Promises to Keep

by Nan Rossiter

  “Hey,” Maeve said, smiling as Gage came up the steps. “I thought you had to help Ben?” she asked, knowing her brother-in-law often asked Gage for help with side projects.

  “I did, and we’re done . . . and since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d stop by so Gus could say hi.”

  “You mean so you could say hi,” she teased.

  “Maybe,” he said with an impish grin. “You almost done?”

  “No, I have to work late . . . remember?”

  “Oh, right,” he said, looking disappointed. “I forgot.”

  Just then, the screen door squeaked open and Sal peered out. “Hey, Gage,” he said, smiling. Gage waved and Sal looked down the porch. “Dinner’s ready!” he called, and immediately, Gus, who’d been watching Tallulah walk along the railing, turned and trotted toward the door.

  “Not you, silly,” Gage said, grabbing his collar as he tried to scoot by.

  Maeve laughed. “I’ll have to finish saying hi to you later,” she said, kissing his cheek.

  “All right,” Gage replied. “We’ll just go home and mope, won’t we, buddy?” He held on to Gus and turned to look down the porch. “G’night, everyone.”

  The seniors looked up from gathering their walkers and canes and smiled at the blue-eyed country boy. “G’night,” they replied, and Gladys smiled broadly. “You take care, sweetheart,” she called, giving him a flirtatious wink.

  “You, too, Miss Warren,” Gage said with a chuckle.

  Maeve watched Gus hop back in the truck and waved to Gage.

  “You’re not going to be an old maid,” Aristides said. “That boy is smitten.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t really know me,” Maeve said with a sad half smile, wondering if she’d ever find the courage to be completely honest with Gage about her past. She certainly hadn’t found it in the two years they’d been dating, and the longer she waited, the harder it became.

  Aristides frowned. “How could he not know you? You’re a sweet girl, and he would love you no matter what—I can see it in his eyes.”

  Aristides continued toward the door, and Maeve watched Gage pull away. “I hope so,” she said softly, feeling the familiar old ache in her heart.

  2

  THE SECOND OLDEST OF SIX SONS, GAGE TENNYSON GREW UP ON A DAIRY farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. His parents, John—who’d been named after his father but had always been called Jack—and Elisabeth, who’d always been called Libby by her family and friends, felt blessed to have six boys to help with all the endless chores around the farm. Farming is a twenty-four-three-hundred-fifty-two job, Jack liked to say, to which Libby would add, Our boys knew how to feed chickens before they knew how to walk. Suffice it to say, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Tennyson boys knew, from an early age, that hard work was expected. Seven days a week they were up before dawn, helping their father feed and milk the lumbering, bellowing, steamy-warm cows. Then they’d hurry back to the kitchen, wolf down the hearty breakfast their mom had waiting, grab one of the brown-bag lunches lined up on the counter, and race down the driveway to catch the bus.

  When their legs grew longer—which was well before they were old enough to have licenses—they all knew how to drive their dad’s old farm truck and John Deere tractors. Many hands make light work, Jack would say. He was a tall, quiet man, who prided himself on being fair but firm with his boys, and although he had a sense of humor, he didn’t tolerate horsing around or laziness. If you have a job, big or small, do it well or not at all was another favorite saying his offspring had heard so often they murmured it in their sleep.

  In the summer, the boys grew strong and tan in the Tennessee sun, their hands calloused from gripping coarse baling twine, their shoulders muscular and broad from tossing hay bales from the fields into the wagons and from the wagons into the haylofts, their short-cropped blond hair turning summer white. In September, they took their favorite cows, bathed and combed, to the Tennessee State Fair, and bathed and combed themselves—wearing the requisite pressed white shirts and pants of 4-H—and stood proudly next to them, hoping to win a coveted blue ribbon. They ate fried dough, crispy fried chicken, buttery fresh-picked corn on the cob, sticky cotton candy, and juicy strawberry shortcake, washing it all down with thick milkshakes before curling up—sleepy-eyed and satisfied—next to their warm blue-ribbon bovines in the sweet hay of the livestock barn. It was an idyllic childhood, filled with Sunday church and family gatherings that included grandparents, aunts and uncles, a hay wagon full of cousins, a picnic table laden with food, and whatever NASCAR race was on. Through the years, the tumbling, towheaded, wrestling Tennyson boys grew like the golden timothy in their parents’ fields, and the farm thrived.

