Promise to a Boy
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Mary Brady
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16
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU’RE NOT ANGELINA Fairbanks.”
“I knew that.” Abby Fairbanks smiled at the man who had rung her front doorbell—insistently—interrupting an excellent game of Candy Land with her nephew. She brushed a clump of dark curls out of her eyes so she could get a better look at the tall and sullen stranger.
He studied a photo in his hand and then looked at her again. His dark brown eyes gave nothing away, but his frown deepened. “This is supposed to be the address of A. Fairbanks who moved here from Denver. Is Angelina here?”
Abby reached out and tipped the edge of the photo so she could see the image. It was Lena all right, from a few years ago when they lived in Denver, and it looked as if it had been taken at one of the parties during which her sister had partaken of more than one mood-altering substance.
She looked up at him and gave him a long steady not-quite glare.
“I guess that would depend on who you are.” And what you want with my sister, mister. He didn’t look like the law, thankfully, because Lena had cleaned up her act.
The man eyed her suspiciously.
Abby fingered a button at the V of her flowered Henley-style shirt and then tugged down the edge of the hem that must have flipped up when she sat on the floor playing with five-year-old Kyle. When she realized these twitchy actions probably made her look less confident than she wanted to look, she put one hand on the doorknob and stood up straighter.
“What do you mean, it depends on who I am?” he asked.
The man’s rumpled blue-and-white-striped dress shirt had a small drop of something red—ketchup hopefully—on the front of it, and the quilted leather bomber jacket he wore looked high fashion, or rather…well, she’d think girlie if he didn’t look so hot in it. Whoever he was, he had traveled far away from home.
“Montana’s a big state and St. Adelbert is a small out-of-the-way town. We don’t get many strangers here, especially on our doorsteps. It makes us cautious.” Abby hoped the nudge acted like a warning shot fired over his head.
“It’s important that I speak with Angelina. Is she here or not?” He widened his stance to look more intimidating. He didn’t need to. His muscular body and deep frown were enough for that.
Abby suddenly felt something she hadn’t felt since she moved back to the small town of St. Adelbert.
Fear.
What if there was something in Lena’s past she didn’t know about, something bad enough to have some city man chase her down?
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, sweetie,” she called over her shoulder to her nephew, who no doubt was already getting anxious to continue their game. Then she stepped out onto the dull gray porch badly in need of paint and pulled the door closed behind her. She was safe outside. In a town this size, where everyone loved to know everyone else’s business, all she needed to do was call loudly and at least three neighbors with weapons of some sort would converge. Even if it was just one of the gray-haired women across the street with a cast-iron skillet.
The man stepped back toward the wooden railing. His short dark hair looked as if it got the tender loving care of a city barber, no, make that a stylist. His nails were neat and his skin, probably a pale shade before he left home, had been cast with a pink tinge from exposure to the harsh mountain sun.
Things could go any which way. She could push and he could push back harder. She took a deep breath and decided the best thing to do was to keep things light, until he did something to actually threaten her or hers.
“If you’re a bill collector, she’s out of the country. If you’re the police, she didn’t do it. If you’re a suitor…” Which Abby definitely knew he was not. Her sister would have told her about any hotties she had on hold. “She said I should stand in for her.”
She gave him an impeccably polite smile, hoping that last little bit would scare him off. It would most men who preferred her pretty, vivacious sister, with the flowing auburn hair and bright blue eyes.
His dark brows pulled together. He must be trying to figure out which of the options he was. She almost chuckled, but stayed silent. Let him fill the void.
A few long seconds passed. This man wasn’t a very good void filler because he just stared back at her.
She held her smile.
He didn’t smile at all.
“Where is she?” he finally asked.
Before Abby could respond, the door behind her flew open. She spun and bent over her five-year-old nephew, putting her body between the man and the child. The boy looked up at her with his big blue eyes, her sister’s eyes. “Aunt Abby, can we finish our game now?”
