes and saw her, still, shrunken, wasted, the damage to her body so extensive that the plastic sheet that covered her sat unevenly.

“What?” he said, and his voice sounded tinny in his own ears, like it was coming from that cold room.

“I said she was coming home. Jeff told me that.” His voice wobbled, broke a little, and Shane wondered how much time Jeff and Collin had spent consoling him so he could come back here and be a grown-up about his broken heart.

Shane nodded and tried to pull out of it. He was the grown-up. This kid needed him. “Yeah. Actually, that reminds me.” He went to his desk and opened the bottom drawer. There was a small box of personal possessions—at least the ones worth keeping. Her drug paraphernalia he’d thrown away, of course, and most of the clothes she’d carried in the same reusable shopping bag had been worn to tatters, even the new brown coat Mikhail had bought her, that she’d been so proud of.

But still, tucked in the pocket of her jeans and in the larger pocket of her coat there had been two treasures, both of them wrapped tight in plastic bags, pristine and perfect, and Shane pulled them both out now.

Martin’s face softened in recognition of the small gold heart-shaped locket Shane pulled out, and he held out his hand. Shane dropped it into his palm carefully, making sure the chain fell in like liquid.

“I thought you might have given these to her,” Shane said, and Martin looked at him, perplexed.

“Well, the necklace, yes.” His full lower lip quivered, but he pulled it together. “We weren’t… going steady or anything, you know? But I sent her a real letter over Thanksgiving, and… you know, I kept sending her stupid YouTube videos.”

“What’d you send her?”

Martin shrugged, breathing through his nose. “The Temptations. Marvin Gaye. Jackson Five.”

“Motown,” Shane said simply, and Martin nodded. “So not official, but….”

“Yeah.” Martin took a deep breath and his hand clenched on the sparkly gold. “The necklace was mine. Pretty thing for a pretty girl, right?”

They both grimaced, and the silence was laden like a storm cloud. Martin shook himself then, and Shane bet he was probably as wrung dry as Shane felt.

“The little stuffed animal,” Martin said, his voice stoic. “That one wasn’t.”

Shane frowned. “I wonder where she got—”

“Mikhail gave it to her—I thought you’d know that. She….” Martin smiled in memory. “She said he just came back from shopping one day and threw it at her. When she asked him about it, he said, ‘I know very little about girls, but they seem to like these things. You should have one.’” Martin did a passable version of Mikhail, even secondhand, and Shane was torn between laughter and tears. He tucked the cat in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and nodded.

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” he said quietly. “I wanted to talk to you about one more thing. It’s about her service.”

Martin nodded, and Shane made his request. By the time he was done, the boy’s eyes were red, but oddly enough, he looked happier, and—as he should, at eighteen—young.

T
HEY
held the funeral three days after the rains stopped, so that the mud wasn’t too bad, and the sky was scrubbed clean and bright. There was a granite grave marker set against the sun side of the swimming-hole boulder. It was the side that got too hot in the summer, the side where Shane and Mickey had stood, dancing, the day of Deacon and Crick’s wedding, and Mikhail Vasilyovich Bayul had told Shane Perkins that he was
never
giving him back.

Shane looked out at the group of people and wondered if Sweetie knew how many people would miss her now that she was gone.

The kids from Promise House were there, dressed in their very best and covered in their coats, because a bitter wind blew from the river across the fields. Missy stood a little apart from the other residents. She’d washed and french braided her reddish hair—Shane recognized Kimmy’s work—and had even put on a new dress. Kimmy hadn’t let her get black, and it was a rich spring brown. She’d put on makeup, but not with a trowel—and Shane actually thought she looked a little like Crick. Kimmy and Lucas stood closer to her than to the other kids. Kimmy tucked herself against Lucas’s chest: Shane’s “little” sister was crying.

All of Shane’s friends stood in the cold sun—Deacon and Crick, Drew, Benny and Parry, and Jeff and Collin and Martin, of course. Jon and Amy hadn’t been able to make it out, but Amy had sent a
glorious
flower arrangement, yellow- and peach-colored roses, an entire spill of them, that Shane had set over the headstone. They looked exotic, rich and out of place in the field of mustard flowers and foxglove and poppies, but Shane liked them. Sweetie deserved roses.

Mikhail stood next to him, both of them wearing dark suits and their shiniest shoes. “I hope you are happy. I did not even buy a suit for my mother’s funeral.”

“I would have let you dance for this one too,” Shane told him, thinking he looked very handsome, and very… upright and Russian. Shane had given him the stuffed kitten, and Mikhail had taken it. His jaw had been tight, and his eyes pinched, but he hadn’t said anything at the time. The beanbag was drooping from the pocket of his suit right now, shiny brown eyes taking in a mournful view of a funeral in the spring.

“She did not care about my dancing,” Mikhail said, a study of indifference. “I was a parent, nothing more.”

Shane reached down and squeezed his hand. “Haven’t you learned yet? That’s everything.”

“Perhaps,” Mikhail grudged. “It certainly hurts that way.”

Shane pulled in his breath and realized that if he didn’t start now, he’d sit here forever, under the blue sky, pretending he was out for no other reason than the sun on his face.

He took a few steps to the small two-by-two hole in front of the headstone and surveyed the crowd with a gentle smile.

