Anne Brown - Promise Bound

“What are you doing, Nadia?” Tom asks, his voice dangerously calm.

My grandfather is just as perfect as Nadia remembered. Young. Broad-shouldered. A rough scruff around his jaw. Good hands.

You should be mine , Nadia thinks. You should be with me. Not with that plain, mouse-colored woman asleep in your bed . Instead, we say, “Jason is a year old. He’s walking.”

“I won’t let you take him,” Tom says.

“Watch me,” we say, suddenly brave, louder than we planned.

He reaches forward—both angry and terrified—and takes two steps closer. “Quiet. Diana is sleeping. She thinks I’m a widower.”

We shudder at the thought. If Tom only knew how dead we feel. We say, “What do I care of her?” thankful that our words are strong and clear.

Tom closes the nursery door and turns on a small lamp that barely casts a shadowed glow around the pale blue room. The smell of the lake drifts through the open window. It lends the effect of being underwater. Nadia hopes Jason likes it.

Without planning to move, she and I are gliding across the floor. If the braided rug lies under our feet, we cannot feel it. Our hand, long and tapered, each finger like bleached driftwood, strokes the blond head dreaming in the crib.

Jason. My father.

Tom is close behind us. He winds his fingers through a lock of our hair. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, and for a second Nadia thinks he has changed his mind, that both he and the baby will be coming with us. Tom’s voice drops, low and soothing but still negotiating. We can hear the strategy behind the comfort. His warm hand cups our shoulder. “Find someone else, Nadia. Start another family. Leave Jason with me.”

A rush of heat flashes through our body and sparks snap in the dry air. Tom jerks his hand back. He knows better than to touch Nadia now, but not enough to stop explaining. “Please don’t take my son,” he says.

“Your son? Jason is mine,” we say.

Tom’s face hardens. His pupils expand until his eyes are black, smoldering things. The anxious fear of defeat burns in our gut, but we do not let our feelings betray us.

“He belongs with me,” we say.

“Over my dead body,” says the man who used to love us, I mean her … Nadia.

We keep the feeling of betrayal trapped under the heavy weight of our heart. “Tempting,” we say.

He smirks. “You’ve told me too many of your secrets. I know how to avoid you, if I wish.”

We lean into him, a molten and hypnotic pulse building steadily behind our eyes.

He diverts his gaze and crosses the room. “Nice try,” he says.

We would have pursued him, but the baby rolls over, cooing sweetly. His cherubic lips purse like the open end of a raspberry. Our heart lurches with longing for him. We lunge, but Tom is quick. He has us by the neck, and he throws us against the wall. The window beside our head rattles in its frame, and we feel the chain slip from our neck, snaking over our bare shoulders before the beach glass pendant hits the floor.

“Don’t touch him,” Tom warns.

“This isn’t over,” we say. “You made me a promise.”

“Some promises were meant to be broken,” he says. “I can’t turn my son over to a murderer. I can’t let him become one.”

“You didn’t have a problem with who I was before,” we say. “I am not the one who has changed.” The sky rumbles with thunder, and the floorboards quake. The tremor races up the wall studs, through the drywall, and along our spine.

“Babies change every love story,” he says, and we have no answer because we know he is right. “Now go before I reveal you to the world. I should think that would put a terrible crimp in your hunting patterns.”

Fear runs the length of our arms. If he made good on his threat, what would become of Maris? Of Pavati and Tallulah? “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

We swallow hard and call his bluff. “No one would believe you.”

“Is that a gamble you’re willing to take?” he asks.

We straighten our shoulders. “I want my family to be together.”

Tom’s face transforms with an expression we cannot read. His colors are sad and worried and laced with … hope? It is only a flash, but that brilliant gleam of optimism leaves an unmistakable glow. Hope that we will be together someday? We have to assume our eyes don’t deceive us, though Tom is quick to mask the emotion. Still, that glimmer of hope gives us the courage to leave and try again another night.

“Your necklace,” Tom says, reaching for the floor.

“Give it to our son,” says Nadia, slipping away from me like water through my fingers, leaving me alone in the dream, and then …

I woke up in Sophie’s room (again), standing over her bed (again), while she released a banshee-like scream that rattled the glass in the windows. Again.

“Oh, for the love of God.” I slapped my hand over my little sister’s mouth, but she peeled away my fingers and took a swing at me. A pile of books lay open on her bed and a few slipped to the floor. The corner of one just about impaled my foot.

“What’s with all the books?” I asked.

Sophie slapped my arm and said, “Lepidoptera.” Then she groaned at my blank expression. “I’m studying butterflies. Now would you please stop sneaking up on me when I’m sleeping? You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“Shhh, you’re only eleven.”

“I don’t think that’ll matter. What do you want?”

What did I want? For one, I wanted these dreams to stop, because if living in Nadia’s head weren’t exhausting enough, the chronic sleepwalking was turning me into the walking dead. Calder had told me the legend last summer—that Nadia’s pendant held his family’s histories—but if Nadia was trying to tell me something with these nightly episodes, she was being way too subtle for me. Spell it out, Grandma. Then maybe we can both get some rest .

“Sorry, Soph. Go back to sleep.”

“That’s it?”

“I said I was sorry. Go back to your butterfly dreams.”

Sophie groaned and flipped over. She covered her head with her pillow, mumbling, “You are so weird.”

I tiptoed back down the hall, hesitating in the spots where my grandparents’ ghosts still lingered along the walls and feeling the deep pit of loneliness that Nadia’s absence always left in my stomach.

CALDER

Sophie’s scream woke me up sometime after midnight. I whipped off the covers and leapt over the back of the couch, heading for the ladderlike stairs that led from the Hancocks’ front door to Lily’s and Sophie’s bedrooms upstairs.

“Trouble sleeping?” I whispered, crawling up the first three steps, careful not to wake Jason and Mrs. H, amazed that they too hadn’t heard the scream.

Lily slowly descended the stairs, her feet uncertain. She’d fallen asleep in her clothes, and an oversized cardigan drooped off her right shoulder. “Sleeping fine,” she lied as the pallor of mustard-colored anxiety slowly drained from her face.

“You could have fooled me,” I said. Maris had called during the day. She and Pavati would be arriving in less than twelve hours. I blamed them for Lily’s restlessness.

“It’s just freezing up there,” she said.

Her hair was a wild tangle of red that gave her a beautifully feral look. I didn’t say it out loud, though. She brushed off compliments like a nuisance fly. So instead I watched her finish her slow trip down the stairs.

Lily took my fingers lightly in hers and led me back to the couch. She curled into the indentation I’d left in the cushions and faced the fireplace, where, by now, there was only a faint, flickering glow from the remaining log on the grate.