She put her hand on his blond head, curly hair like hers, not straight like his mother’s. “Go back inside, Kyle sweetie.”
“Who’s out there?” Kyle tried to see around her, but the big city had taught her caution on the border of paranoia, and where Kyle was concerned, everyone was to be suspected first. Trust needed to be well earned.
Abby physically turned Kyle around and pushed him gently into the house. “I’ll be in very soon. Why don’t you pour us each a glass of milk, and I’ll get cookies down when I come in.”
“Yippee, cookies,” the five-year-old shouted as he ran toward the kitchen at the back of the house. A cookie bribe. The bad-aunt police should be after her any minute.
“And pick up your toys,” she called after him and then slowly pulled the berry-colored front door closed again. When she turned back to the stranger, he suddenly seemed taller, stronger, and she needed him away from the house, away from Kyle. She stepped off the porch and down onto the sidewalk bordered with unruly wildflowers.
“I’m Angelina’s sister. Who are you and what do you want with her?” she asked as he descended the steps.
“My name is Reed Maxwell.” He didn’t offer his hand. She probably didn’t look as if she would accept the offer.
“Maxwell as in Jesse Maxwell’s relative?” One of the rich snobs? One of a bunch of people who didn’t care about anyone except themselves? Those were the kinds of things the man who rented the living quarters above her garage had said about his family.
“Jesse’s brother.”
“Of course you are. He has a picture of your family, though it’s several years old.” Like about a decade or so. The brothers in the photo were gangly teens. This one had definitely developed a man’s body. “Jesse hasn’t changed much.”
Reed Maxwell nodded. “I wanted to ask Angelina if she knows where he is. According to what I found out in Denver, she knew Jesse when they lived there.” The words sounded like an accusation. Maybe Jesse was right. Snobs.
Light. Keep it light, she reminded herself. “He…um…said none of his family gives…well, he said something about…a rat’s ass, about…none of his family giving one…sorry…about him.”
The man smiled and brought one hand up to rest on his hip under the lower edge of his jacket.
Of all the things Abby expected from him, a big grin was not it. Some of the tiredness lifted from his face, brightening his whole appearance and making him—well—yummy.
“What,” she asked, jerking her wandering mind away from thoughts of yummy, “are you smiling about?”
“I know I’m on the right track. The ‘rat’s ass’ hyper-bole would be the kind of thing Jesse would say about us.” He put the photo in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “And he’s probably right for the most part, but I do need to speak with Angelina or Jesse if you know where he is.”
“Angelina’s not here. Neither is Jesse.”
“Jesse was here? In St. Adelbert?”
For almost a year. How could a family not know where one of their own was for that long? “He lived, lives above my garage in the apartment there.”
“With your sister.”
“Angelina doesn’t live here.”
“So, do you know where Jesse is or when he’ll be back?”
Her shoulders drooped when she thought of her tenant. “I wish I knew. He just sort of disappears sometimes. He’s been gone for over two months this time.”
“And that’s different?” Reed Maxwell shifted one foot up onto the lower step. Dress shoes, those slim, well-fitting ones that spoke of money—with laces and everything—and a scuff on the toe of one. A very long way from home. Chicago, more precisely, a rich suburb north of Chicago according to Jesse.
“I haven’t heard anything from him,” she explained. “Not that he usually calls and he never writes, but I thought since he’s gone so long he would have let me know he’s all right. Has he called you in the past couple months?”
The man shook his head thoughtfully as he rubbed his fingertips along his jawline where a long day’s worth of dark whiskers grew. “Are you sure Jesse and Angelina aren’t together somewhere?”
“Angelina is out of the country. Jesse said he was going hiking in Utah, but that was only supposed to be for a couple weeks.”
“And you didn’t think to contact his family.” His grin had long since left and the tiredness returned.
