Promise Me

by Richard Paul Evans

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he someone bad?”

  “Yes, honey. He is.”

  “He didn’t seem bad.”

  “People aren’t always what they seem to be.”

  I didn’t climb out of bed until five. I felt like I’d been run over by a motorcycle gang. Charlotte was at the kitchen table drawing pictures with crayon. I went to the kitchen to make her some dinner. I had just put some water on to boil when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anybody and I didn’t want to see anybody. “Charlotte, will you get that?”

  “Sure, Mom.” She put down her crayons and ran to the door.

  I heard the door open, then after a moment I heard Charlotte say, “She’s crying.”

  A minute later she walked back into the kitchen. “Mr. Matthew’s here.”

  I looked at her in disbelief. “Matthew?”

  She nodded.

  I took the pan off the burner and turned off the stove. My heart filled with rage. It was something I had become good at—concealing heartbreak with anger.

  Charlotte had left the front door open and as I walked into the foyer I saw him. He stood there, a few feet from the door wearing only a hooded sweatshirt, his arms wrapped around himself from the cold. He looked at me anxiously. I noticed he held something in his hand. An envelope.

  “I told you I never wanted to see you again,” I said fiercely.

  “Here’s your money back,” he said, holding out the envelope. “It’s all there with your winnings.”

  In spite of my anger I felt a tremendous flood of relief. I started to cry.

  He said, “I’m sorry that you think I was trying to take advantage of you. I wasn’t. I just didn’t want you to lose your home.”

  I stood there glaring at him. “I don’t want your winnings. I don’t gamble.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then what do you call it?”

  “It’s not gambling if you already know how it ends.” He pushed the envelope forward. “Take it.”

  I took the envelope without looking at it. “This doesn’t change anything.”

  “You should open it.”

  The envelope wasn’t sealed. I reached in and extracted a check from the envelope. It took a moment for the amount to register. I had never seen that many zeros on a check. I raised my hand to my face.

  “Mike Tyson was a forty-two-to-one favorite,” he said.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Beth, you have to trust me that I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Ever. I went to Wendover for you. I only had your best interest in mind.” He put his hands in his pockets.

  “I never want to see you again,” I said.

  He looked stricken but not surprised. “If that’s what you want.” He pulled his hood up and turned and walked out to his car. I watched him drive away. He never looked back.

  Charlotte walked up as I shut the door. “Is he still bad?”

  Still clutching the check I crouched down and hugged her. “I don’t know what he is.”

  I don’t know what to think. Matthew didn’t just upset the game board, he changed the pieces, the dice and the rules. Actually he changed the whole game board too.

  Beth Cardall’s Diary

  The next morning at work Roxanne just stared at the check. “Holy moly, holy moly, holy moly. Is this real?”

  “It’s a money order.”

  “Two million six hundred and four thousand dollars. You’re quitting, right?”

  “I have no idea what I’m going to do. This is overwhelming.”

  “He really gave it all to you. Every penny.”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “I tell you, the man is an angel. And if he wasn’t before, he just earned his wings.”

  “He’s not an angel,” I said. “He deceived me. I can’t trust him.”

  Roxanne gave me her sternest gaze. “Girl, did someone beat you with a stupid stick? How much more trustworthy could he be? He could have taken all that money and never looked back. But he didn’t. He gave it all to you.” She held up the check. “You got two million dollars’ worth of trustworthy right here. What more proof could anyone ask for?”

  I thought over her words. “You think I made a mistake?”

  “A mistake? No. Fighting a land war in Asia is a mistake. What you did was epic stupidity. Tossing out the best man you’ve ever known. Criminee, the best man I’ve ever known. You should be worshiping the water he walks on.”

  I exhaled. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “This time I’m not disagreeing, girl. You go find him and beg him to take you back.”

  “What if he’s gone?”

  “Then I’d search every inch of pavement in this city until I found him.”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s okay if I leave?”

  “I’ll fire you if you don’t.”

  I kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Rox.”

  “Yeah, you better thank me.” I heard her grumbling after me. “God must love fools ’cause he sure made a lot of them.”

  Clearly, there is more to heaven and Utah than is dreamt of in my philosophy.

  Beth Cardall’s Diary

  Matthew’s car wasn’t at his apartment, so I drove around the area looking for him. Around six o’clock I was driving back to his place to check again when I noticed his BMW, or at least one like it, parked at a sports bar just down the street from his apartment. I parked next to it and looked inside the car. I recognized his coat.

  I walked inside the building and spotted him sitting alone in the corner sipping a drink. I took a deep breath, then walked up to him. “Hi.”

  He looked up at me but didn’t smile. “Ciao.”

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I. May I join you?” He looked at me sadly, then gestured to the chair across from him. I pulled off my coat and sat down. “I’m very sorry.”

  “So two million dollars can buy remorse?”

  His words stung. “It’s not the money. I mean, it was. I was afraid I’d lost it all, but I was also afraid . . .” I hesitated. “That you didn’t really love me.”

