Promise Bound (27 page)

“You two be nice to your sister,”
I say.

Laughing, Calder chases Tallulah to the bottom, and my heart aches for the one this wreath was meant for. And for my poor boy, as well.

F
ive years later, Tom Hancock returns to the lakeshore. If I had passed him on a street, I might not have recognized him, but his scent is immediately recognizable in the water.

I hesitate, searching to see if the mousy woman is with him. But Tom is alone. I consider ignoring him. Then I consider killing him. Then I sense him leave the water, and I am lured closer by the fear of losing him again.

The lights are on in the old homestead. I wonder how I hadn’t noticed. He sits at the end of the dock, and I peer at him from the dark shadows of the willow tree. Gone are the striped pants of the 1960s. His hair is cut short.

He drops his legs in the lake, then pulls them back. He is fishing, I realize. Fishing for me. I do not reward him that first night.

For two more nights I watch him. He sighs and searches the stars. When he looks back at the water, he is startled to find me within inches, staring up at him from the waves that slosh against the dock. I put one hand on the splintered boards and pull myself up, water dripping from my hair, my nose, my chin. He scrambles backward like a crab.

I don’t say anything, but stare at him through burning eyes.

When he offers me no apology, I flip and dart away.

Two days pass. I watch as Tom continues his vigil on the dock. Now and then he calls to me, “Nadia!” and his voice tugs at my heart.

When I emerge the second time, his face washes over with sky-blue relief.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

He exhales. “I needed to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined you. I needed to know that you were real. The other night … was that you? I convinced myself it was a dream.”

I have no answer for this. Isn’t our son proof enough that I am real? And why should he be the one reassured? Where is Jason?

“You are alone?” I ask, my eyes glancing to the nursery’s dormer window.

“Jason is dead,” he tells me. “I thought you should know. You deserved to know.”

“Liar!” I cry, though the possibility that Tom is telling me the truth churns through my body, erupting in a white light that blinds me.

The burst of energy shoots from my body across the water. It slices through the willow tree, severing a branch and continuing through the trunk and down to the ground. The tree groans, then splinters. The long willow branch crashes onto the water and a shower of small green leaves fills the air.

Tom jumps to his feet and watches the trunk heave, its pulp burned black. When he looks back at me, his eyes are sad, but his aura doesn’t quite match his expression. They are close, but his emotions are more confusing than convincing. A part of me, the very core of me, says that Jason is still alive. But I don’t trust myself anymore. I cannot ignore the fact that Jason has never come home to me. I can’t believe there is anything so strong that it could keep him away this long.

A
nother five years, and I still cannot be consoled. Grief and doubt have overtaken me, and I refuse to seek their cure. Maris implores me to hunt with her. The water is warmer than usual and it has drawn more swimmers from the sand.

I curl up in a sea cave, lay my head against its smooth sides, and refuse to come out.

Maris has swum with me for thirty-four summers, her small body matured only to a human prepubescent. She begs me to come out of the cave. She hears Tom Hancock in my memories. She tells me he lies. She tells me she can see the lie on his face. That Jason is still alive. But I cannot trust Maris. Or I am too far gone to care.

“Please!” Maris pulls at my arm, her hands sliding down its length before reaching my fingers and letting go. “I’m begging you. I don’t want to be in charge. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

“It is your family now. Do what is right. Keep them together. Take care of Calder. You know how much he looks up to you, and I know how much you care about him.”

A wave of horror washes over her. “You wouldn’t tell him.”

“Don’t tell him the thing he most needs to hear?” I ask, managing a weak smile.

“He won’t pay attention to me if he thinks I’m weak.”

I lift my head, though it is as heavy as a stone. “Love doesn’t make you weak, darling. You’re stronger than you think. I’m counting on that. I know you won’t let me down.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

“Listen to me. This is important. If your brother is alive—as you believe—he may still choose to come home. Something has held him from us. Be vigilant. Watch for him. If something keeps him from us, free him from the problem.”

Maris squirms and scowls at the water. “What is he to me?” Her black tail glints in the sunlight that streams through the mouth of the cave. “This is all his fault.”

“No. This is my fault.” I’m tired now. I manage to find just a little more voice. “Jason is your family, and family is the most important thing. Do what you need to do. Promise me you will.”

Maris fights the words, but ultimately we close our eyes together, and I hear her say, “I promise.”

J
ust after daybreak, I returned to where I’d stashed my clothes, under the scrub bush. From there I hitched a ride to the library, where my car had gathered several parking tickets. I assumed it was Chelsea who’d been kind enough to write
F.U
. in the grime and dirt on the driver’s-side door.

I got in, plugged in my phone. It lit up with a text from Lily.

No
, I thought. This search is over. I’m done. I did everything I could. Besides, no Mick Elroys had showed up as registered owners of
R
or
K
boats.

If it weren’t Sunday morning maybe I could have gone back to the library and checked, but it was closed until tomorrow and I wasn’t going to stick around that long. Except that—

Damn it. My compulsion to fulfill the promise clamped around my heart like a vice. It froze my feet at their spot. Apparently the search wasn’t as over as I’d hoped.

Chelsea had programmed her number into my phone and, unwillingly, I dialed it.

“Screw you,” she said.

“Good morning, Chelsea. Is that the way you greet everyone who calls so early?”

“Why aren’t you dead?” she asked, and I could tell this time it was honest curiosity and not a sarcastic retort.

“Not my time, I guess. Listen, what do you know about the name Mick Elroy? Does that mean anything?”

“I’m not talking to you.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Just knock your phone on the wall then. Once for yes. Twice for no.”

