Promise to a Boy

“Apparently their Denver departure was rather abrupt and it might have had to do with the sister and not Angelina.”

Reed put his free hand flat on the dresser top. “Any details?”

“I’ll see what I can find out. I assume you don’t want me to tell your mother anything.”

“That’d be correct. Thanks, Denny.”

Reed hung up and crossed the room to where a wood-framed picture sat on the bedside table. The photo was of Jesse, Angelina, a toddler and Abby and it looked to be a few years old. Abby looked serious and the others were grinning. The kid was probably the child on “Aunt” Abby’s porch. He picked up the snapshot. The boy looked familiar, but maybe that was because all kids looked the same to him, they just had different colored hair.

He placed the picture back on the table and continued searching. There was nothing in the bathroom except a dry, cracked bar of soap and a neatly folded towel. On top of the refrigerator in a basket was an old letter from their mother ranting and raving in the tone of a chronic alcoholic. This would be the address Abby had used. It was their summerhouse in the Chain of Lakes area and no one was there this year. The letter would probably arrive in Evanston soon and the housekeeper would forward it to Reed’s office in Chicago with any other mail that might upset his mother and contribute to a relapse into the bottle.

Where the hell are you, Jesse?

ABBY TOSSED TOYS INTO the wooden “pirates treasure” box while Kyle ran to get a new game, undoubtedly leaving another mess on the floor outside the game cabinet as he tried to decide which one. There was nothing left of the cookies but crumbs and Kyle had beaten her at most of their half dozen games of Candy Land.

All the time they played, she wondered if she had done the right thing, letting Jesse’s brother into the apartment. Legally, she supposed the apartment wasn’t Jesse’s anymore. He hadn’t paid the rent due before he left, he kept meaning to and now his brother had.

Maybe Reed would find something she didn’t know about and get a clue as to where Jesse had gone after Utah. A stab of dread hit her as she thought of something happening to Jesse.

She picked up a picture of the four of them. It had been taken at the zoo in Denver and she’d had a copy made for Jesse. They were so young in the picture. Lena had just turned eighteen when Kyle was born and he was barely two in the picture.

Abby always wondered about Jesse and Angelina, how their relationship went.

“Is Mommy scared?” Kyle stood, holding the Shoots and Ladders game.

Abby put the picture back and smiled at Kyle’s sweet face.

“Maybe she is sometimes.” She handed the photo of his mother in uniform to Kyle and he left a kiss print on her face where he’d placed so many others. “But she’s in a place where there are a lot of people to make friends with. I bet she misses you a lot, though.”

“She left her bunny slippers. Do you think she misses them?”

On Kyle’s feet were large pink bunnies with floppy ears and black button noses.

“I think they look great on you,” she said, and smiled.

He grinned and then his expression grew serious enough to wrinkle his forehead. “I’d be scared.”

What did she say to that? She couldn’t tell him not to be scared, but she could listen.

“You’d be scared?”

“If I had to go and live with strangers.”

She reached for him and pulled him into a hug. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about that, you rascally rabbit slipper wearer. You’ve got me and your grandma here.”

She tweaked his nose and he grinned again.

“Do you promise, Aunt Abby?”

“I promise,” she said with as much animation as she could stuff into her tone.

The doorbell rang. In the reflection in the hallway mirror, Abby could see Reed Maxwell silhouetted in the sheer lace curtained window of her front door.

“Is that the man again?” Kyle wiggled out of her arms. “Can I see him this time?”

“I want you to stay in the house. I don’t really know this man. He’s a stranger.” And he’s poking and prying. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know how he found out that Lena and Jesse were friends. And if he found that out, how much else did he know? And what did he plan to do with that knowledge?

“We don’t like strangers. Do we?” he said in a serious little-boy tone.

Abby tugged one of his blond curls. “We want to be safe around strangers. That means you stay inside right now. I’ll put a DVD in if you want.”

“Land Before Time. Land Before Time.”

She popped in the kid dinosaur DVD as the bell rang again.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please stay here.”