I hope you’re not this rude when you’re well rested. “I sent a letter two weeks ago to an address I found in his things. I haven’t heard a peep in response.”
“Even though you believed we didn’t give a—care?”
“Make up your mind, please. I should write. I shouldn’t have written. Jesse’s a friend of my sister. She’s worried and so am I. I did talk it over with the sheriff.”
“And?”
“Well, the last time Jesse went missing for almost a month and I was about to go file a missing person’s report, he showed up. I told him about it and he got really sad, asked me never to do that. So this time the sheriff said to give Jesse time. I was going to wait till I heard from his family before I did anything, um, rash. For all I knew he was home in Illinois.”
The man looked out over the mountains rising beyond the town. Then he looked back at her and almost drilled through her with his dark eyes. “I’d like to check out his apartment.”
She involuntarily took a step back, her heel coming down in a clump of white yarrow releasing the stringent, musty smell of the injured plant.
“I don’t think I can let you in without Jesse’s permission,” she said as she stepped forward to take back the ground she had given.
He must have realized he was coming on strong, because he put up a hand in a conciliatory gesture, an uncalloused hand that had never held a rope or the reins of a workhorse. “I don’t mean to cause trouble. I’d just like to find my brother. How much back rent does he owe you?”
“Why do you think he owes money?”
“Some things don’t usually change much over time.”
“Three months.” And the edge of financial oblivion lived a constant threat right under her toes as compounding interest worked heavily against her. The last three weeks…
“I’ll pay the three months and I’ll pay for next month. Will that buy me entrance?” He reached in his pocket for his wallet. Not a wallet, a money clip, of course.
She couldn’t meet his probing gaze without a chance to think. She turned away to study an old red pickup passing slowly in the street. She had no idea how she planned to find the mortgage payment due three weeks ago, and her SUV was also late for an oil change. The house needed work and Kyle needed clothes that would fit, and soon. School started next month.
“It feels mercenary,” she said quietly. Or worse, she thought. Their mother had said again and again that taking money from a man without good reason was wrong. On top of a winning personality, Delanna Fairbanks did have some morals. “With Jesse missing.”
“And you need the money.”
She swung back to face him. “What makes you think I need…”
He pointed at the sagging corner of the porch roof.
Abby pushed the blowing curls from her face again.
“My sister promised to live here and to pay rent.” Now Abby had only the income from her nurse’s job at the town’s one medical clinic. “And Jesse was never very good at paying rent on time.”
She could turn him down, or because she had always cared for Kyle and seen to his needs, she could swallow her pride and do what needed to be done.
“You can get Jesse to pay me back,” he offered.
She looked into his eyes and thought she saw a hint of amusement. They both knew Jesse wasn’t going to pay his brother back.
“Okay,” she said, feeling as if she was betraying Jesse while Jesse’s brother peeled hundred-dollar bills off the wad without even asking what she charged.
When she took the cash she realized it was more than she thought. “This is too much.”
“I’m sure Jesse has cost you more than what I’ve given you.”
She found herself smiling. “He does have a way of making his problems seem like mine. And he has such an innocent way of doing it.”
The man’s expression lightened again. Maybe he was remembering the delightful, funny way his brother had of being irresponsible.
“Um, the door’s not locked,” she said. “You can let yourself in.”
“So I could have walked in and you’d have had to get the sheriff to stop me if you didn’t like it.”
“You could probably walk into many places here in St. Adelbert—” he gave her a skeptical look and she continued “—but you would not want to cross our Sheriff Potts.”
He nodded and turned toward the garage located on the other side of her side yard.
Abby watched his confident stride. He walked as if he were used to getting what he wanted. He probably never disappeared for weeks at a time and never in his life let his hair and beard grow long like Jesse’s—though he might look good with longer hair. In fact, he’d make a great wild mountain man. She imagined him wearing buckskin pants and maybe one of those shirts made of rough cloth with an open V-neck, open down to his navel. Instead, even a bit disheveled, he looked sleek, smooth and, she’d wager, was totally out of his element in Montana. Wild mountain man…
Ridiculous. He probably followed rules and regulations all day long. Heck, he probably made those rules, but was he really a snob who didn’t give a rat’s behind about his brother? He must care a little. He was in St. Adelbert searching for him.
