The Soldier's Promise

by Patricia Potter

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

  “And what are you doing in town today?” she asked.

  He gave her an incredulous look. “You don’t already know? I thought by now the grapevine would have it in big letters.”

  “Nope. Haven’t heard anything about you in the past few hours.”

  “I’m buying supplies for a porch.”

  “You’ve decided to stay, then?”

  “I’m rehabbing the cabin. Beyond that...”

  “It’s getting to you, though,” she said slyly. “If you don’t inoculate yourself, you’ll catch the bug.”

  “What bug?”

  “The Covenant Falls bug. It’s deadly. Makes you want to stay.”

  “What about you? Have you caught it?”

  “I’m in the petri-dish stage.”

  He laughed. “And how long did it take you to get to that stage?”

  “Two and a half years. It was culture shock at first, but then I would take a walk or ride my horse in the morning. I can hear the birds sing, watch eagles glide overhead and smell the pines without car fumes, and everything seems right with the world.”

  He digested that statement.

  “You doubt me?” she challenged.

  He changed the subject. “Are you going to be at the roofing event on Saturday?” he asked.

  “No. I’m working. I heard you’re going to be there.”

  “Apparently so has everyone else.”

  “That’s one of the disadvantages of a small town,” she admitted cheerfully.

  “Mr. Wilson said a woman was going to work on the roof. I thought it might be you.”

  “Nope. It’s Eve. Her father started the roofing parties twenty years ago. She started working on them when she was fourteen and hasn’t missed one in all those years except when she was in college.”

  He recalled their conversation at the waterfall. She’d told him about her father, but she’d omitted the part about repairing houses. Actually, she’d said very little about herself. She mostly talked about Covenant Falls.

  She had walls, too.

  He asked the question that brought him here. “Then could you keep Amos Saturday? If you’re going to be here?”

  “Sure. Sherry and I will be glad for the company.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He was not going to leave Amos anyplace where Sam Clark could get to him. Better safe than sorry.

  He looked at his watch, then at the city building across the street, wondering whether he should call Eve. He wanted to see her. Wanted to know whether the police chief had any thoughts about what happened today and how he planned to proceed.

  At least that was his excuse.

  “She’s probably getting ready for the graduation ceremony,” Stephanie said as if she’d read his mind. “She’s giving out the academic awards.”

  He hated being that obvious. “Does she ever stay still?”

  “Not since I came here.”

  “I haven’t had lunch yet,” he said, “and it’s late. What about you?”

  “Already had it,” she said regretfully, “and I have an appointment due here any minute. But I’m sure Maude would love your business, and you can take Amos.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” he said. There were some things about the town he liked, including Maude’s steaks, her good nature. He would have liked company, but...

  “It shouldn’t be busy,” Stephanie added as she walked him to the door. “It’s graduation night. The girls are getting their hair done, and the boys are already partying.”

  She was right. Maude’s was empty except for Maude herself, who was sitting behind the cash register.

  “Okay to bring Amos in?” he asked.

  “Sure. Service dogs are allowed. I consider Amos a service dog. A retired service dog. What can I get you?”

  So she knew all about Amos, too.

  “I’ll have one of your steaks,” he said.

  “Medium rare, right?”

  “Do you remember everyone’s preferences?” he asked.

  “Just my favorite ones,” she said. “You just make yourself comfortable and I’ll have a salad for you in a jiff.”

  He looked around the café, or diner, or whatever it was. There was a Lions Club sign, and a bulletin board with announcements of upcoming events.

  “Heard you were going to help at the roofing,” Maude said, coming back from the kitchen and placing the large salad in front of him.

  “So everyone says,’” he said testily.

  Maude smiled. “Makes you uncomfortable, does it? You’re somewhat of a celebrity around here,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes.

  “Like every newcomer?” he asked.

  “Just those who save the life of the son of our leading citizen.”

  “I thought Al Monroe was the leading citizen.”

  “Maybe in his own mind,” Maude said. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s just that you made a grand entrance by helping Eve and Nick when he was bitten by that snake. And people who have met you like you. Me included.”

  He found himself turning red. He remembered those first few days when he’d offended everyone. “Not everyone,” he corrected.

  “Almost everyone,” she amended.

  He shrugged. “I was hurting like hell.” Now, why did he say that?

  “You still are,” she said. “I can tell by your walk.”

  For some reason her comment didn’t bother him. Maybe it was the way she’d said it, as if it was nothing at all.

  “I just hope you and this fine dog are here to stay,” she said, then retreated back into the kitchen.

  Amos lay down next to him and put his chin on his shoe.

  He was still mulling over the conversation when the door opened and Eve came to his the table. “Hi,” she said softly, even a little shyly. She stooped down and said hello to Amos, whose tail thumped up and down.

  “I heard you were busy preparing for graduation tonight,” he said. Damn, but the hotline in Covenant Falls had infected him, as well.