There was an overly dramatic pause and then a dull thud on the other end.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“There aren’t enough ways of knocking that.”

“Okay, so how ’bout in relation to the people we talked to yesterday?”

Silence.

“Chelsea, come on. Please. I need to look something up. The library’s closed.”

More silence.

“You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Fine. Come on over. You can use my laptop.”

It took me a while to find Chelsea’s house again. They all looked the same on her street. Ultimately, I recognized the white window boxes and the chemical smell of plastic flowers. I pulled to the curb. Chelsea met me at the door in her pajamas and led me inside without any greeting or questions about what I’d been doing for the past three days, or even about our parting scene. She looked seriously pissed, though. This was going to have to be quick.

“I might have some new information,” I said.

“Yeah, so you said.” She opened her computer without looking at me and said, “What do you want to search?”

“Plug in ‘Thunder Bay’ and ‘Mick Elroy.’ ” Then, on a hunch, I suggested adding the name of ponytail man’s boat,
Rhapsody in Blue
.

Chelsea typed in the name, but she did it like a surname—McElroy—and my heart gave a weird kind of lurch. Three articles popped up. Chelsea clicked on the first one:

“It ends there,” Chelsea said. “Is this what you were looking for?”

I couldn’t find my voice. My head was a whirl of fragmented images: a red box of raisins, the sensation of falling, the sounds of a splash and screams. A boat. A maple leaf flag. A dark-haired woman. I was stunned and panicked to the point of speechlessness.

Chelsea rolled her eyes and exited out of the article, clicking on the second article, which was about a charitable fund being set up for the sole survivor of the McElroy family.

She exited and clicked on the third. It was a section of a newspaper announcing engagements and weddings. The post referred to “Margaret (Molly) McElroy, formerly of Thunder Bay.” Seemed she had remarried. The name of the groom seared the synapses of my brain.

“Chelsea?” I said, finally finding the air to speak.

“What?”

“Thanks.”

She eyed me doubtfully, then said, “Whatever,” slapping her computer shut.

I ran for my car.

My eyes were wide in the rearview mirror. Patrick? Did I look like a Patrick? A rush of heat flashed through my face and then the tears came, wild and furious.

How is it that every life I touched lay in ruins? My father was dead because of me. Nadia was dead because I had not been enough to fulfill her need for a son. And what about the Hancocks? Could they have avoided their true nature if they had never met me? And now what about my biological mother? Was there at least one life that I could salvage?

As the image of my mother flashed across my mind, a guttural cry built up in my chest and broke past my lips. Salt-laced tears stung my eyes, and I could barely keep them open to see the road. I bit down on my hand to restrain the sound that was tearing at my throat.

Grief. Or joy. Or loss. No label fit. So much time lost. That was what bothered me most. She’d been so close for so long. Why hadn’t I ever recognized her touch? The curve of her cheek? Was I so far gone?

No. It couldn’t be true. There must be some mistake. Even if I had lost all memory, what mother wouldn’t recognize her own son? What kind of mother was she that she wouldn’t have known me? I’d been so close. How could she have let me slip away? Not once, but over and over and over
again. I hated her. I loved her. I didn’t care anything about her. I wanted her. I wanted my mother. I felt small and alone.

Then, just when I thought I might pull myself together, the faded image of my father sinking in the lake brought a new sound of agony to my lips. I wiped my face with the back of my arm. How many people had died because of me? My father had only been the first. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to myself when it came to him, but how could I deny it? He was dead because of me.

A truck blared its horn as I veered across the center line, the sound swelling, then fading away as I swerved to the right and skidded in the loose gravel on the shoulder. I put the car in park and threw my head back, howling and bashing my skull against the headrest, over and over and over. My face contorted, unrecognizable in the rearview mirror. I’d never felt so hopeful or so low. So ashamed and in such a hurry to make things right. But I couldn’t turn back time. I couldn’t change the past. I could only run pell-mell into the future.

I abandoned the car and sprinted for the lake, just beyond the tree line. I couldn’t wait any longer for this road to carry me home.

W
aking was like coming out of the grave. My room was dark, the curtains drawn, alarm clock unplugged. There were no sounds in the house to confess the time. No coffee gurgling, no Queen on the stereo, no smell of onions frying in a pan.

My Nadia dreams still lingered on the fringes of my mind, but, slowly, I shed the cloak of death and found my way back to reality. My head pounded and my shaking fingers found the very real goose egg on my forehead. It throbbed, and I remembered the sickeningly dull thud of my head hitting the boat cleat.

“How are you feeling?” asked a low voice.

It startled me and, not yet certain of my surroundings, I nearly rolled out of bed. “Who? Dad?”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I lied, not wanting to confess what I had known for quite some time. Ever since Calder had left, the mermaid’s black cloud of despair had been slowly descending until I was deep within the well. Too deep. And I didn’t see any way of climbing out of this hole I’d dug for myself.

Even Dad’s voice tunneled away from me, getting smaller and smaller like the circle of light at the top of the well. I could barely see him sitting there in a wooden chair in the corner of my room. I was conscious of only one sense. It was as if the world I’d known had been sucked into a black hole, and all that was left was a high-pitched keening in my brain. Mom was dead.

“Mom?” I asked, my voice trembling, my heart a heavy anchor in my chest.

“She’s fine,” he said. “Well, not fine. But alive.”

I didn’t believe him. I’d seen it all firsthand. He was lying to pacify me. But I wasn’t a child. He couldn’t treat me like a child. “Maris killed her,” I said.

“Almost.”

Yes, he was a very good liar. “I failed!”