Calder Promise

by Janet Dailey

  The woman relaxed against the mattress in relief, but it was short-lived as she roused herself again. “I need to see to them.”

  Sebastian wouldn’t hear of it. “First we need to get you fixed up. There will be time enough later to tend to the children.”

  The woman again settled back, but Laura suspected her easy acquiescence was based more on her lack of strength than an acceptance of Sebastian’s reasoning. Sebastian straightened from the bed, shook the top sheet loose from the tangled covers, and gently drew it across the woman, then stepped over to Laura’s side.

  “You aren’t really going to listen to her, are you?” Laura demanded in a hissing whisper.

  “What do you suggest?” he countered smoothly. “Her injuries are undoubtedly painful, but they are certainly not life-threatening.”

  Laura desperately wanted to shoot down his logic, but the only argument she could summon was a weak one. “We can’t be certain of that.”

  The look he gave her spoke volumes, but he chose not to offer a direct response. “I’m going to find the kitchen and get some ice for that eye of hers. Why don’t you get a wet cloth and clean her up a bit?”

  The instant Sebastian moved toward the doorway, the boy bolted for the living room. Laura couldn’t help thinking that he was too young to have such a strong instinct for flight.

  She followed Sebastian into the hall and turned right, toward the bathroom, while he went in search of the kitchen. She flipped on the bathroom light switch, made a brief survey of the small, cramped space, and located a linen cupboard built into the wall next to the bathtub. Dirty laundry, a mix of clothes and towels, was piled in front of its door. Laura pushed it out of the way with her foot and opened the door. The shelves were bare of all except two towels and three washcloths. She took the top one off the stack and crossed to the sink.

  When she turned on the faucet, Laura noticed the medicine cabinet behind the mirror above the sink. She swung the mirrored door open and scanned the contents. There, on the top shelf, was a bottle of disinfectant. She took it down, found some cotton swabs in a basket sitting on the toilet’s tank lid, and removed two from the pack.

  Armed with a wet washcloth, cotton swabs, and a bottle of disinfectant, Laura returned to the bedroom, placed the bottle and cotton swabs on the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed. The woman lay there, not stirring.

  Rather than startle her, Laura said, “Mrs. Mitchell, I’m going to clean you up a bit.”

  As gently as she could, she went to work on the dried blood crusted on the woman’s chin. At some point in the process, she sensed she wasn’t alone. She glanced at the doorway and saw the little boy peering around the doorjamb. He quickly ducked out of sight.

  Seconds after she returned to her task, Laura sensed his eyes watching her again. This time she didn’t turn but concentrated instead on the blood trail until she had cleaned up all of it except for that under the star-studded bandage. Carefully, Laura peeled it off.

  As she went to lay the used bandage on the nightstand, she glanced at the boy. “Did you put this bandage on your mother’s cut?” The boy didn’t say a word, just stared back at her. “That was a very good thing to do.”

  Once all the dried blood was removed, Laura poured disinfectant into the bottle’s lid, saturated the cotton swab with it, and warned her patient. “This is going to hurt, Mrs. Mitchell.”

  The woman winced noticeably but made no sound. A sharply indrawn breath came from the boy by the doorway. After she had treated the deep split in the woman’s lip, Laura used a clean corner of the wet washcloth to wipe the rest of the woman’s face.

  Almost with the first touch of the cloth on her bruised skin, the woman murmured in a sigh, “That feels so good.”

  Once again, Laura felt the warring between anger and compassion. “Your husband did this to you, didn’t he?” she accused.

  The woman looked at her, insisting, “He didn’t mean to.”

  “I’ll just bet he didn’t,” Laura muttered with heat.

  “You don’t understand,” the woman protested.

  “No, and I never will.” She couldn’t bring herself to pretend otherwise.

  Approaching footsteps sent the boy scurrying to the living room again. Laura stood up when Sebastian entered the room, carrying a sealable plastic bag filled with ice cubes and water. During the brief moment when their eyes met, Laura picked up something, but she couldn’t tell if it was frustration or exasperation.

