One Last Promise (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 2) Read online

  Those decisions often differed from those her mother would have chosen. After a couple years, Kelsey couldn’t look at her mother without seeing disappointment etched on her face every time their eyes met. It became so hurtful to both of them that they kept their words and interactions to a minimum. They both missed the closeness they’d once shared, but after repeated attempts on both of their parts to talk through their differences, the words came out scathing or reproachful, resulting in a stubbornness on either side and refusal to acknowledge and look past their dissimilarities in order to reconnect.

  “Well, of course, dear,” her mother said in response to her quip about mixing poison into her cookies. “With that smart mouth of yours, can you blame me for wanting some silence?”

  “Surely, she’s not that bad,” Paul said as he entered the room from the kitchen, holding a pumpkin pie in one hand and an apple pie in the other. His smile chased away all of the apprehension that conveyed deep discomfort only moments ago.

  After suffering some of her father’s intense scrutiny, Kelsey expected Paul to wither and die like a plant under the scorching sun. But that hadn’t happened. The short break in the kitchen had given him an opportunity to regroup and recharge his poise.

  In all likelihood, her mother had instilled some confidence in him, probably by telling Paul that, although her husband appeared imposing on the outside, whenever anyone spent time alone with him, he soon revealed his true nature: a tender-hearted man who would lend a hand in helping a neighbor install brakes on his car. But unlike the past, where Kelsey found Paul’s sudden mood change from timid to assured somewhat endearing, this time, she didn’t know how to take it. How could anyone shift from one end of the personality spectrum to the other so quickly? Something about it felt…phony. Besides, why would someone fake something like that? What could Paul gain from acting that way? If anything, it would make her more skeptical about them as a couple.

  Her father also noticed the shift in temperament by raising an eyebrow.

  Damon reacted the same way, quirking the same eyebrow.

  Although both men had different expressions on their faces (her father looked startled, whereas Damon looked suspicious), Kelsey couldn’t overlook that they viewed the situation from a pessimistic point of view. “I’m not that bad,” she said to Paul. “Although Mom has tried knocking me off at least three other times.”

  “Really?” Damon asked with a smirk, leaning back in his chair, the epitome of cool and collected. “This I’ve got to hear.”

  “The first time she was allegedly showing me how to ride the purple “My Little Pony” bike Dad bought for me at a garage sale. We were on the sidewalk, and Mom was holding onto the seat behind me to allegedly help keep my balance. Then when I started taking off, she let go.”

  “Allegedly,” her mother said. “In your opinion.”

  “In truth, she pushed me.” She exaggerated on that one. She just wanted to see how her mother would respond.

  “I did no such thing.” Her eyes grew wide and her mouth popped open in shock.

  Kelsey tried not to smile at the anger in her mother’s voice. “I swerved into the grass, jumped the curb, and slammed into the neighbor’s rusty gold van. I ended up on the concrete with scraped knees, a bump on my forehead and a nasty gash on my elbow.”

  “You were five-years-old. Your memory is as rusty as that van. And when did you get eyes in the back of her head?”

  Seeing the incredulous looks around the table, she couldn’t resist another lie. Since her mother appeared calm and composed at all times, Kelsey took immense pleasure in disrupting that cool demeanor. “It was so bad that one of my teachers kept asking me if one of my parents hit me.”

  “You little liar! I let go. I didn’t push you. Do you think I’m sadistic?”

  “They haven’t heard about your second ‘suicide attempt.’ Really, Mom; trying to do yourself in by downing a bottle of Pepto Bismol? You were more convincing during your third attempt.”

  “And for your information, I let go because you kept saying, ‘I don’t need your help, Mommy. I don’t need you.” Her voice wavered at the end of that sentence, and she drew her chin inward as though recalling the memory inflicted tremendous pain.

  Kelsey’s wicked humor took an abrupt turn as she watched tears creep into her mother’s eyes. Only after realizing how badly she’d hurt her mother so long ago did she realize that everyone at the table had grown silent. “I don’t remember that.”

  “How could you? You were five.” She held her daughter’s gaze. “That’s when you first started pulling away from me.”

  “But I was five,” Kelsey said, a knot of emotion in her throat. The bump felt so prominent that she had to wait a few seconds before she could talk around it without revealing her feelings. “I didn’t know anything...about anything. And I didn’t pull away from you.”

  “Of course, you did.”

  Kelsey glanced at her brother, a person she could always count on to tell the truth, and he gave a gentle nod, refusing to meet her eyes. But that didn’t seem possible. She had always looked up to her mother, a woman who personified the individual Kelsey would never become: calm and intelligent, warm and giving, comfortable in any situation. Why would Kelsey shut her out? It didn’t make sense.

  Then again, her mom had an even more fractured relationship with her eldest daughter, Ashley. Kelsey had no idea what persuaded her sister to leave home at eighteen and never return, although pulling in close to a million per year on her television show probably had something to do with it. After all, Ashley had just turned thirty-two, and everyone knew that only the best actresses (or in Ashley’s case, best-loved actresses) retained staying power in Hollywood after a certain age. So Kelsey couldn’t blame Ashley for taking whatever film roles came her way when her television show wrapped each year, although over the past decade, Kelsey had seen countless paparazzi snapshots of her sister vacationing at one tropical destination after another.