He gave her a half nod, already holding the remote control in anticipation of the movie starting.

Ah, if life were that simple.

Now all she had to do was send Jesse’s nosy brother away and she could watch the movie with Kyle. She should clean the bathroom and address a few cobwebs, but she wanted to spend as much of her day off with her young nephew as she could. Being a nurse at the only clinic in St. Adelbert didn’t leave her much free time.

Abby opened the door and this time stepped out onto the porch to greet Jesse’s brother. “Did you find anything that would help?”

“There’s not much there.”

“Rolling stone and all that. It’s too bad he’s not here. If you had come in the spring…”

He seemed as if he was trying to decide something. Maybe he just wanted to make sure he asked all his questions before he got back in his rental car and left town.

“I’ll give you my phone number and if you think of anything else, you can call me. Anytime.” Abby felt an urgent need to reassure him and send him on his way.

His brow furrowed.

“I don’t mean… I mean I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she hurried to say and then to prove her point she sat down on the top step and invited him to sit. His brother was missing, after all. There had to be some middle ground between the bum’s rush and trying to keep Kyle’s and her little world undisturbed.

He declined to sit, but descended and put one foot on the lower step as he had earlier. He was tall, and sitting, she did feel at a disadvantage. Maybe that was good. Let him think he had the upper hand.

“Do you know where in Utah he went hiking?”

“There are several parks—Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and more—but he didn’t name one specifically.”

“Do you know if he went hiking alone?”

“He usually did. He said it gave him the space to think.”

“Was there anyone else in town Jesse was friends with?”

“Maybe, but he didn’t confide in me. Like I said, he and Lena were friends. She lived in the house with me for a little while.”

He nodded toward the house. “Is that little boy Angelina’s child?”

Abby turned to see Kyle peering out the window beside the door.

CHAPTER TWO

ABBY FOUGHT BACK THE sudden sensation of panic, an immobilizing dread that had first started when she had been trapped on a dark night by reporters. She had thought she’d banished the feeling forever. She swallowed and quickly stuffed it into the bad memory file where it belonged.

Kyle waved at her. The boy had to move the plant and stand on his tiptoes to see out the lowest window in the column beside the door, his nose pressed on the glass probably leaving a mark. She motioned him away and he disappeared from view.

When she turned back, the thoughtful look on the man’s face appalled her. There were no reasons for him to be interested in her sister’s child—none she could possibly acknowledge anyway.

Abby suddenly didn’t want to talk to Reed Maxwell anymore. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about her sister’s child, except her sister. Her mission in life right now was to protect that little boy. She’d been doing it since before he was born and she’d do it as long as necessary, forever if she had to. The best way to do that was to send Jesse’s brother back to Chicago.

The sooner he left the better, because there were questions she had asked her sister about Kyle and hadn’t gotten any satisfactory answers, answers about Kyle and Jesse. It hadn’t seemed very important before, but with Lena so far away and this man here asking questions, she recognized how little control she might actually have over what happened to Kyle.

Reed Maxwell had to go. Now. Because he was be ginning to make the safe town of St. Adelbert not seem so snug anymore.

“If you leave me a contact number, I’ll email my sister again about Jesse, and I’ll call you and let you know what she says, and if I hear anything from Jesse, I’ll call.” She sounded flustered. She knew she did. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

He half turned away and then turned back. “I thought, until I can be sure I’ve found out everything I can from the people here about where Jesse might be, I’d stay in Jesse’s apartment for a few days.”

“Stay in Jesse’s apartment? You want to stay here in St. Adelbert?” A wrenching, gut-level protest flashed through Abby. This man could not stay in town. There could be no good reason for him to stay. There was nothing for him here.

He stared steadily, silently. Unsure she could say any more without sounding like a crazed shrew, she did the same.

The adrenaline rush and the late-afternoon’s cool breeze made her skin prickle. She couldn’t have him digging into Kyle’s past, her past, and if he stayed, he might do just that—until he discovered things he did not need to know.

“If there’s a chance I can find something out about Jesse by staying here for a couple of days, I’m going to stay.”