  “This should help the swelling, Mrs. Mitchell.” He eased the ice bag onto her black eye and used the extra pillow to prop it in place.

  “Thank you,” the woman murmured and searched out Laura with her other eye. “Thank you both.”

  “You lie there and rest a bit,” Sebastian said and took Laura by the arm, turning her toward the door.

  The woman reacted with a flash of panic. “You aren’t going to call anybody, are you? Please, I—”

  “We won’t. I promise,” Sebastian assured her. “Lie still. And keep that ice bag on your eye.”

  The woman subsided against the pillow, but her worried glance followed them when Sebastian escorted Laura from the room. Laura studied the grim set of Sebastian’s mouth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I suspect I know what the boy stole from Mrs. Fedderson,” he stated. “A sack of marshmallows. Would you care to guess why?”

  Laura had a bitter feeling that she knew the answer. “He was hungry.”

  “Precisely,” he said, his speech cold and clipped. “The shelves in that kitchen are regrettably bare. No milk, no bread, no tins—in fact, there is little beyond flour, salt, cooking oil, a few spices, and a package of dried beans.”

  “I think Mitchell’s been out of work for some time.”

  “The cause is irrelevant. Those children need food.” Sebastian made it a flat statement of fact. “You stay here while I go to Fedderson’s and pick up some groceries for them.”

  “Here.” Laura dug into her purse and pulled out the truck keys. “You might as well drive the truck back. It’ll save carrying the groceries all this way.” She hesitated. “How are you fixed for cash?”

  There was a touch of drollness in his crooked smile. “I’m not in the poorhouse yet.”

  The left-handed reference to his current financial straits prompted Laura to extract a pair of twenty-dollar bills from her wallet. “I’ll contribute to the cause just the same.” She pushed the money and the keys into his hand as the little girl waddled past them into the bedroom, leaving the stench of a soiled diaper in her wake. Laura wrinkled her nose at the odor. “Better pick up some disposable diapers, too. There’s one on top of the dresser but it’s probably the last.”

  Sebastian hesitated. “On second thought, perhaps you should go instead. If the husband should come home and find you—”

  “He wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me.” Laura pushed her chin forward at a combative angle, her dark eyes snapping with temper.

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “I am quite certain you are more than a match for him, but I prefer not to take the risk.”

  “He would be twice as angry to find a strange man in his house,” Laura warned.

  His mouth curved in one of those lazy, sexy smiles. “I do believe you are concerned for my well-being. How encouraging.”

  “I was merely thinking of how difficult it would be for you to attract the interest of some wealthy woman if that handsome face of yours is bashed in.” Laura countered.

  “You find it handsome, do you?” Teasing laughter danced in his eyes, a match to the amused smugness of his smile.

  “Too bad it’s all you have to offer,” Laura retorted, enjoying the playful banter that had them matching wits.

  “It isn’t all,” he stressed suggestively and tucked both the money and the keys into her purse before adding more bills from his pocket. “Go to the store. There will be a better time to jog your memory.”

  Desire tingled through Laura at
the look of promise he gave her. Rather than let him see it, she challenged instead, “Why are you so insistent on staying here? Are you hoping that I’ll regard you as brave and heroic?”

  “Perhaps it’s simply that I suspect you don’t have a clue how to change a soiled nappy.”

  It took her a second to remember that “nappy” was the English term for diaper. “And you do?” She eyed him skeptically.

  “I had some experience at it when my nephews were small,” he replied.

  “Really? I would have thought that was the nanny’s job.”

  “Even a nanny is entitled to a free day. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “How incredibly domestic you sound,” Laura mocked.

  Sebastian sighed in disappointment. “You were supposed to remark on what an excellent husband I would make.”

  “You would—for somebody else,” she added naughtily. “But you have convinced me. You can stay here and deal with the soiled nappy; I’ll go to the store.” Smiling, she touched his cheek in farewell and headed for the door.