“It’s a pretty day,” he said randomly, and everyone he loved nodded, like that was the most natural thing in the world to say. “I have no idea if LeLauna Saunders liked spring or not. I think she might have—she said continuously that the sun in August was trying to kill us dead, so I think a pretty day without that might have tickled her.”

He smiled faintly and looked inside the grave. The small box he had hand sanded, hand beveled, hinged, and latched was sitting quietly, seemingly so far removed from what he had to say here that it might as well have been a cloud, or a kitten, or a star. If it did not remind him so very much of Mikhail’s box of treasures, he might have been able to pretend it
was
one of those things, but he wasn’t great at lying to himself. Never had been. Or to other people either.

“The fact is, there are volumes of things I didn’t know about LeLauna. There was not enough time, and LeLauna was not… forthcoming. But the few things I know—that any of us know—make me wish with all of my heart that she had given us more time.

“I know that LeLauna liked horses and cats and pretty much any animal that came her way. She felt safe with them, and she didn’t mind if they made extra work, they were her friends. I know that anything we asked of her, she did. She didn’t always do it cheerfully—doing dishes, for example, she wasn’t a fan—but she always did it competently and with quiet grace. I know that she liked to read love stories but that she didn’t like anyone else in the house to see. I know that she treasured any gifts that came her way, and she was proud of the things she did here in Promise House, proud of the fact that she was trusted. I know that her grandmother taught her how to make shrimp and grits and yarn dolls. The shrimp and grits, I’m afraid, she didn’t give to the rest of us, but the yarn dolls she passed on to another little girl, and that knowledge will not go away. I know that in spite of what she said before she left, she absolutely loved that we called her Sweetie. She told me so herself. She said that was special—no one had ever given her a nickname before.”

He saw Mikhail’s gaze, wide and stricken, searching his face as he said this. It was something he hadn’t remembered until Martin had come to see him in his office, and something Shane hoped would be a comfort.

“So, see, there’s a lot I didn’t know about her—but the things I do know hurt. There was so much potential for there to be more. That’s the kind of world we live in. Everyone here has cause to know that the universe doesn’t always forgive our mistakes. For every person here who has made a mistake and recovered, there is someone who wasn’t so lucky.” He breathed hard through his nose, swallowed down his grief, and finished.

“Sweetie, we wish you were one of the lucky ones. But we can’t hate you for failing. Everyone fails. We still love you. Wherever you are, whoever caught you when you fell, we just want you to know that.”

He was done.

He looked up and caught Martin’s eye, and Martin nodded, stepping forward to stand next to Shane.

Shane knew, because Martin told him three years ago, that Martin sang in church. Well, Martin was fully aware that Promise Rock was church to Shane’s people, and Shane expected nothing less than reverence.

Martin caught his eye and smiled bravely, then closed his eyes, centered himself, and began to sing.

“I got sunshine, on a cloudy day….”

The entire crowd brightened for a moment, and when Martin sang next, more than one voice chimed in.

“When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May….”

Martin kept a steady snapping, and Shane felt the entire collective take a breath and join in for the chorus. As the song died out, Shane knew that mistakes or no, he and the people he loved the most had taken a frightened, guarded runaway and made her their girl.

Benny and Deacon
:
Convergence

B
ENNY
’
S
stomach stuck out of her coat on the day of the funeral. She was wearing a dark-lavender dress, because she refused to wear black for the sweet kid she remembered making yarn dolls on the porch, and she had to resist the temptation to keep trying to pull the flaps of her leaf-green coat over the seven-month baby bump. She’d finally forgotten about it as Shane started to speak, but Missy’s first words to her, after the song had faded and people started moving across the creek bridge and the cattle guard to their cars, were, “Jesus, you’re really doing this shit again?”

Benny was going to snap something irritated and mean, but then it occurred to her: those were the first words she’d heard from her little sister in five years.

“Yup. The first one turned out okay. I figured I’d work on a second one and give it away.”

Missy let out a breath of something that might have been a laugh. “Well, congratulations. You’re a better fucking person than I am.”

Benny shrugged and decided to make light of it. “Why yes, yes I am.”

And again, Missy laughed. “Seriously,” she said, and her voice was whiskey rough, deeper than you’d expect from a girl with such a pretty face. “I’m… I’m glad you and Crick seem to be okay. I’m….” And this next word
really
seemed to hurt. “I’m
sorry
that I haven’t wanted to see you.”

Benny pulled in a breath and tried to find Crick in the crowd. He was looking with concern at Deacon, who had spent a lot of time out with the horses since Sweetie’s death and who had his “stoic” face on now. It was the expression he wore when he was the most devastated, and Benny wondered if he was thinking of all the ways Crick and Benny could have ended up dead from all of the stupid decisions
they’d
made. It had certainly been on
her
mind a lot, so she couldn’t blame him. Beyond Crick and Deacon, Martin was hugging Jeff like a drowning man, his shoulders shaking with sobs. Collin was steering them to the shady side of the rock, but looking at them hurt like a shock of cold to an open wound. Looking at Mikhail and Shane keeping their game faces on hurt too. Okay, well, the men were occupied, for better or worse. It was her turn.

“Mommy, who’s that?”

Oh thank God. Saved by Parry Angel.

“Hey,” Benny said brightly. “You two have never met! Missy, this is Parry Angel, my daughter, and Parry, this is Missy, your aunt.”