She watched his face for some kind of hope that he was kidding, pulling her leg. City Man Invades Small Montana Town a Hoax. Ha ha! We always gotta have hope, her mother would say. But there had been no give in his words, and now no relenting in the expression on his face.

The bottom of her world gave way a bit.

Okay, then. She made herself relax and smile. “If I can do anything to help, let me know.” She had to keep him from discovering for himself the things about her sister and Kyle that Lena would never clarify, but that could no longer be ignored or treated lightly.

Was Jesse Kyle’s father? If he was, did Jesse know or even suspect?

Pudgy-cheeked and blond, Kyle was nothing like the dark and lanky Jesse and if Lena had not wanted to tell anyone, Abby had known it wasn’t any of her business. It wasn’t until her sister went into the army leaving Kyle in her care that she had admitted she should have insisted on concrete, believable answers, but pinning down her younger sister was like holding fog in the palm of her hand.

Jesse’s brother climbed the steps and sat down beside her. She stayed where she was, refusing to give an inch.

With the tip of her fingernail she flicked off a chip of the peeling gray paint. The flake landed with a tiny click on the sidewalk below.

Maybe Reed thought she was being friendly. The niggling of dread threading through her thoughts told her it was more likely he could see through her facade.

He knew she wanted to send him over the mountains never to come back again, and in protest, he was staking a claim.

She held her ground.

“I have this mother, you see,” he said quietly and then fell silent. He didn’t seem to be expecting her to comment. Instead, he gazed intently out over the neighborhood.

Abby sat silently. Let him ponder. It was a dirty trick to bring his mother into this. She didn’t want to hear about his mother. She didn’t want to think of Jesse’s family, have them become human beings and not just the miserable caricatures Jesse had sketched and then dismissed.

What did a man from the flatlands see when he looked out over the neighborhood? Did he see the houses, the white clapboard, the stone and the log-cabin wannabees, all stout enough to withstand heavy snows and each sheltering a family with their own story? Did he see the trees, some as old or older than the town and each planted by the wind, the squirrels, or human hands?

Surely he had to see the mountains in the distance, hazy and ancient, and some would say full of mystery and lore. Always mountains. Beautiful mountains that kept the rest of the world at bay—most of the time.

How had this day gone from playing Candy Land to feeling as if she had been hurled off the top of the Gumdrop Mountains?

Instead of pressing her for information she did not really have, Jesse’s brother’s broad shoulders drooped.

She wanted to reach out and comfort him.

She scrunched her hands into fists. Always the nurse. She could not comfort the whole world and especially not this man—the one who could be the enemy. Kyle came first. She needed to protect him. I’d be scared… If I had to go and live with strangers. Kyle’s words chilled her.

What if it came to that? What if Reed Maxwell came for his brother and settled for a boy who might be his nephew? What if he knew for sure about Kyle’s heritage and had come for his nephew in the first place?

No matter what, he couldn’t just take Kyle away without cause.

What if he had cause? What if he knew why she had fled back to St. Adelbert?

Abby cringed, but then she put the thought away. She had to. She was getting ahead of herself. It could be Jesse was not Kyle’s father at all, and her sister just kept the man close because she liked having a fan club. That was not at all beyond her sister, but if Abby believed that, maybe she believed the moon was made of green cheese, too.

Reed had a missing brother and he had a mother, who probably missed her son. Nursing had taught Abby almost everyone had feelings for one of their own.

Whatever Jesse and Lena did was not this man’s fault nor his mother’s, and what lived in Abby’s past was Abby’s alone. She couldn’t tell Reed he had a nephew because she didn’t know if he did, and it would be unfair to give him and his mother that kind of hope.

Nor could she feel good about sending him away. Again, there had to be a balance point somewhere between the compassionate human being she should be to this man and the vigilant protector she felt she had to be when it came to Kyle.

She bowed her head. “Jesse hires me to do his cleaning and laundry. I just cleaned his apartment and washed the sheets again a couple days ago. I can repeat the cleaning and do the laundry before Jesse gets home.”