  It was a good forty-five minutes later when Laura parked the pickup in front of the house, collected two sacks of groceries from the back of the truck, and started up the front walk. Sebastian was at the front door, holding it open for her to pass through.

  “There’s more in the back of the truck,” she told him as she went by.

  One eyebrow arched at the sight of the half dozen sacks that remained. “Did you buy out the store?”

  “You were the one who said the shelves were bare,” Laura replied over her shoulder. “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “Straight back.”

  The little girl came running to meet her, swinging the bedraggled doll by its arm. Gone were the pajamas, the dirty face, and the diaper smell. Even her hair had been combed and pulled back from her face by a pair of pink barrettes that matched the pink dress she wore.

  The change in the little girl’s appearance wasn’t the only thing Laura noticed as she passed through the front of the house. The living room had been tidied, the clutter picked up, books and magazines stacked neatly on the coffee table, and the toys stowed in a basket.

  When she reached the kitchen, Laura suspected that Sebastian’s hand had been at work there as well. Both the countertops and table were cleared. She shoved one grocery sack onto the counter and set the other one beside it, then left to bring more, passing Sebastian along the way.

  It required two trips by each of them to unload the truck. When Laura returned from the second trip, she caught the boy perched on the counter, trying to rip open a bag of potato chips. He jumped to the floor the instant he saw her. Before he could run off with his prize, Laura grabbed the back of his shirt collar.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Without losing her grip on the boy, she snatched the bag from his hand, hauled one of the kitchen chairs up to the sink counter, and lifted him onto it. “I see Sebastian wasn’t able to corral you. Before you eat anything, you’re going to wash those dirty hands.” She handed him a bar of soap and turned on the faucet. When he threw her a measuring look, she responded with a no-nonsense one of her own. “I mean it.”

  Deciding that she did, he pushed his hands under the water. While he went about washing his hands, Laura opened the sack of chips, shook a few into a bowl, and set it on the kitchen table.

  “That’s all you can have for now,” she told him. “And be sure to share with your sister.”

  Sebastian joined her in the kitchen with the last two sacks, his glance sliding to the boy. “I see he came out of hiding.”

  “I caught him trying to steal the bag of potato chips.” She gave the boy a towel to use to dry his hands and turned off the faucet. After two quick wipes on the towel, the boy jumped off the chair and ran to the table.

  “According to the little girl, his name is Mike,” Sebastian murmured as he began removing the food items from the sacks. “Her name is Amy.”

  “She looks like an Amy—now.” Laura used the pause to lend emphasis to the latter word, then sent him a teasing glance. “Where did you learn to fix a little girl’s hair? Certainly not from looking after your nephews.”

  “Would you believe that was my first attempt?”

  “Really?” she said, admitting to a little surprise.

  “It was. Although”—Sebastian paused to briefly comb his fingers into her hair—“I have played with a woman’s hair on occasion. It can be quite stimulating. Remind me to demonstrate.”

  She laughed in her throat even as her pulse quickened. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Like England’s illustrious statesman, Winston Churchill, I can be very tenacious.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Laura warned lightly and flashed her engagement ring as a reminder.

  “Perhaps,” Sebastian replied, clearly unconvinced.

  Laura carried a gallon jug of milk to the refrigerator. “If you come across a package of hot dogs, leave them out. Every child I’ve ever known loves them. I thought we could fix some for lunch and heat one of those cans of soup for Mrs. Mitchell.”

  As soon as the groceries were put away, the two of them set about fixing lunch for the children. Carrot sticks, fresh grapes, and milk rounded out the meal of hot dogs and chips. Sebastian buckled the little girl in her high chair while Laura poured some vegetable beef soup into an oversized mug she found in the cupboard.

  “If you can handle things here, I’ll take this in to Mrs. Mitchell,” she told Sebastian.

  “I believe I can manage,” he replied and deftly righted the little girl’s drink cup before it toppled off the tray and onto the floor.