  By the time Gage was seventeen, the Tennessee Tennyson Dairy Farm was legend. Home to five hundred head of Guernsey, Ayrshire, and Brown Swiss cattle, it was known across the South for its dairy products—from milk and butter to cheese and yogurt (as well as eggs from all those well-fed chickens)—but it was especially known for its ice cream and, at Christmastime, its famous creamy, glass-bottled eggnog. In fact, the newly opened Tennyson Dairy Bar had become a destination to which people from up and down the East Coast were making pilgrimages. Life was good, and Jack and Libby felt doubly blessed, knowing their hard work would pay off—the small farm they’d started when they first married would be a legacy they could pass on to their sons. Their oldest, Cale, was already at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, and the knowledge he gained there would keep the farm current and competitive. Jack and Libby could rest assured, knowing their boys would have secure futures, fulfilling lives, and someday, families of their own to carry on the farm’s traditions.

  That was why Jack was so dismayed when his second-oldest son came out to the barn one night, as he watched over a cow in labor, and told him he didn’t think he wanted to be tied down to the farm all his life. Although the boy said he loved growing up on the farm and didn’t mind hard work, he had no interest in learning about the latest farm equipment and technology, or how much silage and magnesium supplement was needed to keep the herd healthy, and he didn’t want to get up before dawn every single day of his life. He had other dreams: he wanted to travel, see the country . . . and go to art school.

  Jack raised his eyebrows but didn’t look up. “I can’t talk about this right now, Gage,” he said dismissively, stroking the swollen belly of the reddish-brown Ayrshire.

  “Mom already knows,” the boy pressed. “She understands, but she said I had to talk to you.”

  “Well, right now isn’t a good time—your cow, here, is having a hard time.”

  “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, Dad. I’m not like Cale.”

  “It’s nothing to be disappointed about, Gage, and it has nothing to do with your brother.” His father was starting to sound impatient. “I just don’t know how you think you’re going to make money by going to art school.”

  “You’ve seen my pencil drawings, Dad. I’ve won blue ribbons. I get caught up in it. It’s what I want to do. My teacher says . . .”

  “I don’t care what your teacher says,” Jack interrupted, standing to face his son. “Drawing is a hobby. It’s not a way to make a living—a living that will support a family. Your mom and I have worked hard to provide for you and your brothers. We’ve worked hard so you will have a future you can count on, and with Cale away, I’m counting on you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Dad. You can count on me. I’m just telling you now because I know you’re expecting me to apply to UT, and I think it would be a waste of money.”

  The cow beside them let out a deep, mournful groan and Jack turned his back to his son. “As I said before, this isn’t a good time.”

  “Can I help?” Gage asked, stroking the cow’s big head. She blinked at him with soulful brown eyes, and he recalled all the blue ribbons they’d won together. Chestnut was his cow, just as his brothers’ favorite cows were theirs. “Do you want me to call Do
c Jacobs?”

  His father turned back and searched his son’s eyes. “No, Gage . . . actually, I think if I’m going to learn to get along without you, I may as well get started.”

  “Dad, it’s not like that. I want to help.”

  “It is like that, Gage. You just told me you don’t want to be tied down. You don’t want to have to get up early all your life . . . so you and I may as well get used to this new arrangement.”

  Gage bit his lip and felt tears sting his eyes. “Fine, Dad, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “It’s not the way I want it. It’s the way you want it.”

  The boy shook his head and walked to the door, but before he left, he turned. “I told Mom you wouldn’t understand.” He slid open the door, pulled up his collar, and walked back to the house.