  “How could you doubt me?”

  “After Marc, can you blame me for doubting?”

  He took another drink, then looked at me. “No, I guess not. But you were right, the best thing would be for me to just go away and never come back.”

  I stared at him, my eyes welling up in tears. “No, that wouldn’t be best. Please, give me another chance. I know I screwed up. But I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  “It’s not that, Beth.”

  I looked at him, confused. “Then what is it?”

  He stared at his drink for a moment then said, “You don’t really know who I am.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me who you are. What I know of you is enough. I don’t even care if your name isn’t Matthew. I don’t care about your past. All I want is your future.”

  “My name is Matthew,” he said softly. “But that’s the thing—my past does matter and my future is spoken for. In a way, they’re the same thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked down for a long time. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Believe what?” I touched his hand. “Matthew, I’ll believe you. Trust me.”

  “You really want to know who I am?”

  “I do.”

  He groaned. “I’m a mistake, Beth. I’m a big, freaking cosmic mistake.” He rubbed his face. “I was never supposed to fall in love with you.”

  “How can falling in love be a mistake?”

  “Trust me, it can.” He rubbed his chin. His voice lowered. “You have no idea what’s really happening here. The best thing I could do for everyone is walk away and never come back. Especially for Charlotte.”

  “Charlotte loves you.”

  “Exactly.” He looked me in the eyes. “Beth
, there are forces at work here you couldn’t possibly understand.”

  My brow furrowed. “What kind of forces?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” He looked at me for a long time, then I saw his demeanor relax in resignation. “All right, you want to know? Here you go. I told you that I don’t gamble. I don’t. I knew about the boxing match because I watched it.”

  “A lot of people watched it.”

  “I watched it eighteen years ago.”

  “What?”

  “Beth, this isn’t my time. I’m supposed to be ten years old, not twenty-seven.” He stared into my eyes then said flatly, “I came here from the future.”

  “The future?”

  “Two thousand eight, to be exact.”

  For a moment I just stared at him, wondering what had gotten into him. “Why are you saying this?”

  He shook his head. “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.” He lifted a glass and took a drink, his eyes never leaving me. “I’m not lying. How else would I know about the boxing match?”

  “It could have been a lucky guess.”

  “It could have been,” he said nodding, “but not likely. How did I know that Charlotte had celiac disease even though I had never seen her and all the doctors who examined her couldn’t diagnose her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did I know that your real name is Bethany—Bethany Ann Curtis, or that you like sunflowers instead of roses or what you eat at your favorite restaurant?”

  I just stared at him. I had no idea.

  “How about this—you were born in Magna, Utah, and your father, Charles Donald Curtis, a volunteer fireman, left you when you were six. Your mother, Donna, is buried in Elysian Gardens and every Memorial Day you go to her grave and lay a lavender plant.”

  “How are you doing this?”

  “I’m not making this up, Beth. I’m not even good at this. I kept slipping up, like in the car when I said how much I like your granola when you’d never made it before. Or when you asked me what year I had graduated, what was I going to say? In nine more years? I told Jan that I had heard a lot about her even though you had never mentioned her. Do you want to know her future? I know her as Jan Klaus, a married women. She gets a big tattoo on her arm, marries a veterinarian and moves to Portland, where she has a boy named Ethan. She calls Charlotte almost every month.”

  Just then the waitress came to our table. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No, thank you,” Matthew said. He handed her a bill. “Keep the change.”

  When she was gone, he continued. “I hadn’t heard of the Bee Gees, not because I was in Italy, but because I hadn’t been born yet. That song I was singing to you in the canyon, ‘Truly Madly Deeply,’ hasn’t been written yet. There is no Savage Garden group. That’s why I smiled when you said you were going to look for it.

  “I can tell you every U.S. president for the next twenty years. I can tell you most of the Oscar best-picture winners, every Super Bowl winner. Every World Series winner. I can even tell you almost every American Idol winner.”

  “What’s American Idol?”

  “It’s a TV show. And in twelve years you’re going to be a big fan. The point is, I know the future because I’ve been there. I can tell you about world events. A year from now a war will start in Kuwait.”

  “Kuwait?”

  “It’s a little country in the Middle East with a lot of oil. Later this year they’ll be invaded by Iraq and next year the U.S. will go to war to liberate them. Operation Desert Shield. Of course the biggest news is that the Soviet Union falls apart.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Yeah, well so is Mike Tyson getting knocked out by a forty-two-to-one underdog. If history teaches us anything, it’s that anything is possible and the unlikely is likely. The changes I told you about have already begun.”

  I looked down, struggling to process all he was saying.

  “I know about your husband, Marc, and that you never told Charlotte that he cheated. I also know that he gave you a pearl necklace that you won’t wear. I’m guessing that’s because it was a sin offering.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because Charlotte knows it’s in your closet drawer and has always wondered why you wouldn’t wear it. I know that on the eve of Charlotte’s birthdays you come in at night after you think she’s sleeping and tell her how lucky you are that she came into your life and then you say goodbye to your baby girl.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “When Charlotte gets married, you give her the rose-gold locket that your mother gave you.”

