One Last Promise (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 2)

by Sydney Bristow

  Her father’s suggestion revealed that he hadn’t forgotten the uneasiness around the table a short time ago. Kelsey dealt with enough apprehension during the week, and she didn’t want to spend her day off locked in a battle of wits that brought forth secrets from unwilling participants. But having served on the police force for thirty-five years, her father had great instincts when it came to those who attempted to hide the truth, and he had difficulty letting something go when he wanted answers.

  Paul, who had already risen to his feet, turned his gaze upon her father, only to glance back to the kitchen as though a great opportunity had passed him by. A grim smile appeared on his face as he sank back into the chair like a deflating balloon.

  Her father’s smile disappeared. “What are you doing?”

  Paul did a double-take. “What…do you mean?”

  He pointed to the plates on the table. “You offered to help clean the table. You can’t take it back now. Snap to it, young man!”

  Paul hopped up from his chair so quickly that it almost tipped over behind him. But he reached out, grabbed it, and slid it under the table.

  Her father glared at Paul. “This set of chairs is a family heirloom. They’re irreplaceable. You break one; you might as well break all of them. Understood?”

  Paul swallowed. He nodded. “Um, yes, sir.” He stood behind the chair, and it looked like he used it as a barrier between them.

  “You’ll refer to me as Mr. Lawford. Understood?”

  His face glowed. He nodded with such vigor that he looked like a bobble head.

  “Paul?”

  “Yes, sir? I mean, Mr. Lawford. I mean, yes, Mr. Lawford.”

  “Now would be a good time to clear the dishes from the table.”

  “Right away, Mr. Lawford.” With a quivering hand, he grabbed his plate, tossed his napkin and utensils on top of it, and then moved on to Kelsey’s plate, doing likewise without even meeting her gaze. Sweat glistened on his upper lip.

  Kelsey never enjoyed watching her father challenge the men she dated, but while she hated it during her teens, when every single boy trembled upon meeting an imposing cop with such a demanding voice, by her twenties she realized that her father had pure intentions. He intimidated them not because he had a twisted ego that needed to show superiority and stroke his ego but because he simply wanted to determine whether or not they deserved his daughter. Now, Kelsey no longer dreaded these instances, but looked upon them as opportunities to discover whether or not the men she dated would stand up for themselves and had enough courage to challenge her father.

  Paul had failed, but so had every other man before him, so she couldn’t hold that against him. She still hoped to find a man with enough bravery to pass her father’s test. And again, she couldn’t blame them from quaking under his demanding glare. After all, she had spent her life looking into those eyes which, when disappointed, pierced her heart with sorrow. Likewise, when he’d been upset with her for executing poor judgment, she felt incompetent. On the other hand, when he smiled at her with pride, Kelsey had never known a better feeling in her life.

  And because he didn’t often express his feelings and usually kept everyone at a distance, unless tempered by consuming seven or eight beers, growing up she’d often bothered him just to get a response out of him…

  “Why did you want to become a police officer?”

  “To help people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to protect people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes me feel like I’m contributing to make this a better world.”

  “Why?”

  “It makes me feel good.”

  “We don’t make you feel good? You love your job more than your family?”

  He sighed, aggravated. “Of course, I love you all more.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your brother and sister are part of me.”

  “What about mom? She’s not part of you. Are you saying you don’t love her?”

  “I love your mother. Very much.”

  “Why?”

  His eyes grew intense. “Because she’s the best woman I’ll ever find.”

  “But why?”

  Around and around they went until her father almost shouted at her, which only made her giggle inside. She resorted to such annoying childishness because, while at home, her father wanted to relax and forget the toll the workday had taken on him. This often meant sitting in front of the television without speaking to anyone. And she wanted to do something, anything to get him to notice her.

