The Promise

by Robyn Carr

  Ted followed her, and Scott watched them leave together. From the clinic’s window he saw them cross the street and head down the hill toward the marina. Devon was on her way back from the diner, carrying a couple of take-out cartons—one for him, one for Peyton. He had completely lost his appetite.

  Devon came into the clinic, still looking over her shoulder. “Who’s the good-looking guy with Peyton?”

  “The ex,” Scott said.

  “Does that Lamborghini belong to him?”

  Scott leaned over the counter to look out the window. “Probably,” he said.

  “Where are they going?” she asked.

  He watched as Ted dropped an arm around Peyton’s shoulders, and she stepped away, escaping his touch. “Down to the bay so he can demonstrate walking on water,” he said. Then he turned and went into his office, closing the door.

  * * *

  Peyton was stunned to see Ted at first, then realized she shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew the man. He believed he could turn any situation to his advantage.

  “Let’s just get something straight,” she said. “I had plenty of legitimate complaints about our relationship, but I always trusted you to be honest and faithful. You might be over this infidelity, but I’m not. For all I know, there might’ve been others. There’s no way I’ll ever trust you again, no way I’m willing to take that kind of chance. Tampering with Lindsey was a fool’s move, but the next time, you might find a woman of more maturity and substance, a woman you can actually move on to, leaving me devastated and broken all over again. No, Ted. I’m not going there. No way.”

  “You were devastated?” he asked a little too hopefully.

  “I’m over it,” she snapped. “I’m over you! I can’t believe you. Lindsey didn’t quite measure up, and you ousted her. For God’s sake, can’t you at least take responsibility? Or is this just one more child for you to throw money at and ignore? How many more will there be?”

  “No more, and that’s a guarantee. I’ve done what I should’ve done years ago and had a vasectomy. But that’s not the point. The point is—”

  She laughed outright. “Oh, but it’s a very good point, let’s stay on it. Now you’re completely safe, except for disease, of course. Now you can screw around without the possibility of pregnancy. How very clever!”

  There was a painful clench in her chest. Before Ted’s home became too much to bear, she had wondered if she would perhaps have a child of her own. It was a decision that had to be made sooner rather than later. It wasn’t very long after getting to know his children that she’d decided she’d never bring a baby into that household. She stomped off ahead of him, and he grabbed her arm, spinning her around.

  “Are you listening to me? I made a terrible mistake! I have regrets. I’m sorry, more sorry than you can imagine, and I believe I can make it up to you. And I’m not going to ignore the child. I’m having documents drawn for support and visitation—everything necessary to be responsible and meet my obligations. No matter what you think of me, I have never ignored my responsibilities!”

  She shook free of his grip and said, “Don’t you ever lay hands on me again or I’ll have you arrested, you son of a bitch!”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. You make me desperate. For God’s sake, am I not getting through to you? I need you. The kids need you!”

  “How many need me, Ted? The three that probably threw a party when I left? Or three plus a baby who will be visiting?”

  He lifted his hands again, as if he might grab her upper arms, but then he dropped them to his sides. His face was a little twisted, and he glanced away as if looking for some courage or inspiration. “You were right about them. The kids. You were right about me. I should’ve listened to you. They needed a firm hand. They needed discipline, and I fought you. I don’t even know why, but I just didn’t want to think they were that much trouble. When I was around, there weren’t many problems. I was confused. You were so angry with them, but when I was around, they were mostly fine.”

  “You weren’t ever around!”

  “I see that now. I realize now, I should have listened to you.”

  “Fine. There’s still time,” she said. “Take a firmer hand now.”

  “That won’t be enough,” he said dismally.

  “Ted! Get into counseling. With them. Learn to be a better parent. Learn to show your children you love them enough to be sure they’re safe, and help them learn to respect themselves and their family. For God’s sake, I can’t do it for you!”

  He looked at his feet. “Krissy’s pregnant,” he said.