  That said, Ashley had finally accepted an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner – or so Alex told her – with plans to stay with their brother over the four-day weekend. But when United delayed her flight due to nasty weather conditions in LA with no estimated departure time, Ashley most likely didn’t begrudge her inability to return to her childhood home. But her long-standing quarrel with their mother validated Kelsey’s own struggle; if both daughters had strained relations with their mother, maybe the problem didn’t lie with each of them but with the one responsible for their upbringing.

  So Kelsey refused to look in her mom’s direction because one look would reveal the bruised feelings on her face and the tears in her eyes, and then Kelsey would mirror that same expression.

  “Taboo,” her father said. He opened the box and removed a couple decks of cards with one word at the top of that list, which a player must describe to his teammates without uttering the five taboo words below it. “It’s a game of skill. Even more so, it’s a game that characterizes each of us as we try to convey the word our teammates must guess.”

  Alex pulled out an hourglass with enough sand to last one minute, a couple pencils and two pads of paper to allow team leaders to keep score.

  “We have eight people here, so we’ll break that number in half. My wife and I will be on one team with Damon and Cassandra. Kelsey and Paul, you’ll be with Alex and Marisa.”

  Alex handed his father a pad of paper and a stack of cards.

  “Each person,” her father said, “will get a chance to describe the selected word at the top of any given card without gesturing, acting, drawing, and so forth. You may sing, but you can’t whistle or hum a song. Hints cannot rhyme with a taboo word. Each card also has five “taboo” words that cannot be spoken. For example, if the given word is ‘baseball,’ and I’m in charge of describing that word, I cannot say ‘pitcher,’ ‘hitter,’ ‘pastime,’ ‘sport,’ or ‘game.’ But I can say something like ‘Wrigley Field,’ or ‘Chicago Cubs.’ From those clues, my teammate
s have to guess the word ‘baseball.’ If Cassandra says it, our team gets one point, and I pick up another card and it continues on until time runs out. We’ll go through five rounds. The team with the most points wins. Any questions?”

  No one responded, so her father picked the first card.

  Kelsey took the hourglass, trying not to think about the heated exchange with her mother. But that became impossible; her mind examined every angle of her mom’s assertion. Kelsey had never considered that she’d withdrawn from her mother at such a young age. She’d always figured that she’d departed during her teens, so this bombshell left her feeling…inadequate. How could a five-year-old child determine that she needed to emotionally pull away from her mother? What would have triggered such a response?

  Her mom had never mistreated her – as a child, before hitting the double digits, Kelsey had spent a good deal of time in the corner for using chalk to write swear words on the sidewalk instead of drawing boxes for hopscotch, removing (she preferred that term over stealing) the coins in Alex’s Hulk Hogan Piggybank – Alex had suspected and had convinced their father to set up a video camera to catch her in the act – or for keying a neighbor’s car…although in this instance, she didn’t act out of anger or jealousy; she just liked the way the Malibu paint job looked on that Chrysler Town & Country minivan. And she had an irresistible urge to see what it would feel like to place a key against the door and make a rectangular scratch around the entire vehicle. (It felt good at the time, but the spanking her father doled out obliterated the rush of excitement she got from wrecking the van.)

  During her prepubescent years, she’d also spent plenty of time in her room without the ability to talk on the phone, watch TV, or play on the computer – her mom had given her plenty of so-called “classics” to read: Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Cay, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, among dozens of other boring novels. For a few years, other than after-school activities, she practically lived in her bedroom for failing to tell her mother that she stayed over at a friend’s house after a soccer game (regardless of Kelsey’s age, her mother demanded that she know her daughter’s whereabouts at all times) or for tossing a lit match on a group of twigs she’d collected in the backyard, which burned up a swath of grass before lighting up a Birch tree.

  Throughout each of those incidents and countless others, she had always looked up at her mom to find disappointment lining her face. Each time, a shroud of darkness, of incompetence, of misunderstanding overwhelmed her. No matter what she did, Kelsey never felt that she could win her mother’s approval, whereas her dad never let her forget that he adored her, no matter how many idiotic things she’d done. But her mom…growing up, she couldn’t recall ever seeing her mother glow with pride upon what Kelsey considered an accomplishment: scoring the winning goal that helped her soccer team beat the previous year’s champions, receiving a B-minus on a test on photosynthesis, or making the cheerleading squad…until the day Kelsey first opened Forever and Always.

  Near the end of that night, her mother ventured behind the front counter and entered the back room, went up to Kelsey, who hadn’t the funds to hire a custodian, and swept away breadcrumbs, bits of cheese, and scraps of sliced chicken from the floor, then pulled her into an embrace from behind. She held Kelsey for a long moment then finally said, “My dear child…my dear daughter” before turning around and rushing out of the restaurant.

