Promise to a Boy. Mary Brady

lived here.”

      “You’re a good woman, Mom. You always were.”

      “You have to say that. You’re my kid. Have you heard from Lena?”

      “Not since the email I got last week. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” It had actually been twelve days and Abby wondered if it was time to escalate to worry. “And I’ll drop Kyle off in the morning tomorrow as usual and pick him up when I’m finished at the clinic.”

      “I’ll see you, and maybe I’ll get a date planned while you’re at work then.”

      “Don’t do it on my account.”

      “Goodbye, you ungrateful child.”

      “Bye, Mom.”

      Abby put the handset in the cradle, sat back and folded her arms across her chest.

      She wanted to ask her mother if Lena had ever talked about Kyle’s father, but knew it would do no good. If Lena had said anything, their mother would have said it didn’t matter or it wasn’t important. That’s what she had always told them when they asked, demanded, or even begged her to tell them about their father. He packed up and left when Abby was six and Lena was a toddler. The last thing Abby remembered about her father was him yelling at her mother about having to spend too much money on a kid for Christmas, more specifically, the doll Abby had to have.

      She thought about Reed and Jesse’s parents. She at least had one good one, not perfect, but good.

      After a few moments, she turned an ear to the house. Quiet. Way too quiet.

      “Kyle?” When he didn’t answer, she called louder. Still no answer. He had to be outside.

      She stopped at the kitchen window and looked out into the yard. Reed Maxwell stood on the top landing of the apartment stairs, watching something below. A perplexed, contemplative look skewed his features.

      Abby leaned closer to the window to see what he was looking at. A deer? A flock of wild turkeys? A bear?

      Whatever it was, it was out there with Kyle.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ABBY FLEW OUT THE BACK door without another thought and stopped abruptly on the back porch. No deer or turkeys or bears. No fascinating or dangerous wildlife at all. In the shade of the tree, in the sandbox, Kyle sat pouring sand into his big yellow dump truck.

      Abby studied Reed on the landing outside the garage apartment. The look of speculation on his face suddenly made sense.

      He knew.

      Reed Maxwell knew or at least suspected Kyle might be his nephew. He acknowledged her presence with a nod and then glanced down at his phone.

      Abby wanted to tear across the yard, grab Kyle and run as fast and as far away as she could, but she stayed where she was, holding her breath. If she overreacted now she might stir up something that was best left untouched. Maybe he didn’t suspect anything about Kyle and Jesse, but a strong reaction from her might start Reed on a path he might otherwise not have thought to tread.

      She figured he had gone on his fact-finding mission in St. Adelbert, although it wouldn’t have done any good. If any of the townspeople knew anything, they would have spoken up, if not to her, then to the sheriff, and Sheriff Potts would have told her.

      What if Jesse’s brother pressed her for information about Kyle? Could she lie? Tell him she had no ideas about Jesse and Kyle?

      Kyle played on, oblivious to both adults.

      What she would not do was run. She had run in the past—more than once—from St. Adelbert to the big city. When the big city beat her down, she ran back to the small town, dragging her sister and Kyle with her. Her sister in turn convinced Jesse to come to the St. Adelbert Valley where the four of them lived for a short while in a loose family-like structure.

      Abby had even bought this house in an attempt to anchor them all here, for all the good it had done. If St. Adelbert wasn’t safe, where in the world was?

      She chanced a glance at Reed.

      Backlit clouds played at the tops of the mountains behind him as the sun had already begun making its way down into late-afternoon sky. He lowered his phone and reached up to push his hair back. He seemed to be trying to make a decision. To get closer to Kyle for a better look? Snap his picture? To grab the boy and make a run back to Chicago?

      His phone rang. He gave it a look of distaste, and then he thumbed the screen, stepped back inside the apartment and closed the door.

      Abby huffed out a breath of relief and Kyle filled his dump truck with more sand. He was a dear child, the perfect mix of sweet and rambunctious. Imagining life without him in it, even for a little while, had her rubbing the ache in her chest.

      “Kyle, sweetie,” she called and when he looked up, “come on in. We’ll go get a present for Angus’s birthday party.”

      Kyle jumped up, flinging sand from his clothes.

      “Is it today?” His voice squealed with the glee of a five-year-old anticipating his best friend’s birthday party.

      “No. Today’s Thursday and the party is Saturday. Can you figure out how long that is?”

      His face scrunched up and he silently began to mouth the days of the week as he held up successive fingers. His face lit. “Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Three days.”

      Abby knew in Kyle time that was correct.

      His life was simple, gloriously simple, and she hoped she could keep it that way. Hoped she could keep her promise to Lena to “keep my boy safe while I’m gone.”

      “’S’go!” He grabbed her hand with a sandy one of his own.

      IN THE APARTMENT ABOVE the garage, Reed held his phone a few inches away from his ear while Maxwell and Anderson’s newest and possibly most lucrative client vented.

      “I don’t see how they can say they’ll sell that piece of land to us and then say they won’t.” His client’s voice blasted. It was dinnertime in Chicago. Why wasn’t this man at home bothering his help?

      With part of his brain Reed listened, knowing it wasn’t, as the man said, about the property. It never was. It was about power and who would have the upper hand. The other half of his brain, in the meantime, tried to sort out the possibilities about his brother and the boy playing in the sandbox. When he saw Kyle hunched over the dump truck looking determined, the familiarity about the boy clicked inside his head. His look and his mannerisms reminded him of Jesse as a child.

      Reed pinched the bridge of his nose as the client went on about what he kept referring to as the “untenable position.” It didn’t seem to make a difference what nationality, what business, or what deal, the stakes in their purest form were about who would keep or gain the power and the control.

      “There is always a solution,” Reed assured the man.

      “We need to meet in person, if not tonight, then tomorrow morning.”

      “I’m not in Chicago right now.”

      “What do you expect me to do? I’m going…” And the rant continued.

      Grow up first and second, go learn not to parry a feint. The seller wasn’t really retracting the offer. He was pretending to attack his opponent’s position, pretending being the key word. They might as well be princes fencing for the fair maiden’s honor. It was no different.

      “Denny Anderson already has you penciled into his calendar,” Reed said when the man took a breath. “He thought he might need some one-on-one with you tomorrow. I’ll have him call you in the morning.”

      Mollified, the man thanked Reed for his time, and, he wheezed out, “prompt attention to the details.”

      Denny had warned him about the tenuous situation the land