A Promise Remembered

by Elizabeth Mowers

He nodded, as if sensing all she held back behind her admission, and came to her, sweeping her into his arms and lowering his face to hers. His delicate kisses slowed to longer, deeper ones.

  Annie could sense their near future. Clothing strewn, bodies clasped together as she made another impulsive mistake with a man, albeit a man she loved.

  “William?” she managed between breaths, pressing her hands to his chest. “Did you come here tonight for—”

  “You?” he whispered, eyes twinkling in the low moonlight that slipped through the window sheers. She nodded. He pressed his forehead to hers. “I can’t stay away from you.”

  “But you’re still going to?”

  He nodded slowly. “Someday I’ll be back, Annie. I swear it.”

  “Then tell me now, William, why you have to leave? What is it you’ve done that’s so bad?”

  As he began to lean back, she wrapped her arms around his waist, forcing him to face her.

  “You’ll think differently of me.”

  “We all have dark secrets within us.”

  He ran a finger down the slope of her nose. “Not all of us.”

  “You’d be surprised at the dark thoughts I’ve entertained recently.”

  “Really?”

  “About Sean,” she confided.

  William stroked a wisp of hair off her temple as if building his resolve to tell a story.

  “The difference is I acted on my dark thoughts, and you never would.”

  Annie mentally wrung her hands as she thought about what she was preparing to do. Her confession was nearly to her lips when William drew a weary breath and began one of his own.

  “I was working in the Navy and had settled into a good life there. I’d grown to appreciate the structure, the discipline that it offered. But as much as I tried, I still had this anger inside me. For periods of time I’d feel fine and then something would happen to trigger me. It was like I was fighting my old man again.”

  “Dennis?”

  “Yeah. I hated how I left home, washing my hands of him and Chinoodin and all of it, and taking off on my own. I enlisted in the Navy and never looked back, which meant I never had the chance to face him as a grown man. I’d always been a kid fighting him, or more like a kid defending myself against his rage. On the ship or at port, the smallest thing would suddenly bother me, and for all the discipline I embraced over the years, the unpredictability of my feelings made me feel...weak.”

  “I haven’t seen any of that since you’ve been back.”

  “I never want you to see it.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Or the children.”

  Annie’s expression softened. “You care for them?”

  “I care for all of you,” he replied, quickly serious.

  She smiled inwardly. “Go on.”

  “We were docked for a few days near Greece. I’d gone ashore and gotten drunk. Not one of my finer moments. One of the buddies I was with was a guy I didn’t know very well named Bart Miller. He had signed on about a year earlier, and he’d started hanging around my friends. The first night had been fun and lighthearted. We’d met some locals and toured around town a bit. But the second night I caught him red-handed trying to lift my wallet. He still denied it and blamed a local who had been hovering near us all night. It started a huge fight, and I had no intention of leaving until I’d pummeled Bart’s face.” He paused to read her reaction. “I told you I wouldn’t come off as flattering in this story.”

  “Continue” was her only reply.

  “I made it back to the ship, along with my friends, but Bart got picked up by port authorities and our superiors raked him over the coals for fighting. The bar wanted to press charges and sue for damages. It got ugly. Bart was furious. To save his own neck, he gave me up as the one who instigated the fight. It stunk, but our superior wouldn’t drop any of the charges against him, even after I admitted to what had happened. Bart was enraged. He didn’t want a bad mark on his record and he blamed me.

  “One night, when I was coming back from upper deck, he attacked me with a knife. I fought him off, but he ended up getting stabbed. I didn’t intentionally do it, Annie, I swear to you, but during the struggle, he took a bad one to the gut.”

  Annie covered her mouth with her hands. “You killed him?”

  “Almost,” William replied. “I felt awful, Annie. I couldn’t believe it. He came close to death. The way he was bleeding...”

  “Is that why they’re after you?”

  “During Bart’s surgery, he slipped into a coma. I had explained to my superiors what had happened, but between the bar fight and now having a fellow sailor in a coma because of me, they discharged me from the Navy.”

  “Discharged you?”

  “It was my darkest day. I had nothing, Annie. All I had worked for over the last decade was finished in one brief moment. I demanded my file be reviewed again and when they refused, I lost it. I was pretty much carried off the ship.”

  “So that’s it? That’s why you—”

  “Let me get this out, would you?” William pulled away and moved toward the window. “It took me a few days to get my bearings and wrap my head around what had happened. I decided my temper had taken the career I’d been working for my entire adult life, and I needed to rectify it. I had just made up my mind to return to Chinoodin, to piece together where my life had first begun to go wrong, when I got word from a friend that Bart had woken from his coma and claimed I had attacked him. He actually said I had threatened to kill him with the knife.”

  “But you didn’t do it,” Annie interrupted, charging over to him. “It was self-defense.”

  “It’s not only the fight with Bart, Annie. I had been in fights before. My track record...”

  “Would lead them to believe Bart,” she supplied.