  “Stephanie told me you were coming here. I hoped you wouldn’t mind company.” Her lips played with each other nervously.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t mind it at all.” He hesitated. “And how is Officer Clark?”

  “Confused, according to Tom. Confused and angry and maybe a little scared. He’s stuck in the office now, doing paperwork about the results of the search, probably until midnight if Tom can arrange it.”

  “And if he sees us together?”

  She shrugged. “That might give him a little more to think about. I’m sure he’ll hear about it.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “You mean our trip to the falls? Haven’t had any calls today. It means we went unnoticed, which is, in itself, a miracle.”

  “I imagine the police chief filled you in about this morning.” Although no one was around, he lowered his voice.

  She simply nodded.

  Maude appeared with his delicious-smelling steak and a second plate with pieces of hamburger on it. “For Amos,” she said, “if that’s okay?”

  Amos was already sniffing the air. Josh nodded. He was trying to get Amos on a mostly dry dog-food diet, except for the occasional egg, but he saw no harm in an occasional treat.

  “Go ahead and eat,” Eve said and ordered coffee. “I had lunch,” she explained.

  The coffee came immediately and Eve looked amused as he dug into the steak and Amos into the hamburger. “Amos seems to be adjusting,” she said.

  Josh finished the bite and nodded. “He’s still not the dog I knew before, but his interest in food is coming back. Not in toys yet.”

  “Nick would like to bring Bra
veheart over,” she said tentatively.

  He looked back quizzically.

  “Braveheart was pretty badly treated,” she said. “We think he was used for dog fighting. I found him nearly half-dead, probably because he refused to fight. He’s very timid, but also very sweet.” She paused. “Nick thinks Amos can help him. I don’t know why.”

  “Nick named him?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “It sounds like him.” He took another bite of steak. His hunger had faded with Eve across from him, but eating was a defense against her appeal. Her dark hair was pulled back by gold clips, and those eyes of hers... God, he could drown in them.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to work on the roof.” Josh watched her face and saw that familiar flash of mischief.

  “Stephanie told you? I thought to surprise you.”

  “I gather there are few surprises in this town,” he said.

  “I was a daddy’s girl,” she said. “I wanted to do everything he did. So he taught me to fish, taught me how to fix a car and how to bait my own hook when we went fishing. It drove my mother crazy.”

  He shook his head. “You keep surprising me.”

  “You do the same to me. I never thought you would have volunteered to build a roof for someone else. I thought you didn’t want to get involved.

  “I didn’t,” he said.

  “What about your leg? Won’t it be dangerous up there?”

  “I’m learning to cope.”

  “Back to Nick,” she said. “Can I bring him and Braveheart Friday? He has a scouting meeting tomorrow.”

  “Sure. He’s always welcome, but there will be...”

  “Talk. I don’t care. It’s no one’s business.”

  “What about Nick’s grandparents?”

  “They like you.”

  They liked him when he helped Nick, but he wondered whether they would be happy about a stronger relationship. Most of his life had involved violence of one kind or another. His background was no indication of lasting commitments. But then she wasn’t asking about that. Just a mere visit. He could handle that.

  She looked at her watch. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with the ceremony tonight.”

  “Why don’t you come?”

  That was a mile too far. He hadn’t even gone to his own graduation.

  “Still have a lot to do on the cabin,” he said, “and I don’t want to leave Amos alone.”

  She nodded. “Friday, then. Maybe about four?”

  He nodded, and she quickly left, stopping only before opening the door to look back.

  And he watched until she crossed the street and disappeared back into the city building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JOSH RETURNED TO the cabin after his early supper. For the first time, he thought of it as coming home.

  It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was unaccountably restless.

  Damn, admit it. He was lonely. It seemed every day he became more connected to Eve and her son. Settle down? Josh Manning?

  Just adopting Amos had seemed an infringement on his life. Now it didn’t seem so much of one. In just a matter of weeks, Amos had wriggled himself into Josh’s heart even if he hadn’t wriggled himself into Amos’s heart. Yet.

  He opened his laptop and studied the plans for the porch again. The directions said the job would take three weeks, but that was assuming one person was involved. He had Nate. He was reminded of what he’d said recently about the satisfaction of building instead of destroying. He had just blurted that out, but now he knew there was a hell of a lot of truth in it.

  When he finished, he filled Amos’s water and food dishes, then spent thirty minutes doing the leg exercises he’d neglected. Then he turned on the stereo and grabbed the biography he’d been reading. Fifteen minutes later, he realized he was reading the same page over and over again. He stood and walked through the cabin, mentally listing everything he still had to do on the interior and sketching out a timetable. While waiting for the porch materials, he would scrape the old wallpaper from the bathroom and apply the new rolls he’d bought in Pueblo. It had a Native American pattern in browns and tans and orange that he’d really liked. Maybe later he would match it with ceramic tiles.