  That silenced her. Krissy? Fifteen-year-old Krissy? “Oh, God,” she said. She backed away from him and sat on one of the pilings holding up the dock. “How pregnant?” she asked weakly.

  “Not very. Six or eight weeks. She got scared and told her mother. Her mother called me.”

  “She must be terrified,” Peyton said.

  “She’s a wreck. Her mother didn’t prepare her for this.”

  “Did you?” she asked.

  “Me? I’m her father!”

  “My point,” she said, shaking her head. She stood, surprised to find her legs were trembling. “Ted, I can’t fix this for you. You have to get some family counseling, maybe get her mother involved. Krissy needs some family support right now. You all have decisions to make, and it’s very important that everyone is on board, going forward with this family event.”

  “The decision is made,” he said. “She’ll terminate.”

  “That’s what she wants?” Peyton asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what she wants! She’s fifteen!”

  “Oh, God,” Peyton said. “Is Krissy okay with that decision?”

  “She’d better get okay with it because she’s fifteen, and that’s what’s going to happen!”

  Peyton swallowed. She hated herself for even asking the next question. She didn’t particularly like Krissy. Krissy had always been mean and selfish around her. She was a horrible fifteen-year-old. She had lied, defied and treated Peyton not just disrespectfully but cruelly. But she was fifteen and pregnant. “Ted, has Krissy told you what she wants?”

  “Irrelevant,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  “What did she say?” Peyton asked.

  “She thinks she wants to keep it, but that’s absurd. She can’t be a mother, she’s too young, she’s in high school. She’ll terminate.”

  “Oh, man,” Peyton said, shaking her head. “You can’t force her to terminate the pregnancy. You guys need an intervention in the worst way.”

  “What do you care? You’re pro-choice!”

  She sighed and shook her head in frustration. How had she managed to ignore this side of him until she was giving up, until she was leaving him? Was it because in the beginning he hadn’t acted that way toward her? She took a deep breath. “Actually, you don’t know anything about my politics, but it appears you think you’re pro-choice, though I’d have to wonder if you even know what it means. Choice, Ted. Not pro-abortion. As far as I know, there is no pro-abortion network. I’d never condone forcing a woman to terminate a pregnancy. What the hell do you think a choice is?”

  “Bullshit! I’ve seen you at work in my practice with women who jeopardize their lives with pregnancy because of their cardiac condition! I’ve seen you!”

  “No, you haven’t,” she said coolly. It was true, they’d had the rare patient who couldn’t survive a full-term pregnancy, and neither could the fetus. It was an awful situation, one rife with heartbreak. “My patients get the facts, the best information I have, but I would never force anyone to make a decision that they’d always regret. Not even if it threatened their life—that’s not my decision. It’s the patient’s decision. Krissy could be irreparably damaged by being forced to do something she’s violently opposed to. It could be harder for her to recover from that than from early motherhood. Besides, there are other options. There’s adoption. There’s even open adoption. Oh, Ted, talk to your d
aughter.”

  “That’s her mother’s job!”

  “It’s also yours!” she shouted. Suddenly she realized her forehead had broken out in a sweat, and she wiped it with her palm. “Listen, Ted, I can’t help you. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t help you. Krissy has never listened to a thing I’ve said. She hates me. If she doesn’t actually hate me, she definitely resents me. I would be of no use to you. You’re on your own.”

  She walked past him, heading for the clinic.

  “Peyton, please,” he said. “Please. There isn’t anyone else to ask.”

  She slowly turned back. “Yes, Ted. There are lots of people to ask. Call an OB. Maybe a women’s health NP. Tell them what you’re up against and ask for some real high-end counseling. Explain you’re divorced, a single father, you’re up a creek and you don’t know how to help your fifteen-year-old daughter, but you need to hear all the options. If you can’t think of anyone, ask the triage nurse in your practice—she’s very savvy. She can point you in the right direction. But don’t come back here and ask me. When all I wanted in the world was to love you and your kids, none of you cared. You didn’t help. You didn’t support me, and then you betrayed my trust.” She started walking again, then she turned back toward him. “My God, did you really think I’d go back to your practice and your house?”