  An hour later, from the bedroom he’d shared all his life with his older brother, who was now away in college, he heard the kitchen door slam and wheels spin on gravel. He got up from his desk and pulled back the curtain. All the lights were on in the yard and the barn doors were flung wide open. His mom was hurrying across the yard with an armful of towels, and Doc Jacobs was climbing out of his truck. Then he saw his sixteen-year-old brother Matt appear in the doorway, motioning for them to hurry. Gage’s heart pounded—he wanted to help. He wanted to know Chestnut was okay, but the words his father had said were repeatedly playing through his mind, and his feet felt cemented to the floor. Finally, he let go of the curtain, turned up the lonesome country song on the radio, and picked up his drawing pencil.

  3

  “SHEESH, AUNT MAEVE, IF I WERE MARY, I’D TELL COLIN TO GO JUMP IN a lake! He’s such a pain in the as . . . butt!” Ten-year-old Harper Samuelson shook her head as she rearranged the fleece blanket draped over their legs. “Mary is trying to help him, but he’s so damn . . . I mean dang ungrateful.”

  Maeve laughed at her niece’s honest unadulterated interpretation of the characters in the book they were reading. Ever since Maeve’s older sister, Macey—who’d endured more than her share of miscarriages over the last several years—and her sister’s husband, Ben, had adopted the little girl, Maeve had felt as if she’d found a kindred spirit. She had offered to “niece-sit,” because Harper found the term babysit insulting, anytime her sister and brother-in-law wanted to go out. Macey, seeing the growing alliance between her sister and new daughter—who had spent most of her young life being shuttled from one foster home to another and, due to a heart condition, ended up needing a new heart—and wanting Harper to have as many positive role models in her life as possible, had latched onto the idea. Date night had quickly become a weekly event that Maeve and Harper looked forward to as much as Macey and Ben. They’d even started their own book club, The Pepperoni Pizza and Root Beer Book Club, but instead of reading books and getting together to discuss them—as other book clubs did—they read their selection together, discussed it as they went along, and when they finished, watched the movie. The first two books they’d read were the classics To Kill a Mockingbird and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both of which featured young strong-willed female protagonists with whom Harper had fallen in love. And even though most people tend to like the books more than their movie adaptations, Harper and Maeve agreed that the movies made from these two books were perfect.

  “What about Mary?” Maeve asked. “She wasn’t much better. She acted like a spoiled brat when she first came to Misselthwaite Manor.”

  Harper nodded thoughtfully, gently stroking the furrowed dreaming brow of the golden retriever lying beside her. “She did, but she had an excuse. I mean she was an orphan, and no one loved her. She was just defending herself.”

  Maeve nodded, wondering if Harper could see how much the life of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s spunky protagonist paralleled her own. Both ten years old. Both orphaned. Both had a sassy attitude. And both were making great strides toward becoming the amazing young women they were meant to be.

  “I love Dickon,” Harper added, taking a sip of root beer. “He reminds me of Sam.”

  “Does he now?” Maeve teased.

  “Not like that,” Harper said, rolling her eyes.

  “Not like what?” Maeve asked, feigning innocence.

  “Not like a boyfriend, duh. Sam is a lot like Dickon.”

  “How so?” Maeve asked, surprised that Harper drew a parallel between the young male character who loved animals and Sam Finch—the sweet boy and classmate with whom she’d become fast friends—before she saw herself in the audacious Mary Lennox.

  “Well, you know how Soot and Captain and the little robin all love Dickon and trust him?” She looked up at Maeve. “Sam’s like that. His mom, Sage, takes care of wild baby birds and animals that have lost their parents, so he is always around them. Last year, when we were in Mrs. Holland’s class, and she had to clean out the guinea pigs’ cage, Sam would hold Harold and Maude in his arms and they would fall asleep like it was the safest place on earth. He also has a pet raccoon named Ty Coon,” she added with a smile, “and he follows him around like a shadow.”

  Maeve nodded thoughtfully. “But does he have eyes that ‘look like pieces of moorland sky’?” she teased in her best British accent.

  “They are very blue,” Harper said with a laugh.

  “And does he ‘smell like heather and grass and leaves’?”

  Harper rolled her eyes and pushed on Maeve’s arm. “I said it’s not like that.”