Abby let herself back into the house. He could check the apartment and then there would be nothing to keep him here. He’d go to Utah. Maybe he’d find Jesse and let her know. She liked Jesse. It was more like she had a younger brother as well as a younger sister when Jesse and Lena were around.
She wondered, as she picked up a pair of Hot Wheels cars, if there was anything in Jesse’s apartment to find. Jesse may be a wayward fellow, but he always seemed so open, a no-secrets kind of guy. And she’d never found anything odd or even telling lying around when she tidied his apartment and put away his clean laundry. Jesse Maxwell had no secrets that she knew of anyway.
REED HURRIED UP THE STEPS to Jesse’s apartment two at a time. He had been trying to find his brother for six weeks, first on the internet and by phone, and last week he started in person, and now he had a real lead.
The apartment door opened into a kitchen, with a dining and a living room area as one continuous room, one continuous small room. He could see a bedroom and bathroom through the open door off to the left.
Everything was in order and clean. Not a thing out of place. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but neatness was not it.
So not like the drop-it-anywhere Jesse he had known. The place was as orderly as his own condo, and he couldn’t imagine living any other way. Jesse could and did. Helter-skelter best described the life the Jesse he knew led. Maybe miracles did happen.
Reed pulled out his mobile phone and ran his finger across the screen to boot it up. Two bars. Good enough.
He needed to speak to his business partner. Corporate investing seemed to go better when his and Denny’s complementary brains studied the deals together. Denny looked at things more from the people angle and Reed from the logistics side. Together they understood better than most the motivations and financial implications of buying businesses and real estate for their business clients.
But right now, Denny was also working on a personal issue for Reed.
Reed placed the call.
“You found civilization. Impressive,” Denny said instead of hello.
Reed laughed. “I wear my battery out checking for service.”
“Find anything out there, and where is there anyway?”
“I’m in St. Adelbert, Montana. Cheery little burg buried in the mountains where my brother has an apartment.”
“But no pay dirt?” Denny was perceptive.
Reed looked around and then decided the bedroom might be the best place to start searching. As he neared the bookcase along one wall, he stopped for a moment. On the top shelf sat the photo of him and Jesse with their parents Abby had mentioned. That Jesse had it was a wonder. That he displayed it made him think Jesse might not hate his family as much as he pretended.
“Reed?”
Reed moved on. “But—he’s not here. Hasn’t been for a while, a couple months.”
“Then you won’t want to hear that your mother has been in again asking if you found anything.”
“I wear out the rest of my battery listening to her voice mails.” He opened the top drawer of the beat-up old dresser and picked up a paltry pile of cancelled checks from the local bank.
“I told your mother I’d call her if I heard anything from you.”
“Thanks, I know it won’t stop her from coming into the office and I promise I’ll make that up to you some day.” The checks were mostly to Abigail Fairbanks in nice, neat penmanship, only the signature was Jesse’s. The memo lines said rent, cleaning and laundry. That explained why the apartment was so neat.
“Don’t think I haven’t got things figured out, buddy.” Denny’s tone held a mock challenge.
“What’s that?” Reed played innocent.
“Your mother is the reason you went out there instead of hiring someone else to do the legwork.”
Reed gave a gruff sound that probably passed for laughter. “Might have been. I need you to see what you can find on Abigail Fairbanks. She’s renting an apartment to Jesse.” He gave Denny the address listed on Abby’s checks and then moved around the things inside the drawer to look under them. A few pairs of new underwear and some unmated socks, one with a hole in the toe. Nothing else.
