Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

“Mom, honestly—”

“And besides, if it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t be sitting there right now.”

I went silent.

Dad said, “She’s got you there.”

I looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not the only one with a bad memory,” Mom said. “You’ve forgotten what happened that summer at Agnes’s cabin?”

Marla had alluded to something when we were in the car.

“Wait a sec,” I said. “The raft. This is about the raft.” Back then, the Pickenses had built a wooden platform, about six by six, floated it on sealed oil drums, and anchored it a hundred feet from the shoreline. We’d go out there and dive off it.

“We’d told you not to go out there alone,” Mom said. “And especially we told you not to do flips off it. We kept telling you one day you’d hit your head on the edge.”

“Which, one day, I did,” I said, the incident now starting to come back to me.

“You knocked yourself out,” Dad said. “You did a flip, whacked your noggin on the edge of the raft, and went into the water unconscious.”

“Marla saw me,” I said.

“She was sitting on the dock, dangling her feet in the water, mooning after you — she had such a crush on you,” Mom said. “She saw you hit your head and go into the water facedown, and you didn’t move a muscle. She went running up to the cabin, screaming at the top of her lungs that something had happened. Agnes and I were sitting at the kitchen table playing cards. Agnes ran out of that cabin like she’d been shot out of a cannon. Jumped in the boat and went out there and got you.”

“I don’t really remember it,” I said. “I only remember being told about it, after.”

“You lost about a day,” Dad said. “Of memory. Agnes saved your life, but she’d never have had a chance if it wasn’t for Marla.”

“Think about that,” Mom said. “And you’ve got nothing else to do. You might as well be doing something useful.” She put her hand to her mouth, then reached out and touched my cheek. “I’m sorry. That was an awful thing to say.”

“And it’s not exactly true, anyway,” Dad said. “The boy got a job offer today.”

Forty years old, and still “the boy.” Still that boy who fell off that raft and nearly died.

“You did?” Mom said. “What is it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I have to think—”

“Randall Finley offered him a job as his right-hand man,” Dad said. “How about that?”

Mom looked nearly as horrified as when she’d taken the call from Marla’s father. “Finley? That horse’s ass? He’s offered David a job?”

“What’s wrong with Finley?” Dad shot back. “He’s a good man.”

“What’s he want David for?” she asked him.

“I’m right here,” I said.

“Gonna help him take another run at the mayor’s seat,” Dad said. “I bet, with David’s help, he could do it, too.”

Now she looked at me. “I forbid it.”

I sighed. “I haven’t given him an answer yet.”

“It pays a thousand dollars a week,” Dad said.

“I wouldn’t care if it paid a hundred thousand dollars a week,” she said. I had to admit, for that kind of money, right now I’d have done PR for the Taliban.

There was a knock at the door. Mom started to push herself away from the table, but Dad was already on the move. Once he was out of the kitchen, Mom said, “You can’t be serious.”

“It’d help until something better comes along,” I said. “I’m not a fan of the guy, but it’s a paycheck.”

She put her hand on mine a second time and closed her eyes. “Do what you have to do. I haven’t got the energy for this, not with everything else that’s going on. But I want you to help Marla. Will you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know how. But... okay. I’ll... I don’t know... I’ll ask around. Maybe find something that helps.” I smiled sheepishly. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten about the raft.”

“We nearly lost you,” Mom said, and sniffed. “I can still see little Marla, busting into the cabin, looking like she was almost in shock, saying, ‘David! David! David’s gone!’ I’ll never forget it.” She caught a tear with her finger before it had a chance to run down her cheek.

“Someone for you,” Dad said, standing in the doorway, looking at me.

“Who?” I said.

“She didn’t say. Just asked for you. I invited her in, but she said she’d wait outside.” His eyebrows went up half an inch. “Nice looker.”

Mom brightened. “Who is she, David?”

“I have no idea,” I said, “but I’m not going to find out sitting here.”

There was no one on the porch when I went out the front door. She was standing at the foot of the steps. I couldn’t tell who it was right away, given the dim porch light, and the fact that she was looking out toward the street, arms crossed over her chest.

“Hello?”

She turned around. “Hey,” Samantha Worthington said.

“Hi,” I said. “You’re unarmed.”

She dug into the front pocket of her jeans. When her hand came back out, it was wrapped around something. I could guess what.

She came halfway up the steps, arm extended. “I believe this is yours. Or your kid’s. I don’t know. All I know is, it’s not Carl’s.”

I opened my palm to allow her to set the pocket watch on it. Our fingers brushed together lightly. Samantha retreated, ran her fingers through her hair to get it out of her eyes, and said, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Not just about the watch.”

“You mean the shotgun in my face.”

“Yeah,” Samantha said. “That.” She forced a smile. “You get some fresh shorts?”

“I did.”

“I was doing laundry, grabbed Carl’s jeans; they felt kind of heavy. Found the watch in his pocket.” She shook her head. “You’d figure, if he was going to lie to me, he’d do a better job of covering up after himself.”

“His future as a master criminal looks uncertain,” I said.

She pointed toward the street, where a small Hyundai sedan sat. “He’s in the car. I brought him to apologize to your boy.”

I opened the door a crack and called in, “Ethan! Out front!”

Almost instantly I heard stomping on the stairs, and then he emerged. “Yeah?”

Samantha looked at her car and made a waving-in gesture. The door opened and a black-haired boy Ethan’s age got out.

My son looked at Carl, then at me. I put the watch in his hand and said, “You can give this to Poppa in a minute.” He looked at it, stunned, like he’d won the lottery. “This is Carl’s mom, Ms. Worthington.”

“Hi,” she said as Carl approached. Once her son was standing next to her, she said to him, “You know what to say.”

“Sorry I took the watch,” he said, looking more at the ground than at Ethan. “That wasn’t right.”

“Sorry I punched you and stuff,” Ethan said.

Carl shrugged. “Okay.”

There was an uncomfortable three seconds of silence. Then Ethan asked, “Do you like trains?”

“What?”

“Do you like trains? My grandpa has some. In the basement. If you want to see them.”

Carl, his face blank, looked at his mother. “Uh, yeah, I guess,” she said. The boy came up the stairs and disappeared into the house with Ethan.

“The Middle East should be so easy,” I said, coming down the steps.

“Carl’s not a bad kid,” Samantha said defensively. “He’s just... like his father sometimes. I don’t like it when he gets like that. He can be a bit of a bully. But there’s a good kid in there, I swear. Some days it’s just a little harder to find.”

“Sure,” I said.

“And yet, he’s kind of my rock, you know? He’s there for me. We’re there for each other. I guess that’s why, when you said he had that watch, I just stood up for him.” She raised her hands a moment, a gesture of futility. “Now what do I do? I feel like an idiot standing here. The plan was, Carl says he’s sorry and we go. Now he’s in there with your kid.”