  “Yeah. It was my word against his.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What could I do? I ran. I took off before they could arrest me. By the time I hit Tennessee, I had a Naval investigator brought in for special assignments, calling me to turn myself in, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. If I go back I’ll most likely get arrested and charged with attempted murder, and I’m not going down for something I didn’t do.”

  “William,” Annie said, running her hand up his shoulder, “eventually it will all catch up with you, and you’ll look even more guilty. Being on the run isn’t the kind of life you want to lead.”

  “I want a life here,” he replied, turning to face her. “With you and the children and Mom. But I can’t live that kind of life sitting behind prison bars. I can’t make money to send for Mom’s cancer treatments while wasting away in a cell. She needs a son who can take care of her, and if I can’t be here physically to help her, the least I can do is send her the cash to survive.”

  Annie buried her face into William’s chest. All she wanted to do was hold him close to her heart and never let him go, but she could see now that loving him fully meant giving him up. For how long, she could never know the answer, but judging by the despair that had begun to wrap its icy claws around the most tender part of her heart, she could only guess it would be much longer than she could bear.

  “You have to go, William.” She spoke so softly. “You have to go for Joyce.”

  William grazed his hands over her as she peered up at him, her eyes damp while fighting back tears.

  “If things were different, Annie...”

  “But they’re not,” she replied. “Fate slid us a loser hand twice now, it seems. We both have to do things we don’t want to do, William, but we’ll get through it in the end. For James and Betsy...and Joyce...I have to believe that.”

  William stroked her hair off her forehead, his topaz-blue eyes narrowing to darkened sapphire as he studied her. She had to be solemn, put on a brave front for him to leave her again.

  “Come with me,
” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Pack up the children right now. I heard about some jobs in the Pacific Northwest. Come with me, Annie. There isn’t anything for you here.”

  Annie slid her fingertips along the chiseled contour of his jaw. “I’m tired of being afraid.”

  “Then come with me. We’ll be safe together, you and the children. Sean will think twice about—”

  “No,” Annie stated. “I don’t want that life for my children. I can’t take them on the run.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better than staying here and fighting Sean day in and day out?”

  Annie stepped back as William gently reached to keep a hold of her. “I know what I have to do for them, William.”

  “Annie...”

  “You should go,” she said, clasping his hand. “Marjorie said someone was circling the house earlier. You should leave while you still have the chance.” It was a lie, but she had to end it while she was still thinking clearly. He shouldn’t detour any more than she ought to right now with so much on the line for them both.

  “I love you.” William said the words sweetly, like a nostalgic love song he’d been humming along to happily all day without realizing it. Never had another’s voice soothed her anxious heart so much. When her eyes widened, he offered a whimsical grin and lowered his head to kiss her. When it was over, she found him smiling. “I suppose that means you love me, too, huh?”

  “I always have,” she agreed. He ran a thumb across her dampened cheek before drawing away to the backdoor. As he slipped out into the darkness, she whispered to the night, “And I always will.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ANNIE CHECKED HER lipstick in the vanity mirror one more time, running a shaky finger along the edge of her lip before hastily flipping the visor closed again.

  Marjorie was staying at her house for the night to babysit the children. She imagined them playing board games and eating sloppy joe sandwiches for dinner. They were so easily excited. It was exactly what she hoped to preserve for them.

  Before she’d departed the house, Marjorie had made one last-ditch effort to keep her from leaving.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, sweetheart,” she said, eyeing Annie’s outfit. “Why are you meeting him dressed like that?”

  Annie had kissed Marjorie on the cheek and assured her it wasn’t at all what she thought. But as she climbed out of the car and smoothed the red halter dress over her hips, she prayed she knew what she was doing.

  “You liked it the last time I wore it.”

  “You’ve made some changes since then,” she scolded with a cluck of her tongue. “First you ask me to be the children’s legal guardian if anything happens to you and now this?” the old woman had said, reaching to pull the front of Annie’s dress up to hide her cleavage in a fussy maneuver only a mother would attempt. She supposed it made sense, as she loved Marjorie like a mother. “How much do you expect me to buy on faith? I’m worried about where your mind is at.”

  “I can’t talk about it now,” Annie replied, glancing past Marjorie to the children, who were giggling and eating popsicles on the porch steps. “Please trust me.”

  “Don’t make a deal with the devil,” she muttered, bringing Annie in for a tight hug. “He always wins.”

  Not this time, Annie thought as she headed down the walk. She couldn’t bear to look over her shoulder for fear the children’s happy faces would have her doubting herself.

  “Annie? Where are you?” Brandon had asked after she’d driven to Sean’s apartment complex. His voice burst through her cell phone as urgently as Marjorie had hugged her minutes earlier.

  “I can’t talk now, Brandon. I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for me and the children over the past few days.”

  “Annie, meet me somewhere or let me come to you. We can talk about this.”

  “There isn’t anything to talk about, Brandon. Nothing is wrong, so please don’t worry about me.”

  “Whatever you’re planning—don’t.”

  “Brandon...” She bit back what she wanted to say. Sometimes justice needed a little nudge. Working at the mayor’s office, Brandon should already understand that.