“I can pay you, better than Jesse did.” The man didn’t pull his gaze from the horizon. “Hell, Jesse could pay you better than he did.”

“You’ve already paid me enough.” She tucked her fingers under her thighs. “Tell me about your mother.”

“A piece of work.”

“She must miss Jesse if she sent you looking for him.”

He gave a short bark of laughter at that. “My business partner accuses me of coming out here to look for Jesse so I could get away from my mother. He might be right.”

“You ran away from your mother?”

“I know how this sounds, but she used to be a nice, tidy drunk who never bothered anyone.”

Abby turned and leaned her back against the decorative post so she could see him better. The look of regret on his face said he wasn’t kidding about his mother, either.

“Jesse didn’t talk about your mother much, not specifically, or any of you. He seemed content to think of all of you as some distant, vaguely related people, and he didn’t seem to need to have any of you in his life.”

“I don’t think any of us can blame him for that, but last year our mother sobered up, and eventually she realized she’d been drunk almost her whole marriage, for sure most of the time her sons were growing up.”

“That must have been hard on you and your brother.” As dear and funny as her mother was, Abby knew what it was like to be ignored by a parent.

“When we were younger it was hard. Once we were old enough, it seemed like an advantage. We mainly got our way, any car we wanted, parties at the house, apartments of our own at too young an age.”

“What about your father?” Since she had hardly known her own before he ran away, Abby found herself wondering about other people’s fathers and how they related to them.

“He’s probably exactly as Jesse described him. He was either gone or negotiating with someone and couldn’t be bothered with his family.”

“Ouch.”

“Kids can survive a lot.”

“Jesse said he was cut off from the family because he didn’t conform.” She wanted to say to their idea of what a human being should be. She might be prying, but if Kyle’s happiness depended on her knowing what kind of people Jesse’s family were, then she had to dig.

“I suppose, in a way he was. Jesse was cut off from a paycheck he wasn’t willing to work for. He has a trust fund he never touches and prefers to do his own thing, be his own man. My rebellious brother, the cliché.”

“That is so Jesse. He tries hard to be different from his family, or his idea of what his family is like or what any family might be like. Sometimes he could be a real pain and sometimes he’s just cute.” Abby smiled at the thought. “As long as he was free to move about, without any real entanglement, he seemed happy.”

“Our mother wants to see him. I suspect she wants absolution or something. She wants the family she never really noticed before. Maybe she finally deserves her family, her children and who knows, maybe grandchildren some day.”

Abby didn’t know what to say to that. His brother was funny and often irresponsible and now he was missing. A dread grew inside her. If Jesse was Kyle’s father, what would his family do? They had money. Money often spoke louder than signed papers. Would they try to take the boy, take him to Chicago and make him live, afraid, among strangers?

Abby wanted to shriek at her runaway imagination.

But she needed to consider all the possibilities, not let herself be blindsided, not again. She wouldn’t let Kyle down and she wouldn’t let Lena down now that her sister was trying so hard to reform in the army, to grow up. And Abby knew she couldn’t do anything to keep Reed from looking for his brother, but she couldn’t sit here any longer catastrophizing, either.

“I hope Jesse comes back soon, for your mother’s sake.”

“She’d appreciate it.”

“Well, I have things to do,” Abby told him, pushing up from the step. Things that didn’t involve getting to know this man or his history or encouraging him to hang around St. Adelbert.

Or taking a chance on spilling things she didn’t know if she believed herself, like Jesse and Lena possibly having a child together.

REED STUDIED THE WOMAN standing over him. Her riot of dark brown curls swept along her jawline and somehow seemed perfect for the angles of her face. She was attractive in a natural, unmade-up fashion. Her figure was tantalizing. But her eyes struck him the most. They flashed light brown, almost yellow like the color he imagined a mountain lioness’s eyes to be.

He stood and faced her. He had no business noticing her eyes. “Thanks for your time.”

“I hope your mother gets to say whatever she needs to say to Jesse.”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you with my mother. I have no idea why I did. Tired, I guess. I was in Denver yesterday.”