  “I hoped,” he said.

  “Ted, why did you fight for joint custody when you and Olivia divorced?”

  “Don’t make this about my divorce! I’ve always loved my kids!”

  “I think you really believe that, but you’ve never spent time with them. You never gave up a golf game to be with them.”

  “I worked like a bloody slave to make sure they had everything they needed, that they’d have a decent school, a good house, a college savings....”

  “That’s all money. Most of my college was paid for by scholarship. I also worked and saved. Did you think I’d take care of your office, your three kids, your new baby and a grandchild? Did you?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “You have no idea how much I need you.”

  “And here I thought you loved me,” she said softly.

  “I do love you! I’ve always loved you! I tried to show it.”

  “Why didn’t I know this about you?” she asked in a soft voice. “I thought you at least loved your kids in your own clumsy, inadequate way. I thought you were just too permissive, but you just couldn’t be bothered.” She shook her head. “Those poor kids. They’re going to be such a mess, and they have nowhere to turn.”

  “You could help,” he said. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t help you. Ted, I don’t love you.”

  “You did once,” he argued. “You could love me again.”

  “No. I can’t manufacture that just because it’s what you want.”

  “We could try one more time.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “What you have to do is admit your mistakes, live with them and take responsibility.”

  “What is it you think I’m doing?”

  “Trying to get someone else to take up your responsibility, that’s what you seem to be doing. As usual.”

  She put her hands in the pockets of her sweater and, head down, she went back to the clinic. The whole situation made her heart hurt. They were doomed unless someone helped them, and it certainly couldn’t be her—no one in that entire family cared for her or respected her enough to even take her seriously. But left in her wake was a man she had deluded herself into thinking had really loved her, and a teenage girl facing the biggest crisis of her young life. It was crushing.

  The fact that there was nothing she could have done didn’t make it any less painful. Or maybe the worst was that she’d thought herself so smart, so perceptive and intuitive that a man like Ted couldn’t get anything by her. Yet he had. She’d never seen it coming.

  When she got to the clinic, she found Mac McCain and Eric Gentry standing in front, ogling the midnight-blue Lamborghini parked there. Eric had a reputation as one of the best classic car restorers in the Pacific Northwest. And Mac’s office was the clinic’s next-door neighbor.

  “Hey, Peyton,” Mac said.

  “Hey, Mac. Hey, Eric.”

  “Peyton, this here’s a Lamborghini,” Mac said.

  “It is,” she affirmed.

  “Belong to a friend of yours?”

  “No,” she answered. “Belongs to my former boss. Dare I hope you have a reason to lock him up?”

  “Not for having a car worth about a billion dollars,” Mac said with a chuckle. “You unhappy with your old boss?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I hate him a little, that’s all. He’s a shit.”

  “Oh, well, that’ll do it,” Eric said, laughing.

  “He hasn’t broken any laws that I’m aware of,” she said. “Maybe if you hang around the car, he’ll let you take it out for a spin. But then, no, he won’t. In fact, if he sees you touching it, he’ll want to press charges.”

  “Well, now, I’m craving a cup of coffee,” Eric said, heading for the diner and out of harm’s way.

  “I believe I’m due a cup, too,” Mac said, following.

  There were no patients waiting yet, but Devon stood behind the counter, wide-eyed and looking a little anxious. “I brought you back a grilled cheese, like you asked,” she said a little nervously. “Here’s your change.”

  “Thanks. Is it in the fridge?”

  “I left it out so it wouldn’t get lardy.”

  “Thanks. Where’s Scott?”

  “In the back somewhere. You okay? That guy upset you?”