  “Annie, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you have to think about your children.”

  Annie rolled her eyes. They were all she thought about. The realization Sean could whisk James away and upset him on his own leisurely schedule had left her feeling gutted and raw. The only way out of this mess was, unfortunately, through it.

  “You’ve been a good friend, Brandon,” she whispered before hanging up and switching her phone to vibrate. Immediately, it began to pulse in her purse and wouldn’t stop as she approached Sean’s apartment. She pressed the buzzer and waited, each second ticking by in agonizing silence.

  “Who is it?” Sean’s raspy voice barreled through the air, almost too forceful for the tiny speaker box to tolerate.

  “Annie,” she told him, summoning the last of her courage.

  “What do you want?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Talk?”

  “I brought wine.”

  The agitated buzzer reminded her that she only had a few seconds to change her mind. She’d be in too deep once she was at his door.

  As she climbed the stairs, her mind slipped back to the last time she had worn the silky red fabric she had on now and had slow danced in William’s arms. Her gut wrenched at how happy she had been for a brief instant and how blissfully unaware she had been of what was in store.

  She turned the corner to Sean’s apartment only to discover him leaning against the door frame, watching her.

  “What do we have here?” he whispered.

  Annie plastered on the most pleasant smile she could muster. She hoped it would pass for genuine.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d let me up,” she lied.

  He snorted and ran a hand over his mouth in response. “You and I need to bury the hatchet once and for all, don’t you think?” she continued.

  “Really? What did you have in mind?”

  Annie pouted her lips. “I thought we could have that date. But first I brought wine!” She breezed by him into his apartment and quickly eyed the place.

  “How did you know I’d be alone?” he asked, shutting the door behind them.

  “I took my chances. Why? Are you expecting anyone?”

  “I’m happy to say I’m not,” he replied, running his tongue over his bottom lip.

  “Give me a hand, would you?” she asked, struggling with the corkscrew.

  “In a minute,” he muttered, grazing his lips over the back of her neck.

  “So, where would you like to go? Dominic’s is always good and it’s easy to talk there,” she said, forcing the bottle into his hands. “It’s quiet and...romantic, too.”

  Sean shrugged and twisted the top of the cork, breaking a chunk of it off. In frustration he chucked the corkscrew into the sink and pushed the cork into the bottle with a forceful thumb and a deep-throated grunt.

  “I’m sure we’ll finish the bottle.” He winked and handed the wine back to her.

  “Perfect,” she replied, forcing a giggle. “Why don’t you put on some music while I pour the wine.” She gauged his reaction and imagined her entire plan unraveling in an instant before her eyes. She was executing a delicate dance with a wild bull that could gore her at any moment.

  Sean cocked his jaw and smirked.

  “Sure,” he finally mumbled before easing out of the kitchen. “Any requests, baby?”

  “Surprise me.”

  As soon as Sean was out of sight, Annie yanked two wineglasses from the cupboard and poured him a tall glass.

  As soft music wafted through the air, Sean was back at her side. She swirled his glass and handed it to h
im, studying him from over the top of her rim. Taking a dainty sip of her own, she breathed a sigh of relief when he downed it all.

  “Don’t you want to have a shower and get ready if we’re going out?” she teased, reaching for the wine bottle, but her body stiffened when he moved in for a kiss instead.

  “Patience, patience, maybe you’ll get a good-night kiss if you’re lucky,” she told him, giggling. On the inside, though, she was starting to lose her nerve. “But first I need to freshen up a second. Why don’t you pour us some more wine? I’ll be right back.”

  Sean hesitated, his eyes squinting in discernment, but before he could say anything, she had ducked from his embrace and scrambled to the bathroom.

  Behind the door, she trembled and broke out into an instant cold sweat. She had come here in the stupid dress that William had loved, but she now despised it. If William could see her now, he’d be repulsed just as she was repulsed with herself. Promising herself she’d burn the dress as soon as she got home, she waited.

  She tried to imagine William riding west into the sunset, the sun highlighting the flecks of gold in his hair and the bronze of his skin. In another life she’d be right there with him, clutching him around the waist as they journeyed off to happily-ever-after.

  “Oh, William,” she whispered. “If you had known what I was planning, you would have never left me last night.”

  “Annie, if you want me lookin’ my best for our big date and whatever’s to come, you’ll have to let me in there.” Annie’s heart thudded as fast as a sprinting jackrabbit.

  Holding her breath in absolute silence, she eased open the door. She half expected Sean to jump out in front of her, wise to her deviousness. His treacherous mind two steps ahead of her. But—nothing. He came toward her, gave her a big wink and shut the bathroom door closed behind him. She took several calming breaths and scanned the apartment again. She zeroed in on Sean’s desk but froze.

  What was she doing? What was she thinking?

  All she wanted to do was run away—far, far away—and never look back. Perhaps William had the right idea. Maybe she should pack up the children now and follow him across the country. The law would be after them, but at least they’d be together and have the children...