  But Kelsey always got the impression that, with the exception of a detached personality, social awkwardness, and a tendency to judge others, she had a great deal in common with her father: they both demanded excellence from themselves (although not from others), they dedicated themselves to their goals and refused to give up until they achieved them, and they believed that family, above everything else, was the most important part of life. That said, they were also impatient, stubborn, and set in their ways.

  Nevertheless, throughout the years, Kelsey had tested his love with the usual pranks, sarcasm, and annoyance, but none more so than during her senior year of high school. One Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m., after drinking too much with friends who insisted they drive her home, Kelsey stole her friend’s keys and suggested they call her father rather than try to drive home. She lost the argument, and her friends somehow retrieved their keys and took off, stranding her in an unfamiliar, unsafe neighborhood.

  Kelsey walked to a gas station and called her father, who had just come home from a late shift and, discovering that his daughter hadn’t returned home yet, had stayed up and waited for her to do so. When he answered the phone, his furious tone made it difficult to answer his questions while standing under a bright lamp post at a pay phone and looking over her shoulder for anyone who might want to hurt her. She couldn’t help but feel like a complete failure in his eyes.

  After he arrived at the gas station, cutting the thirty-minute trip in half by speeding down every street to get there, she’d realized that although his anger had not been fabricated, he had kept her on the phone to ensure that she was still safe. He had also used the conversation to quell her fear of being in a seedy town.

  Her father had found it difficult to get back to sleep that night and ended up beginning an early shift the next day without a wink of sleep. If he had a desk job, he would have had difficulty concentrating, but since he worked the streets, near the end of his shift exhaustion set in when he most needed to remain cognizant of his surroundings. He had responded to a burglary in progress at a convenience store, only to confront the thief upon exiting the store.

  The burglar had already raised his gun, and just after her father threw his forearm into the gunman’s hand, sending the incoming bullet into the ceiling, he’d managed to take down the assailant. If he hadn’t been so tired, though, he would have also had quick enough reflexes to take on the thief’s partner in crime, who ran out the door and escaped.

  A day later, that same accomplice had gotten caught—but not before beating his eighty-year-old grandmother senseless when she refused to hand over the money in her purse. The act resulted in irreparable brain damage.

  Yet Kelsey remained convinced that if she hadn’t collapsed from fatigue and stress overload after her opening week at The Witching Hour a little over a month ago, her father wouldn’t have finally shared that piece of history with her. At the time, he hadn’t explained why he’d imparted that bit of regret. But Kelsey knew the underlying wisdom behind her father’s story: the Lawfords were a resilient bunch, capable of enduring every bit of doubt and struggle that life threw at them. She had stared at him with tear-filled eyes, unable to speak, unable to express her regret, unable to tell her father how much she appreciated not knowing back then how her immaturity and carelessness had played a part in an elderly lady’s beating.

  And while that long ago night of drinking (and the disappointme
nt from her father) tamed the wild child inside her, Kelsey had stumbled quite a few times since then and often needed her dad to bail her out: a speeding ticket (or three) here, a maxed out credit card there, or a tendency to forget her mother’s birthday, which he covered by purchasing last-minute gifts in her place, never telling his wife how her daughter knew just what she wanted. Overall, Kelsey knew that no matter how much time passed, her father would sustain the greatest hardship and conquer the greatest odds if doing so meant keeping his daughter safe or ensuring her happiness.

  Growing up, Kelsey had always found her father strong, supportive, and protective. He’d treated her to the movies, took her out for ice cream, and attended her ballet recitals and soccer games. By not telling her the truth about the repercussions of her night of drinking, he’d protected her from tremendous guilt. But after hearing his confession, she added a new term that she never really attributed to her father: kind. Ever since that night, she regarded him as…a confidant, a friend. And that’s why, in this moment of giving Paul a hard time, she might question his approach but would never question his love for her.