“You drove through the night from Denver? You are tired.”

“I suppose I look pretty bad.” He brushed his hair back. There was a little extra to push around, as he was a couple weeks past his usual cut. “I slept somewhere in Wyoming, but not long.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say you look bad, but you do look tired. I wish I had answers for you, but I truly have no idea where Jesse might hike in Utah or where he might have gone after he left.”

He could see the unsaid “if” in her eyes. He believed her. She was skittish and protective of the boy, but there was an open honesty in the way she presented herself, something missing from most women in his life, for that matter, most of the people in his world. Something that must have made him feel compelled to spill out his history to her. Yeah, he was tired.

“I have a few things to do, too, people to talk to. I found a couple uncashed checks and paycheck stubs in Jesse’s apartment. I guess I’ll start with those people.”

“You might want to get some sleep first.”

The door to the house popped open, and they both turned to see the boy come charging out like a small bull.

“Aunt Abby. Aunt Abby!” he called in the high-pitched tenor of a small child.

“You rascal. Is the movie done already?” she asked as the boy stopped just before crashing into her. She leaned over and scooped him into her arms and stood. He grinned ear to ear and when he did, a big dimple showed in one cheek.

Reed hadn’t missed the look of alarm on the woman’s face when the boy opened the door. He hadn’t missed the look of love, either, as she clasped him in her arms.

“Gramma’s on the phone and she said to go out and tell you to stop ’gnoring her.”

She shot a look at Reed and rolled her eyes. “I have to go. I have a mother, too.”

“Ask her if I can come to her house, please, please, please,” the boy said with one small hand pressed to her cheek as Abby carried him up to the door. She turned and gave Reed an uncertain wave before disappearing into the house.

He couldn’t help but wonder if she were for real.

She seemed so, well, nice, and she could carry a forty-five-pound child as if he weighed five pounds and she seemed to enjoy it. Definitely not like most women in his life.

He headed back to the apartment to retrieve the ad dresses he should have brought with him. Very tired.

The sooner he found Jesse, the better. If he brought his brother back home for their mother to apologize to, his part would be finished. He could get back to running his business. His partner could feel as if he had a partner again.

Abby Fairbanks thought his brother was cute. He hadn’t thought of Jesse as cute—ever. He was only two years older than Jesse, and had missed being aware of Jesse’s cute stage, maybe because he was too young himself at the time.

Who would know? Some long-gone nanny?

Reed thought of the smiling face of the little boy who had come running out of the house. The boy was cute also, not that Reed usually noticed such things; kids didn’t play much of a role in his life. When the boy had come out onto the porch, grinning, he had that same familiar look about him. Though all little blond kids looked alike to him, this one was definitely the kid in the picture on Jesse’s bedside table.

ABBY SENT KYLE TO TALK to his grandmother for a couple minutes while she wrung her hands, gnashed her teeth and wondered. How far should she have pushed her sister to find out if Jesse was Kyle’s father? More important, would Kyle gain anything by knowing right now who his father was?

And then there was her mother’s latest crisis—finding a husband, preferably one for her daughter and one for herself. There was always some urgent necessity in her mother’s life. Usually Abby felt like the only sane adult member of her family. Today, even that was iffy.

One thing she agreed upon with her mother was the light Kyle had brought into their lives. Her mother turned uncharacteristically responsible when Kyle was around. If Delanna Fairbanks kept it up, she might actually figure out she was all right by herself just the way she was, and so was Abby.

Kyle giggled in the other room. Abby sighed. She had to talk to her mother sooner or later.

When she went into the living room the phone was missing from its usual spot on the low wooden table beside the window. She didn’t see Kyle, but the chocolate-colored thermal drapes, which had been pulled back to let in the summer light, fluttered in the still indoor air.

She sneaked up and called softly into the fabric. “Boo.”

Kyle squealed with delight and pulled the curtain away from his face. “Aunt Abby, you got me. Bye, Gramma. Here.” He shoved the phone at her and tore off for wherever it was a boy went when the adult in charge was busy on the telephone.