Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

I cocked my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In the boathouse. I went in there and caught you making out with that girl. I think her name was Zenia or something. You had your hand right under her shirt.”

“Yeah, I remember that. I begged you not to tell anyone.”

Marla nodded. “I made you take me to the marina, in Dad’s boat, and get me something at the snack bar. I was bought off for the price of a milk shake.”

I shot her a smile. “Yeah. I remember that, too.”

“I should have asked for more, considering what I’d end up doing for you later.”

“What?” I asked.

“That same summer?”

“I don’t... I don’t think I know what you’re referring to.”

She waved a hand, dismissed it. “All my memories of the cabin used to be good. It was my happy place, you know? But I don’t think I can ever go back there.” She went silent for several seconds, then said, “That’s where I lost her, you know. Where I lost Agatha.”

“Agatha,” I repeated.

“That’s what I would have named her. I had a name all picked out. Agatha Beatrice Pickens. A mouthful, I know.” Her eyes, which hadn’t had much of a break from crying in the last couple of hours, moistened yet again.

“I didn’t know it happened up there,” I said.

“There was this outbreak at the hospital then, C. diff or whatever they call it, and Mom was worried about me having the baby there. Although she didn’t want anyone to know she was choosing to keep her own daughter out of the hospital. She knew how that would play, sending me elsewhere at the same time she was telling the press that the hospital was perfectly safe, that all precautions were being taken. But she was trained as a nurse and was a midwife for a while years ago — you knew that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So she said she could look after me as well as anybody could. Although she didn’t want to take too many chances, so she got Dr. Sturgess to help out. So they got me all set up at the cabin. I mean, it was a good idea, and it was really nice up there. Relaxing, you know?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Mom stayed up there with me. She had Dr. Sturgess on standby. Like, if the contractions started getting really close together, she’d call him and get him up there. Since she’s the head of the hospital, people, even the doctors, jump when she tells them to.”

“I’ve noticed,” I said.

“So, when it looked like the baby was about to be born, she texted him and he got up there real fast. And things were going okay at first, although I had a lot of pain, you know? Lots of pain.” Her voice drifted off.

I didn’t know what to say. Maybe there wasn’t anything she wanted me to say. Marla just wanted to talk.

“They gave me something for it; Dr. Sturgess did. And that helped. But then things started going wrong. Something really bad. And when the baby — when Agatha — came out, she wasn’t breathing.”

“Was it the cord? The umbilical cord?” I didn’t know a lot about the subject, but I had heard of newborns dying that way.

She looked away and nodded. “Yeah. I’ve read about it online, and it happens a lot, but it’s rare for it to actually threaten the baby. But that’s what happened. It was all kind of surreal, because I was sort of in and out, but even so, I’ll never forget it. Not as long as I live.”

“I’m sorry, Marla. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.”

“At least I got to hold her,” Marla said. “To see her perfect little fingers.” The tears were coming now. “Mom says I held her for a couple of minutes before they had to take her away. You have any Kleenex?”

I pointed to the glove box. She opened it, grabbed three tissues, dabbed her eyes, and blew her nose. “Mom blamed herself,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“After, she said it was all her fault. That if I’d had the baby at the hospital, maybe they could have done more to save her. She took it pretty hard. I know she comes across as a total bitch and a half, but she took it almost as bad as I did.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Do you blame her?”

She took several seconds to answer. “No,” she said finally. “It made sense, doing things that way. I mean, I went along with it. Dr. Sturgess said it was the smartest thing to do. It was just... it was just the way it happened. If I blame anyone, I guess I blame God. That’s who Mom says she blames, after she’s done blaming herself.”

I nodded.

“And I’m not a religious person. I mean, I didn’t really believe in God until I needed Him to blame. Does that make any sense?” She searched my face.

“I think so,” I said. “It’s hard to know how to handle these things.”

“And up until everything went to shit, it was kind of a good time up there. I mean, just being there with Mom. She was okay. She was really nice to me. She wasn’t judging me the way she usually does, even though I know she was pretty pissed when she found out I was pregnant. But close to the end, she seemed to come to terms with it.”

“How about the father?” I asked. “How’d he react?”

“Derek?” she said.

“Yeah. I’ve never known his name.”

“Derek Cutter.”

The name rang a bell. From my days as a reporter for the Standard.

“I didn’t tell him right away. I hadn’t talked to him much in the last few weeks I was pregnant. She didn’t want me to have anything to do with him. I don’t think I was really in love with him or anything.”

“He’s a student?”

Her head went up and down twice. “He’s local. He didn’t leave town to go to college like a lot of kids do. He started out living at home, but then his parents split up, and they sold the house and his mom moved away, I think. His dad moved into an apartment, and then Derek started sharing a house close to the college with some other students.”

“Sounds kind of rough for him.”

“Yeah. His dad runs a gardening service or something. When Derek was a teenager, he worked for him. Cutting lawns and doing landscaping and stuff like that. But when the house got sold, he had to rent a garage or something to store his lawn mowers and everything. Mom never liked Derek. She figured I should be finding someone whose parents were lawyers or owned Microsoft or invented Google. Someone like that. But Derek was okay.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“At a bar in town. We just kind of bumped into each other. I might have sort of lied about how old I was. I told him I’d just gotten out of school, so he’d think I was only a year or two older than him, instead of seven. But I don’t think age really matters that much, do you?”

My phone rang. “Hang on,” I said.

It was home calling. That could mean Mom or Dad, but I was betting Mom.

“Hello?”

“David?”

I was right. “Yeah, Mom.”

“What’s happening?”

“It’s a long story. I can’t really get into it right now. I’m with Marla, and Agnes has arrived.”

“Because I don’t know if this is something you want your father to handle. I’d do it myself but I fell on the stairs.”

I gripped the motionless steering wheel with my free hand. “Mom, what’s going on?”

“I was coming up the stairs and slipped, but it’s nothing. But the school called about Ethan.”

Jesus, when it rained, it poured. “What about Ethan? Is Ethan hurt?”

“I don’t think so, but he got into some kind of fight. With another boy. He got sent to the office and they called here for you. You gave them your old cell phone number when you enrolled him and you must have forgotten to give them your new one, so if there’s an emergency—”