  But that didn’t mean she would let her dad mistreat any man in her life. Sometimes he got a little too aggressive while in protective-parent mode, and she had to gently prod him back into line. And she got the impression that she might need to save Paul tonight. Kelsey didn’t know if that stemmed from knowing that her mother gave her father free reign to drink as much as he pleased on major holidays, or because the Bears were playing in a crucial game of the season, or because his entire family gathered around him, or perhaps because all three coalesced into a maelstrom. She only knew that he was in top form tonight.

  Kelsey looked for Paul, but he’d fled into the kitchen with a stack of plates that rattled against one another. An outside observer would think they did so because Paul held them at an awkward angle, but each person at the table knew his trembling fingers caused the plates to clatter. She couldn’t blame him, though. He’d responded no differently than every other man who had attempted to get close to her. In many ways, she sympathized with these men: how many of them would risk standing up to an ex-cop with a stern voice and a brusque manner?

  And because so few guys she’d dated could withstand her father’s nature for more than a few questions without sinking into their chairs and answering with one-word answers (although a bad boy had once lasted through an “interrogation” for an entire 30 minutes, which only made her more attracted to him, but after that night he pretended that she didn’t exist), she always ended up pitying them.

  Damon met her father’s eyes. “That was tough to watch. You do that with every guy your daughter dates? Try to find out if he’s strong enough for her?”

  Her father just stared at Damon with an unreadable expression.

  Unwilling to let the ex-cop get the best of him, Damon let out an easy smile. “Nice strategy. I’d do the same if I were you.”

  “How come you never did that with Marisa?” Alex asked his father.

  “She knew me too well by then. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t want her to start crying. Besides, now that she’s with you, she probably does her fair share of crying as it is.”

  Marisa laughed at that while Alex just shook his head in good-natured humor.

  Her father unleashed a jolly smile and draped a hand onto Alex’s shoulder. “You walked right into that one. I couldn’t resist.”

  “That’ll do it here from Detroit,” the broadcaster said on television. “Final score: Bears 20-Lions10.”

  Her father clapped his hands long and loud. Afterwards, he snapped his fingers. “Now is the perfect time for a different game.” He looked at Damon. “Taboo is the perfect way to get to know the man who wants to stand beside my little girl.” He grinned then cast his attention back to his daughter.

  “I’m not a little girl anymore, Dad.” Nonetheless, a part of her liked his term of affection.

  “You’ll always be my little girl.”

  “Even when I’m old and shriveled like you?”

  “Especially when I’m old. Who else is going to push my wheelchair closer to the TV?”

  The entire table erupted in laughter.

  Kelsey’s mind reverted back to her father’s interest in playing Taboo. She could only imagine what secrets her father wanted to elicit from…wait a minute. Why did he keep looking at Damon? He didn’t think…how could he have known that she found Damon so appealing? Then again, calling off Damon’s date and excusing herself to attend to him just might have just given away that very obvious fact. There was no foreseeable happy ending to this situation—not with Paul being so endearing and, let’s face it, a little too…fragile.

  “Ooh, I love Taboo,” said Cassandra. She grabbed Damon’s forearm. “Have you ever played?”

  His sly grin which matched her father’s caught Kelsey’s eye. She didn’t expect that response. In fact, watching him clap his hands and swish them together in delight, she realized that he, like her dad, probably regarded this game as a quick and telling method of learning more about Paul. And not because it would reveal his level of intellect, but because when playing Taboo, players needed to rely on quick thinking and often didn’t have time to censor the words that exited their mouths as they scrambled to win points.

  Alex and Marisa both said, “Sounds like fun,” at the same time then smiled at each other as though voicing the same thought simultaneously indicated yet one more reason why they belonged together.

  More than anything, Kelsey couldn’t hide her happiness for the couple. They were alike in many ways, but striking differences such as Marisa’s spontaneity and outgoing personality brought Alex out of his intrepidity and shyness.

