Page 89 of One Last Promise

Moose nodded.

“I had sort of stepped up by then. My sister was ten, and I did a lot of the cooking. Made a mean pot of macaroni and cheese. And ramen.”

“And milkshakes?”

She didn’t know why her eyes wetted. But of course he’d put that together. Because Moose was exactly that thoughtful.

“Yes. My mom loved milkshakes. They tried chemo for a while, but after one round, it didn’t work, and she decided not to try any more. So Dad came home from deployment, and we went on a family vacation to Florida and . . . then she died, just a couple months later.”

“Wow.”

“He didn’t know what to do with us. He’d been gone for most of our lives, really, and . . . he could have gotten out of the military, but it was all he knew, so he went back in and put us in foster care. The last thing he ever said to me was that he’d be back. And then we pinky promised, and I never saw him again.”

She swallowed, hating how that still made her entire body ache.

“You didn’t have family in Minnesota?”

“No. Dad was an only, and his mom had died. His dad remarried, and the stepmom didn’t want us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Mom’s family wasn’t able to take us either. Her parents were in assisted living, and she had a brother, but Dad didn’t know where he was, so . . . yeah, foster care was theonly option. Dad worked with a family rep from the military, and we went with a family who understood military deployments. But . . . it didn’t make it any easier. Pearl and I felt orphaned.”

“I’ll bet.”

She’d closed up her Styrofoam box and put it on the dash.

“Pearl met Rigger when she was about fourteen. He was my age, two years older than her. That’s also when she experimented with drugs for the first time. Oh, I was mad. After our mom died of cancer, I thought, how could she do that to her body, you know? She saw our mom suffer, and all those drugs were destroying her too.”

He nodded. “But kids don’t think about their health. They’re just hurting and need to fix it. ”

“Yes. And I panicked. I threatened to turn her in to our foster mom if she didn’t stop using.”

His mouth made a grim line.

“Yeah, I know. She got mad and ran away, and I went out looking for her, and we both ended up in juvie as runaways. We switched foster homes then, to another military family, but not far enough away from Rigger, and it happened again.”

“Did your dad find out?”

“I don’t know. By that time, we’d gotten word that he’d gone missing, so . . . I figured I’d have to take care of her.”

“So you enlisted.”

“I was seventeen, took my GED and got emancipated. Then I joined up. Went to boot camp, deployed to Afghanistan.”

“What was your MOS?”

She picked up a plastic bag and put the empty containers in it. “Counterintelligence.”

He said nothing.

She looked up.

“You were a spy?”

“No. Hand me your container.”

He did and sheput it in the bag.

---