Page 86 of Promise Me Forever

“Chad,” I say, frowning. “What are you doing here?”

“I was still in town, visiting my parents in the neighborhood. I just… Look, I know this is weird, but I just wanted to come by and pay my respects to the place. Whatever happened between us, I spent a lot of time in this house. I have a lot of happy memories of it, of you. Of Edith. Is that okay?”

He looks nervous but sounds sincere. He was a big part of my life for a very long time, and however badly things ended between us, I can’t erase that. He, in a very strange way, is also part of my family.

I spread my arms wide. “It’s your lucky day. I’m open for bear hugs.”

Chapter

Forty-Two

DRAKE

Fuck. Why is she hugging him? Why is she letting him touch her?

More to the point, why am I skulking here across the street, hiding behind an old SUV and watching it happen? Why aren’t I striding over there and punching the asshat in the face?

Because, I tell myself, that would make me the asshat. I left work early, knowing how hard this was going to be for her. Going through Mom’s things was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life—divvying them up between us as keepsakes, the unexpected kick in the nuts that came from the smell of her perfume lingering on her clothes. Things are just things, stuff is just stuff, until they become more. Until they are memories, precious reminders of what you’ve lost. Amelia said she wanted to do this alone, but I knew better. Or at least I thought I did.

Turns out she’s not alone anyway. She’s standing there on the front step, wrapped up in Chad and accompanied by Emily Gregor and a woman I assume is the famous Kimmy Park. All three of them knew Edith a lot better than I did. All three of them have been in Amelia’s life a lot longer than I have. She doesn’t need me at all, and I was stupid to think I was going to be some knight in shining Armani, riding to her emotional rescue.

I could still go over there. I don’t have to punch Chad in the face, no matter how much I want to. Instead, I could do something normal, like introduce myself properly to the women and kiss my girlfriend and help them sort out the house.

Hey, maybe we could all go out to dinner and talk about the old times. Except my old times with Edith, even my old times with Amelia, only go back a few months. I’m the new kid on the block, and I don’t like the feeling. It’s selfish and fucked up and wrong, but I like having her all to myself.

An ancient crone of a woman gives me the evil eye from a few doors down, and I suspect that must be Mrs. Katzberg. Before she can give the game away, I turn on my heel and stride away. Constantine dropped me a couple blocks from here, and I went to Wanda’s to get Amelia some cannoli, thinking the familiar food she always talked about might bring her some comfort. Now, the box hangs from my fingers, and I can’t imagine wanting to eat it alone.

If she can find some solace and comfort with Emily and Kimmy, or even with Chad, so be it. She deserves it. I get out my phone to call Constantine back, but Amber’s name flashes on the screen. She’s pretty much as fucked up as I am, which makes her one of the few people I could tolerate being around right now.

“Darling,” she purrs when I answer. “Can I talk to you about clowns?”

“No,” I reply. “But you can talk to me about what a shit I am. Are you free for a drink?”

“I remember that day so clearly.”I gaze off over her shoulder, clinking the ice in my Scotch glass. “I kind of wish I didn’t.”

“I know, Drake. I feel the same. I’ve gone over it so many times, spent so many hours wishing it had played out differently. That I hadn’t gone into her room to check on her. That shehadn’t been on so many head-fuck drugs. Most of all, that you hadn’t overheard it all.”

I stare at my Scotch, losing myself in the memory. It was about three nights before Mom died. With hindsight, I now know that she was on a lot of pain meds, doped up to the eyeballs to help her tolerate those final days. Days that counted down to hours, to minutes, to nothing, the pain getting worse and worse, her mind getting more and more messed up. As Amber puts it, head-fuck drugs. I think my parents hid a few home truths from us—like how long she actually had left and how much it was going to suck. Maybe they were protecting us, maybe they didn’t even know themselves. Maddox was only sixteen at the time, and I’m pretty sure they still saw all of us as babies anyway, no matter how old we were.

Elijah was already married to Amber, and they’d discovered that she couldn’t have kids a few years after their wedding, once they started trying. Both of them really wanted children, and Dad was keen on the whole family name being continued thing, so it came as a blow to everyone. We’re close, the James boys, and we all felt Elijah and Amber’s pain. Back then, she hadn’t shut down, the rest of my brothers hadn’t closed off from her, and she still felt like part of the family.

I was walking past Mom’s room that night, on my way back to my room after getting a beer from the kitchen. I was in my second year of law school, still living at home, although I was considering getting a place with my girlfriend pretty soon. Her door was slightly ajar, and I couldn’t help but hear her voice coming from inside.

“You’re so beautiful, Amber,” she was saying, her voice edged with a slight slur. Some of the meds made her sound like she was drunk. “We were so pleased when you and Elijah settled down—seeing your child married is a big moment. It’s such a shame that you’ll never get to experience it.”

I heard Amber gulp and stutter out a half-assed reply. I mean, I was shocked that my mom had said that, never mind Amber herself. “You look so healthy on the outside,” Mom continued. “Nobody could have guessed that you were barren.”

Amber’s gasp was loud enough for me to hear, and I was so shocked I dropped my beer. “I’m sorry, Verona. I know how much you wanted grandkids. I… I wish I could have given them to you.”

“It doesn’t change anything, does it? We all feel like this way, you know. It’s sad that poor Elijah has to pretend he doesn’t mind. And maybe he doesn’t mind right now. But he will. One day, he’ll resent you for what he’s had to give up. You shouldn’t have married my boy, Amber, knowing that you were broken.”

Amber was sobbing, and I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I burst into the room and confronted my mom even though she was so frail, so tiny in that big bed, her eyes bruised and drowsy. “Mom! What’s wrong with you? Why are you saying these things? None of that is true. Why would you even think that?”

She looked up at me, confused and groggy, and then back at Amber, as though she was seeing her for the first time. “Amber?” she said, sounding a bit more like her true self. “Why are you crying, darling?”

“She’s crying, Mom, because you just tore her to pieces about not being able to give Elijah kids. He loves her!”

I’ll never forget the look on Mom’s face as she stared at me, her mouth open in horror. Her normally supple skin was dry and thin, stretched across the bones of her face like tissue paper. Her beautiful dark hair had never grown back properly after the last round of chemo and lay in thin strands across her head. She looked old and sick, and nothing at all like my mom. The things that I’d just heard coming out of her mouth were not things my mom would have ever said either—she was the kindest, sweetestsoul, and I think that’s one of the reasons Amber and I were so shocked.

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