  Peyton shrugged. “He brings back some sad memories, that’s all.” She went to the office. Even though Scott was not there, she occupied her small table, not his desk. It’s all so sad, she thought.

  Scott walked in, a clipboard in his hand. “Well?” he said.

  “He’s in a mess,” she said. “He’s in over his head. He can’t manage his office, his children, anything. His girlfriend is pregnant and he’s not going to marry her, but his daughter is pregnant and she’s fifteen and he decided he needs me. He said he just can’t do it without me.”

  “So?” Scott asked.

  She shook her head. “I can’t help him and wouldn’t if I could. But I wish things hadn’t gone the way they have.”

  “Do you feel sorry for him or something?”

  “I do. I tried to warn him. But I don’t get any pleasure from the way he thinks he needs me.”

  Scott leaned a hip on the edge of his desk. “I might be having a little trouble understanding this....”

  “I knew I did a good job in the practice. I didn’t think I was managing his kids very well, but apparently I was better at it than he is.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Scott said. “Why would it surprise anyone to hear you’re good at everything? Most women would like hearing that, I think.”

  She stood. “My conversation with Ted sounded like a quarterly review—he didn’t know how much he loved me until he had to take care of his own practice and his own kids.”

  “He said that?” Scott asked. “He didn’t say that.”

  “It sounded like it to me. Can I ask you something personal?”

  “I think you’d better,” he said.

  “If your wife had lived, do you think you’d still be crazy about her when you were in your sixties?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said.

  “And what did you love so much?”

  “How much time have you got?” he asked. “She was funny. She could make me laugh even when I was mad. It pissed me off, have a good mad going and she acts like a simpleton, undercutting my bad mood when I was really getting into it. She was way too generous. It drove me crazy—she couldn’t pass a bum on the street without giving him a couple of bucks, even though we didn’t have a couple of bucks to spare. I’d say, ‘Serena, he’s just going to go to the bar with that,’ and she’d say
, fine, maybe it’s the last cold beer he enjoys. She wouldn’t pick up her clothes for anything, she was a draper—over the chair, the exercycle, the dresser, even the toilet. Half the time she got dressed right out of the clothes dryer. She was disorganized and forgetful, except where long columns of numbers were concerned. With numbers, she wouldn’t even misplace a decimal point, but hell if she could remember what day it was. She sang off-key, she was gentle-natured unless she was ovulating, and then she was a bear. She fell asleep reading every single night. She left lights on all the time, hours after she left the room, like we had money to throw away on utility bills. She burned half of what she cooked, but she was amazing in the garden—the flowers worshipped her. She was clumsy, her feet were huge—size tens. She battled her weight, she was eventually going to be round and soft like her mother—she gained sixty pounds with Will. And when she smiled, people went into a trance. She cried at movies, and she couldn’t stand scary movies. I love scary movies and fall asleep during chick flicks. She could do the taxes, but she’d forget to file or pay them. Want anything else?”

  “So...you didn’t adore her because she was a great physician’s assistant or excellent nanny?”

  He frowned darkly. “She was a terrific CPA and was going to manage my private practice—we looked forward to being partners. And she didn’t live long enough to be a great mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “You better get some things straight, Peyton. It sounds like you think Ted used you when he said he loved you. It’s not a crime to praise someone with amazing talent—you’re not only a better PA than I can afford, you’re the best PA I’ve ever worked with. It’s an absolute crime to say you love someone when all you love is what they can give you. Or do for you.”

  “I want what my parents have.”

  “I spent only two days with Paco and Corinne. He is very proud of her. He brags about her cooking, her mothering, her gardening and her figure, but I don’t think he lusts after her for any of those reasons. And that Paco.” He whistled. “He’s filled with lust—for your mother, his farm, for life. You can have what your parents have. If you think you can have that with Ted, you can probably catch up with him. Or maybe not,” he said with a shrug. “I’m sure that Lamborghini really moves.”