  Confident that he could, Laura exited the kitchen, soup mug in hand. Briefly she tried to visualize Boone in Sebastian’s place, but it was simply too ludicrous. If Boone had been with her, he would have handled the situation differently: the authorities would have been called, the injured woman whisked off to the nearest medical facility, and the children turned over to a social service agency. He wouldn’t have seen the need to involve himself personally. Laura wasn’t entirely sure why she had.

  The woman was awake when Laura entered the bedroom. “I brought you some soup,” she told her.

  “Thanks.” The woman pushed herself up into a sitting position, but it was obvious that she was in pain.

  Laura set the mug on the table and helped the woman adjust the propping pillows behind her. “Sebastian mentioned he gave you a couple aspirins. Did they help any?”

  “A little. I’ll be fine, though,” she added hastily.

  The anger came back for the man who inflicted this abuse on her. “I hope you feel better than you look.” Laura didn’t try to soften the sharp edge of her voice as she placed the mug in the woman’s hands. “Can you manage to feed yourself?”

  The woman nodded in answer and dipped the spoon into the soup. Laura watched her take the first few spoonfuls. Then the effort seemed to exhaust the woman. She rescued the soup mug from the woman’s loosening grip and set it on the table.

  “Tell me when you want some more, Mrs . . .” she began, then stopped. “It doesn’t feel right to keep calling you Mrs. Mitchell. What’s your first name?”

  “Gail.”

  “Mine’s Laura.” Rather than tower over her, Laura settled onto the edge of the bed.

  The woman named Gail made a weak attempt at a smile, hesitated, then said, “He didn’t mean to hurt me, you know. Gary is really a good, kind man.”

  “Maybe I should bring you a mirror so you can see what he did to you,” Laura suggested dryly. “There isn’t much good or kind about it.”

  “He didn’t mean to,” she insisted again. “He’d been drinking. It never would have happened if he hadn’t.”

  “How often is he sober?” Laura challenged, irritated at the way the woman kept defending this animal who masqueraded as a man.

  Avoiding a direct answer, Gail plucked at the top sheet. “None of this started until the mine closed. Before that he was a wonderful, lovi
ng husband and father.” She let her head rest against the headboard and gazed at the ceiling as if recalling better times. “We were going to leave when everybody else did, but neither one of us wanted to go back to the city, and the county had an opening in the road maintenance department. Gary was sure he was going to get the job. Every month they kept saying next month. In the end they didn’t hire anyone. Budget problems, they said. By then we had used up what little savings we had. Then his unemployment insurance ran out.”

  It wasn’t hard to guess what happened next. “And he started drinking.”

  Instantly defensive, she met Laura’s skeptical gaze. “Gary is a proud man. You have no idea how much it hurts not to be able to take care of his family.”

  Laura wouldn’t relent in her opinion of the man. “Is that the reason your cupboards were bare? He was too proud to apply for food stamps?”

  The woman turned her face away. “We get food stamps.”

  The statement confused Laura, but only for a second. “Let me guess: he sold them for cash so he could buy booze?”

  “No,” she denied, stung by the remark. “He needed gas money for the truck so he could go look for a job.”

  “Where? At Harry’s?” It was tough talk, but Laura was determined to open the woman’s eyes.

  Tears welled. “He goes there sometimes. You can’t expect him to sit at home all the time.”

  “And when he goes there, he drinks, then comes home and beats on you.”

  “It isn’t like that. Not always.” Her voice had a sob in it. “He loves me.”

  “His kind of love you don’t need,” Laura stated, then tried another tactic. “Gail, this isn’t good—not for you or your children.”

  “I know, but”—this time she did sniffle back a sob—“if he could just find a job, everything would be all right again. I know it would.”

  Personally, Laura had her doubts that a job would bring about an abrupt change in his behavior. Maybe with counseling it might in time, but she couldn’t see Mitchell ever agreeing to that, certainly not voluntarily. It was something a judge would have to order him to do; even then Laura suspected he wouldn’t be all that cooperative.