  I yelled, “Stop it!” I began to cry. “How are you doing this?”

  He grabbed my arm. “I told you. I’m from your future. I can tell you things you don’t want to know. The dry cleaner burns down in six years. One of the workers, Bill or Phil, or whatever his name is, dies of a heart attack. Roxanne’s husband has a stroke.”

  “Ray?”

  He stared at me. “You don’t want to know what I know. I’ve already told you too much.”

  I felt like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. I lay my head in my hands. After a few moments I looked back up. “If you’re from the future, why are you so interested in me? Why not save the world.”

  “Because it’s not mine to save. The world has its own destiny. I wasn’t sent here to change the world. Only yours.”

  “Someone sent you?”

  “I don’t know, someone, something. Who knows? Maybe it’s some cosmic committee. I’m here because I made Charlotte a promise.”

  “You know Charlotte as an adult?”

  He hesitated, his eyes carefully reading mine. “This is going to be hard for you.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “Beth, Charlotte is my wife.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  He raked his hand back through his hair. “I made her a promise that I would take care of you.”

  “But you told me your wife died.”

  His expression turned grave. “I’ve told you too much.”

  “What happens to Charlotte?”

  “Don’t ask, Beth.”

  “Tell me.”

  After a moment he threw up his hands. “Nothing happens to Charlotte. Okay? Just forget all this. None of this is true. I’m just a lunatic you’ll never have to see again.”

  “What happens to Charlotte?”

  “Nothing.”

  I grabbed him. “I need to know.”

  “Some things are better not to know. You said so yourself.”

  “I was wrong.”

  He groaned and balanced his head on one hand, covering his eyes. A minute later he looked up. “She gets intestinal lymphoma from her celiac.”

  My eyes welled up. “I don’t believe you. I don’t know how you’re doing this, but I don’t believe you.”

  “Good,” he almost shouted. “Don’t.”

  When I could speak, I said, “You’re my son-in-law?”

  He didn’t answer. “Supposing that what you’ve told me is true, how did you get here?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea. It was 2008, just three days before Christmas. Charlotte and I had been to the oncologist to discuss the results of her last round of chemo and radiation. We were hopeful that she was in remission, but we were dead wrong. The doctor said that the cancer had spread and that now we’d have to resort to unconventional methods.

  “It was the worst day of my life. Charlotte collapsed at the doctor’s office. I think it was the last straw. After all she’d been through, she finally just gave up. That afternoon you called to check on her and she made me lie to you. She didn’t want to ruin your Christmas. But she stayed in bed after that.

  “Then, on Christmas Eve, Charlotte and I were supposed to go to your house for a dinner party, but Charlotte couldn’t get out of bed. She had me call to tell you that we wouldn’t be making it but we’d see you in the morning for breakfast.”

&
nbsp; I began to cry.

  “It was around eight that I climbed in bed next to her and started giving her a massage to help her sleep. I knew she was bad off, I just didn’t want to believe how bad. She started talking about you. She said that you had lost everyone you had ever loved and that you had given your entire life for her. She was upset that she had let you down.”

  I dabbed my eyes with the napkin. “She never let me down.”

  “She said, ‘When I’m gone, promise me that you’ll take care of her.’ I told her, ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ but she shook her head. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Promise me.’

  “I promised her I would, then she fell asleep. I just lay there next to her, terrified of losing her, wondering if I should call someone, praying for her life.” He took a deep breath. “Wondering if it was time for her to die.” He slowly shook his head. “That’s the last thing I remember. That’s the last time I saw her.

  “The next thing I remember was waking up to a scream. I looked up to see this strange woman standing in our room wearing a robe and screaming at the top of her lungs. Then this guy runs in with a baseball bat. He yells, ‘What are you doing in our apartment?’ I said, ‘What are you doing in my apartment?’ I’m looking around for Charlotte but she wasn’t there. In fact, nothing looked right. Charlotte was gone. The room was different. The pictures we had on the walls were gone. The walls themselves were different—they were wood paneling. The guy with the baseball bat asked if I was drunk. I honestly wasn’t sure. Nothing made sense. He said to me, ‘You wandered into the wrong apartment—now get out before we call the police.’

  “I was in no position to argue. I stood up and walked backwards to the door. When I got outside, the weather had changed. There was a huge blizzard. I had no coat, no gloves or hat, just what I had on the night before.

  “I looked at the apartment number on the door, it was our same apartment, only everything else was different. Someone else’s name was on the mailbox. The metal railing along the corridor looked new instead of rusted, and the giant cottonwood tree outside our window was only ten feet tall.

  “I kept thinking this had to be a dream. I had no idea what to do or where to go. I’m just standing there outside that apartment when I heard this voice. It said, Go to the 7-Eleven. The closest 7-Eleven was just down the street, about a mile from your old home.”