  The interior was slowly taking on a personality—the one of the home he dreamed about as a kid. A big rocking-chair porch had been part of that dream.

  He was turning it into the picture he’d carried around in his wallet for years. When he and his mother moved from one rented room to another and when she’d died of an overdose and he had no home at all, he would pretend he lived in that house.

  One time when he and Dave had gotten particularly drunk after a mission that had resulted in multiple deaths, including two members of their team and an Iraqi child who had blown himself up killing them, he’d told Dave about some of his childhood and that picture.

  Dave hadn’t said anything about the cabin then, but he must have remembered his words.

  He tried to shut down those memories. Amos, who had climbed up on the sofa, moved closer to him. A warm, wet tongue reached out and licked his hand. Josh leaned down and buried his face in Amos’s fur.

  He didn’t know what to do with the emotions rocking him. He’d denied them for a long time, putting them in a box, according to the hospital shrink who warned him that someday that box would explode. It hadn’t yet, but maybe it was leaking.

  Not Now. Not today. He leaned down and ruffled Amos’s fur. “Thank you,” he whispered and stood. He went into the bathroom, washed his face with cold water and stared at his reflection. He wasn’t sure he knew the man who stared back at him.

  The cabin was getting to him. Or was it Eve?

  He was playing with fire. So was she, but she didn’t know it.

  He took a cold shower, but it didn’t cure the restlessness. The sun was just beginning to drop. He thought about the Harley. He had put off tuning it. It hadn’t been ridden in more than a year, but the repair had been relegated to last place once he’d started restoring the cabin. Once it had represented a kind of freedom. Now that freedom didn’t seem so important.

  “Come on, Amos. Let’s go for a walk.” Amos followed him outside. As they reached Lake Road, he noticed cars turning out of the driveways of his neighbors, including Mrs. Byars’s Buick. She waved at him. He waved back.

  They were all probably on their way to the graduation. That would be a big event in a town this size.

  He turned down the road toward the mountain, passed the turnabout and started climbing the path. He reached the lookout and sat on the rock to watch the sunset. He noticed a couple of beer cans that hadn’t been there on earlier walks. Kids celebrating the end of school, no doubt. Next time he would bring a bag and pick them up.

  The sky was made up of vivid bands of scarlet and orange fighting for supremacy, then diffusing as they turned into a golden glow that reflected in the deep blue of the lake. Lights started to go on in the town below.

  He should leave while he could still see the path. The last thing he needed was to fall. And yet he was paralyzed by the sheer beauty of the sunset. He wondered why he had never really looked at one before he came here.

  He started down the path. He slowly made the fifteen-minute trip down the path and walked to the dock. He didn’t dare go to the end. The supports were rotten. Another item for his to-do list.

  At this rate, he might never leave Covenant Falls.

  * * *

  THE HIGH SCHOOL auditorium was filled to overflowing.

  Eve glanced at her notes as the principal congratulated the students. The valedictorian and salutatorian delivered their speeches. It just so happened—not strangely—that two of her three award winners took
those honors. This was the best part of Covenant Falls, the hopeful part.

  She listened intently, even as she scoured the crowd for familiar faces.

  Faces? One face. She’d hoped against hope that Josh would materialize. But he didn’t. Instead, there were the faces of people she’d known her entire life. Friends.

  Then it was time for her to present the awards before the formal presentation of diplomas.

  She placed the notes in her jacket pocket. She shouldn’t need them. She’d known these kids since they were born. She looked for Al, but he wasn’t there, either. Nor was his nephew, who was on duty answering calls tonight since the regular dispatcher’s son was graduating. She made her remarks short. “We at city hall are so proud of everyone on the stage tonight. You’ve worked hard to get here, and every one of you is a star tonight. Build on those diplomas and never stop learning. Tonight, I have the very great pleasure to recognize three particularly outstanding seniors for their achievements in English, math and science.”

  She then presented the awards in no particular order. Each received a two-hundred-dollar check from the civic clubs in town, as well as a trophy and certificate that gave them bragging rights on college and job applications.

  Then her part was over, and the parade of graduates accepted their diplomas, some with great solemnity and others making faces and clowning. When the last name was called, the principal said, “I give you the graduating class,” and the graduates threw their hats in the air to the sound of thunderous applause.

  Eve felt a tremendous sense of pride in her town, in these students and the families that had such high hopes for them.

  It took a while, but eventually everyone found their way into the lunchroom for the reception, but as she expected, they were all gone within an hour, most within thirty minutes.

  Tom had assigned their youngest officers to be at the two sites most commonly used for partying—Covenant Falls and the picnic area bordering the lake. Tom and Eve both wanted minimal visibility, but the officers had their orders. No drinking.

  When she had said her goodbyes, Eve made her way to Abby and Jim’s house, where Nick was staying. When she entered the living room, Nick was curled up asleep with his head on his grandfather’s lap, a big bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of them.