  That response confused Kelsey more than anything else in her entire life. She tried to imagine her mom saying those words out of pride, but the more time she spent on that recollection, she recalled how her mother expected her to become a veterinarian due to her love of animals. That along with the idea that her mom hadn’t faced her during that hug revealed that her mother considered Kelsey’s small business a huge disappointment. She still loved her but couldn’t give her blessings for this career trajectory. That neither of them had mentioned the incident only fortified her opinion.

  Her father glanced at his card and looked at Paul, who had just sat down beside Kelsey and put a hand on the back of her chair. “Let’s get started.”

  Kelsey turned over the hourglass.

  Her dad kept his gaze on Paul. “A black player on the Lakers basketball team in the 1980s.” After Damon picked Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, he had run out of answers, and neither Cassandra nor Kelsey’s mother responded. Her father said, “Wayne and Garth from the movie Wayne’s World.” Cassandra mentioned the names Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, but her father continued to look at Paul. “It’s a famous quote they said. They would bow down while saying it.”

  Damon said, “We’re not worthy.”

  Her father said, “Put a spin on the last word in that phrase.”

  “Unworthy.”

  Her father smiled at Paul. “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Damon started laughing. He liked Glenn more with every passing moment. The man had a cunning but honest sense of humor, and he spoke his mind. Plus, he didn’t approve of Paul, which gave them something in common. Besides, cops had better instincts when it came to reading emotions than the average person, so Damon couldn’t blame Kelsey for failing to recognize that Paul had other pursuits in mind when it came to their “relationship.” He looked at Kelsey with a twinkle in his eye as if to say, “I told you” without judging her.

  She crinkled her nose at him and gritted her teeth, annoyed.

  Although it frustrated him that she refused to look at Paul as anything but virtuous, Damon liked her stubborn streak – to a degree anyway. Most of the women he’d met bent under pressure and didn’t stand up for what they believed in. He found that characteristic unattractive. Those who stood by their beliefs might find themselves in countless arguments with their partners, but couples who didn’t speak their minds often proved combustible.

  And that’s what he wanted: a long-term relationship; one where he could grow old with his best friend and lover; one that would allow them to support and challenge each other; one that would allow him to build a family. The thought made him glance around the table at the individuals surrounding him.

  Alex stared at Marisa with a little smile on his face.

  Kelsey turned to find Paul checking out her cleavage. She rolled her eyes and chuckled.

  Her father had enough physical presence to inform everyone (without uttering a word) that, as the head of the household, he would set the direction of the activities today, while his wife would set the tempo of how those activities would play out.

  As a nine-year-old boy visiting a friend’s family for dinner, Damon had witnessed a similar scene; the kindness, the laughter, and the tempered voices felt so exotic and so uncomfortable that he squirmed in his seat, unable to sit through a conversation he couldn’t believe was authentic. After fifteen minutes without hearing raised voices or a fist pounding the kitchen table, he had jumped up from his seat, leaving almost his entire meal untouched and ran out of the house.

  His buddy tried to engage him in conversation after that, which cemented the idea that his friend’s family actually interacted amicably, but Damon never spoke to him again. And he never again visited a friend’s home for dinner. But as the years passed, while in bed each night, listening to one couple or another screaming at each other—or hearing a lamp shatter against his bedroom wall, Damon revisited the scene the night he had dinner with a real family: a family who shared their thoughts and feelings, a family who respected each other in good times and bad, a family who loved each other unconditionally.

  “Is everything okay?” Loretta asked.

  Hearing silence around him, Damon glanced around to see everyone staring at him with uncertain expressions. That’s when he felt the tears standing still in his eyes. How could he not get emotional at something so foreign, something so…beautiful?

  Seeing the group clustered around the table (with the exception of Paul, of course) reinforced the notion that he not only wanted a family…but he needed a family. Having bounced fr
om one unloving household to the next throughout his childhood, Damon had managed to contain his anger (and his sanity) with the consolation that after he settled down with the right woman and they started a family, he would do everything possible to give them the childhood that he never had. If he was blessed with children, he would attend every ball game or dancing recital, build their self-confidence, and give them guidance and direction in a firm yet compassionate manner. If he had a girl, he would provide an example of what she should expect from a man when it came time for her to date: resilient, loving, honest, respectful, and supportive. If he had a boy, he would do his best to conduct himself with dignity so that his son had a strong, compassionate, and resourceful man to look up to.

  Damon blinked to fight back the tears and hardened his heart to flush the heartfelt feelings out of his system. But this time, anger didn’t rise to the surface. He stayed at the table. He didn’t run out of the house. That counted as a significant change.

  “His eyes get watery every time I let one rip,” Alex said with an apologetic face. “It just hasn’t gotten around to everyone else yet.” He shrugged. “Sorry, it just slipped out.”

  “Gross,” Marisa said, plunking down a fork full of mashed potatoes. “Is this the future I have to look forward to?”

  “Oh, come on,” Alex said with a grin. “You like it. Don’t deny it.”

  Glenn laughed so hard that a piece of food got lodged in his throat. He grabbed a glass of water and took a few gulps before resting easy. He let out a deep sigh and patted his son on the back. “That was a good one.”