Page 57 of Promise Me This

We trudge over to where Niamh stands at the edge of the water, arms crossed with a disapproving frown turning her into an admonishing mother rather than my child. She hates to get dirty, and she hates to be splashed. This behavior, as far as she’s concerned, is unacceptable.

When I get close, she holds out a finger to keep me back. “I don’t wanna get wet.”

“Neither did I,” Leo huffs, but it turns into a laugh. And then we’re all laughing, two of us shivering, as we make our way back to the car.

The stars are just starting to wink at us in the darkening sky, and the evening breeze chills me to the bone, but the image of Leo doubled over with laughter—truly consumed by joy—for the first time since her return is enough to make my inevitable pneumonia-induced death worth it.

“Can we get takeaway?” Niamh asks, hopping into her booster seat.

“Sure, there’s a shop on the corner up the road,” I say.

Leo’s eyes go wide as she joins us in the car after ringing out her hair as best she can. Her teeth are chattering to the same tune as mine, but at the sound of deep-fried food, she perks up. “Can we get a spice bag?”

“How could we not?”

“With garlic mayo and curry sauce?”

“Mixed together?” Niamh’s lip curls around the question.

I roll my eyes. “That’s just as disgusting as it was twelve years ago, but sure. We’ll get all the sauces.”

Niamh giggles, and Leo settles into her seat, satisfied. I rest my hand atop the gearshift, ready to get on the road. Just as I start to move toward first gear, Leo places her hand over mine, guiding me through the motions, and I know that she remembers. I’m realizing neither of us could’ve truly forgotten.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leona

“What on earth are you cleaning now?”

I glance over at the doorway, where Siobhan is peeking in with her eyebrows scrunched together. Dusting my hands off on my cotton pajama bottoms, I check my work. The bookshelves have all been emptied and wiped down, and are now ready to be refilled. I’m surrounded by stacks of books that run the gambit from historical romance to bird watching, each sorted into their respective genre.

“The shelves were a bit dusty, and I thought it’d be easier for guests to find books to read if they were organized into categories.”

She swipes at the sleep pooled in the corners of her eyes as she makes her way across the room. Her nightgown dusts the floor, its yellowing lace edges frayed from years of wear. A thick wool shawl is draped over her shoulders, and suddenly I realize how chilled I am.

Siobhan selects a tattered copy of Pride and Prejudice off the top of the romance stack, turning it over in her hands. “Do you not sleep well, Leona?”

The grandfather clock in the foyer chimes then, low and resounding, punctuating her sentence. It’s two in the morning. I’ve been at this for an hour.

I study my nails. Painting them was my first distraction. When that didn’t work, I came downstairs. “Occasionally I have a hard time, and it’s easier if I clean instead of tossing and turning in my bed.”

Her head tilts to the side. “Is it something with the room? I could get you a space heater if it’s too cold up there, or I think they make little machines nowadays that make noise if the house creaks too much for your liking—”

“The room is perfect, Siobhan,” I interject. “It’s not a new thing.”

Concern couples with understanding, filling her features. “The divorce then?”

I scoff, more harshly than I intend. It doesn’t go unnoticed. “It long predates the divorce.”

“What did your ex-husband think of it?” She makes her way over to the couch and settles in, props an elbow on the back, and rests her chin in her palm so she can still see me, as if I’ll disappear otherwise.

“He didn’t,” I mutter. I try to comb through the memories of our marriage, fuzzy as they seem even now, just a year out. Nick was kind, albeit disinterested. Our marriage was not an unhappy one, just a blissfully neutral bandage that patched up the gaping wound of my twenties. “Nick didn’t know what he wanted, I think, and so he convinced himself he wanted me. Until the person he did want finally came along.”

Alarm flashes in her gaze, but I wave a hand, dismissing her concern.

“It’s okay. I’m truly happy for him,” I say, and I mean it. When he told me he wanted a divorce, that he’d found someone else, someone that felt truly right, it only broke my heart because I felt I’d failed someone yet again. It didn’t break my heart to lose him.

She nods, accepting my sincerity for what it is.

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