“Related to Angelina? Oh, and I know it’s a little late, but I found Angelina. She’s in the army. Apparently, she was given a strong recommendation by a judge to find some meaning in her life.”
“Sounds like Jesse’s type. Abigail is Angelina’s sister.” Angelina was apparently a wild woman. He wondered what Abby was like. Her mass of dark curly hair, warm brown eyes, snug-fitting flowered shirt with its seductive V of buttons and jeans said she had a figure that probably drew a crowd of men. People in Denver had been happy to regale him with stories about Angelina, whom they called Lena. None of the neighbors knew much about Abby, not even her name.
“From what I can tell, Angelina hasn’t been in any trouble since she left for Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
She’s in the Middle East right now.”
“Do they have any other siblings?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“Angelina might have a child. A little boy came to the door when I was talking to the sister. He called her Aunt Abby and she called him Kyle.”
Denny laughed. “Are you sure the child is a boy? Many gender related names are crossing over to the other side these days.”
Reed made an exasperated sound. “Who am I to know? I’ve paid so little attention to kids in my life, it could have been either, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had seen the kid’s face.”
Denny shuffled papers. “Wait. I think I have info about a child, but the sources, apparently a bit on the drugged-out iffy side, said—yeah.” The paper shuffling stopped. “They thought the kid was a little boy and might even have belonged to the sister. They rarely saw him. The sister took care of him anyway.”
Reed pulled on the handles of the second drawer. The drawer stuck, but when he pulled harder it opened only to contain a very old pair of jeans and a couple T-shirts, each with a rude saying.
“Maybe the kid lives with the aunt because Angelina isn’t mother material.” Much like Reed’s own family. One brother stayed and made something out of himself, turned the family misfortune around. The other brother couldn’t be bothered with responsibility, family or otherwise, and just disappeared into the West. And then there was their mother…
“There’s more.” Denny rustled more papers. “Seems to be some confusion because they are both A. Fairbanks.”
“Go on.” The next two drawers were empty. Again a reflection of his brother’s life.
“Apparently their Denver departure was rather abrupt and it might have had to do with the sister and not Angelina.”
Reed put his free hand flat on the dresser top. “Any details?”
“I’ll see what I can find out. I assume you don’t want me to tell your mother anything.”
“That’d be correct. Thanks, Denny.”
Reed hung up and crossed the room to where a wood-framed picture sat on the bedside table. The photo was of Jesse, Angelina, a toddler and Abby and it looked to be a few years old. Abby looked serious and the others were grinning. The kid was probably the child on “Aunt” Abby’s porch. He picked up the snapshot. The boy looked familiar, but maybe that was because all kids looked the same to him, they just had different colored hair.
He placed the picture back on the table and continued searching. There was nothing in the bathroom except a dry, cracked bar of soap and a neatly folded towel. On top of the refrigerator in a basket was an old letter from their mother ranting and raving in the tone of a chronic alcoholic. This would be the address Abby had used. It was their summerhouse in the Chain of Lakes area and no one was there this year. The letter would probably arrive in Evanston soon and the housekeeper would forward it to Reed’s office in Chicago with any other mail that might upset his mother and contribute to a relapse into the bottle.
Where the hell are you, Jesse?
ABBY TOSSED TOYS INTO the wooden “pirates treasure” box while Kyle ran to get a new game, undoubtedly leaving another mess on the floor outside the game cabinet as he tried to decide which one. There was nothing left of the cookies but crumbs and Kyle had beaten her at most of their half dozen games of Candy Land.
All the time they played, she wondered if she had done the right thing, letting Jesse’s brother into the apartment. Legally, she supposed the apartment wasn’t Jesse’s anymore. He hadn’t paid the rent due before he left, he kept meaning to and now his brother had.
Maybe Reed would find something she didn’t know about and get a clue as to where Jesse had gone after Utah. A stab of dread hit her as she thought of something happening to Jesse.