  Maeve raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Mm-hmm . . .”

  Harper shook her head. “Keep reading!”

  Maeve obediently turned back to the book, and as Harper listened, she watched Big Mac, their gray tiger cat, saunter in, hop on the couch, and curl up next to Keeper. She reached out to stroke his soft fur, too, and while she did, she pictured the ruddy-cheeked Dickon greeting the pale, self-absorbed Colin for the first time, and wished she had a secret garden to tend.

  Twenty minutes later, Maeve realized there’d been no recent commentary from the peanut gallery and looked over to see Harper sound asleep, her breathing soft and easy. She reluctantly tucked the bookmark between the pages and reached over to stroke the heads of the big golden retriever and his feline sidekick. “Where’d we lose her?” she whispered, and Keeper opened one eye and swished his tail, but Big Mac just slumbered on peacefully. Typical cat, Maeve thought. She looked up at the clock on the mantle—it was after ten—and then she gazed at the embers in the fireplace, wondering what Gage was up to and deciding he was probably asleep, too. When they’d first started dating, she’d teased him about not being able to stay awake past ten o’clock, and he’d explained that his internal clock—from growing up on a farm—could not be reset. It was a curse from his father, he added—a comment that made her wonder. As she watched a piece of bark catch and flame up, she recalled the first time she’d heard Gage’s name, and realized there’d been no way to know how much it would come to mean to her. She and Macey had been sitting on Macey’s back porch eating ice cream from the Tennyson farm, when Ben had come home from work, seen the ice cream, and casually mentioned that he’d just hired a new guy named Gage Tennyson.

  “No way!” Macey had said, as she licked her spoon.

  “Way,” Ben had said.

  “Wait,” Maeve had said as the progress of her own spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “He’s not from the same family that makes Sweet Irish Cream?” She had eyed her brother-in-law, unable to believe he had someone on his crew who might have something to do with her favorite ice-cream flavor.

  “He might be,” Ben had teased with a grin.

  Macey had raised her eyebrows. “If you hired him, Ben, you know . . .”

  Just then, there was a sound on the front porch and Keeper and Big Mac both perked up, pulling Maeve back to the present. “Are Mom and Dad home?” she whispered, and Keeper thumped his tail and hopped off the couch, landing deftly on three legs—one of his front legs, due to a bout with cancer, had been amputated—and he hurried to the door, his whole hi
nd end wagging.

  The doorknob turned, and Macey and Ben peeked in. “Hey,” Macey said, kneeling down to greet their two rescue pets. Keeper pushed his bowed head into her chest—his usual hello—while Big Mac placed his front paws, light as a whisper, on her knee and sniffed her cheek.

  “How was The Crab Shack?” Maeve asked, gingerly lifting the blanket off her legs while trying not to disturb her slumbering niece.

  “Amazing, as always,” Macey replied. “How was the weekly meeting of The Pepperoni Pizza and Root Beer Book Club?”

  “Great!” Maeve answered, chuckling. “Except you-know-who fell asleep midchapter!” She nodded in Harper’s direction and then looked back at her sister. “There’s some leftover pizza in the fridge.”

  “Want to take it home?” Ben asked.

  “No, thanks,” Maeve said, shaking her head. “You guys can have it for lunch tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?” Ben pressed, holding up a paper bag containing two takeout containers, “Because we have leftovers, too.”

  “Positive,” Maeve answered. “I’m pretty sure Gage got a pizza tonight, too.” She smiled. “He feels left out when Harper and I have book club.”

  “He can come over, too, you know,” Macey said.

  Maeve frowned. “Oh, no. This is girls’ night, and besides, he’s not a big reader.”

  “Okay,” Macey said, laughing softly, “but, you know, Harper thinks he walks on water so I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  “I know,” Maeve replied. “Maybe the three of us will do something together sometime.”

  “That reminds me—the Croo-Picnic is next weekend,” Ben said.

  “So I heard,” Maeve replied, remembering the brief conversation she’d had with Gage about the annual summer barbecue Ben and Macey hosted for his employees and their families. “What can we bring?”