  Kelsey hoped the man she settled down with (but not settled upon) had that same effect on her. She needed someone who would balance out her rough edges: her affinity for speaking her mind without vetting her thoughts and her annoying habit of living life the way she approached her career, analyzing every decision from a profit or risk ratio and considering how her employees and customers would respond, which ended up making her second-guess even simple decisions. She didn’t suffer from anxiety attacks, though, and she actually thrived on what others considered stressful events, with the exception of dealing with the grand opening of a new restaurant.

  As much as she wanted to visit friends and family, in one way or another, she often declined invitations. So when Thanksgiving arrived, she let out a sigh of relief, figuring that she couldn’t condemn herself if she’d closed both restaurants for the day. Most restaurants closed that day.

  Her mother entered the room holding a rectangular box – the game of Taboo – and a silver plastic plate above it held over two dozen chocolate chip cookies.

  Kelsey’s mouth watered. “Mom,” she said in a long-winded, frustrated sigh. “Half that amount would have gotten the job done.”

  Her mother shrugged. “Why make just a few? I want you to enjoy them.”

  “That’s the problem. I enjoy them too much.” Her metabolism had begun slowing down a couple months ago, and she could no longer eat snacks with the same reckless abandon as in the past. “Okay, I’ll just have one.” She put in a few grueling workouts each week, so just one couldn’t hurt.

  Marisa, bolstered by impressive willpower, shook her head at Kelsey, as though pitying her. “I’ll have half of one.”

  Kelsey liked the challenge. “Actually, I’ll just have a bite.”

  Marisa sniffed at that. “One morsel.”

  “A good whiff.”

  Her mother’s cheeks trembled with irritation. She dropped the game in her husband’s lap. “The holidays are for enjoying each other’s company…and each other’s cooking.” She lowered the plate onto the table, grabbed a cookie in each hand, and held them out to Kelsey and Marisa. “You’ll eat these cookies, and you’ll like them!”

  “You poisoned them, didn’t you?” Kelsey loved it when her mother got upset. She had such an even temper on every day o
f the year…except holidays, when she spent the day in the kitchen trying to ensure that her family enjoyed their time together. Likewise, that last statement, served as an outburst. But for most families, the comment probably seemed tame; her mother didn’t curse, didn’t drink, and always seemed to do the right thing every day of her entire life. She seemed too perfect, which was something Kelsey needed to shake up just so she could detect an imperfection: a temper.

  During the first decade of her life, Kelsey had very close ties with her mother: they shopped together, went to the hair stylist together, worked together on her reading comprehension skills (up through her teens, Kelsey had difficulty understanding anything she read, which led to a paralyzing self-consciousness about sitting in a classroom with students who might laugh at her diminished intellect. To deflect others from picking up on her deficiencies, Kelsey developed a quick wit to encourage others to laugh or get off topic.).

  When it came to subjects that had no bearing on her life – science and history – she felt like everyone else spoke a strange language from an episode of Star Trek. For that reason, she had no interest in pursuing a college education. Nonetheless, when she realized how important numbers became to business matters, she dedicated hundreds of hours to focusing all of her time and energy into grasping the intricacies that became imperative to know when it came to running a business.

  Nevertheless, from her earliest recollection, when it came to her studies, her mother remained by her side, never wavering, always steadfast in her patience and support. But during those late- night study sessions, Kelsey had sat next to someone who had reached the honor roll every year of her life – from first-grade until her senior year in college. It resulted in plenty of pressure and quite a bit of self-loathing at not acquiring her mother’s inclination to grasp concepts with very little effort.

  When Kelsey reached her teens, where she felt more comfortable with the popular clique at school because of her lack of interest in academics, she should have grown closer to her mother, who never lacked a topic to discuss with even the most dissimilar person in the vicinity. But the chasm between them grew too wide for Kelsey to close – or even cross. Furthermore, while her mother seemed born with the ability to know what to do in any given situation, Kelsey had difficulty ever making up her mind. During her teenage years, peer pressure led to her penchant for taking the most adventurous route without considering the consequences.