She picked up a picture of the four of them. It had been taken at the zoo in Denver and she’d had a copy made for Jesse. They were so young in the picture. Lena had just turned eighteen when Kyle was born and he was barely two in the picture.
Abby always wondered about Jesse and Angelina, how their relationship went.
“Is Mommy scared?” Kyle stood, holding the Shoots and Ladders game.
Abby put the picture back and smiled at Kyle’s sweet face.
“Maybe she is sometimes.” She handed the photo of his mother in uniform to Kyle and he left a kiss print on her face where he’d placed so many others. “But she’s in a place where there are a lot of people to make friends with. I bet she misses you a lot, though.”
“She left her bunny slippers. Do you think she misses them?”
On Kyle’s feet were large pink bunnies with floppy ears and black button noses.
“I think they look great on you,” she said, and smiled.
He grinned and then his expression grew serious enough to wrinkle his forehead. “I’d be scared.”
What did she say to that? She couldn’t tell him not to be scared, but she could listen.
“You’d be scared?”
“If I had to go and live with strangers.”
She reached for him and pulled him into a hug. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about that, you rascally rabbit slipper wearer. You’ve got me and your grandma here.”
She tweaked his nose and he grinned again.
“Do you promise, Aunt Abby?”
“I promise,” she said with as much animation as she could stuff into her tone.
The doorbell rang. In the reflection in the hallway mirror, Abby could see Reed Maxwell silhouetted in the sheer lace curtained window of her front door.
“Is that the man again?” Kyle wiggled out of her arms. “Can I see him this time?”
“I want you to stay in the house. I don’t really know this man. He’s a stranger.” And he’s poking and prying. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know how he found out that Lena and Jesse were friends. And if he found that out, how much else did he know? And what did he plan to do with that knowledge?
“We don’t like strangers. Do we?” he said in a serious little-boy tone.
Abby tugged one of his blond curls. “We want to be safe around strangers. That means you stay inside right now. I’ll put a DVD in if you want.”
“Land Before Time. Land Before Time.”
She popped in the kid dinosaur DVD as the bell rang again.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please stay here.”
He gave her a half nod, already holding the remote control in anticipation of the movie starting.
Ah, if life were that simple.
Now all she had to do was send Jesse’s nosy brother away and she could watch the movie with Kyle. She should clean the bathroom and address a few cobwebs, but she wanted to spend as much of her day off with her young nephew as she could. Being a nurse at the only clinic in St. Adelbert didn’t leave her much free time.
Abby opened the door and this time stepped out onto the porch to greet Jesse’s brother. “Did you find anything that would help?”
“There’s not much there.”
“Rolling stone and all that. It’s too bad he’s not here. If you had come in the spring…”
He seemed as if he was trying to decide something. Maybe he just wanted to make sure he asked all his questions before he got back in his rental car and left town.
“I’ll give you my phone number and if you think of anything else, you can call me. Anytime.” Abby felt an urgent need to reassure him and send him on his way.
His brow furrowed.
“I don’t mean… I mean I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she hurried to say and then to prove her point she sat down on the top step and invited him to sit. His brother was missing, after all. There had to be some middle ground between the bum’s rush and trying to keep Kyle’s and her little world undisturbed.
He declined to sit, but descended and put one foot on the lower step as he had earlier. He was tall, and sitting, she did feel at a disadvantage. Maybe that was good. Let him think he had the upper hand.
“Do you know where in Utah he went hiking?”
“There are several parks—Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and more—but he didn’t name one specifically.”
“Do you know if he went hiking alone?”
“He usually did. He said it gave him the space to think.”
“Was there anyone else in town Jesse was friends with?”
“Maybe, but he didn’t confide in me. Like I said, he and Lena were friends. She lived in the house with me for a little while.”
He nodded toward the house. “Is that little boy Angelina’s child?”
Abby turned to see Kyle peering out the window beside the door.
