Page 8 of Stone Promises

Ethan laughs. “Boy was Mom pissed. She had to entertain eight second-grade boys for two hours until their parents came to pick them up. She sent Kyle and me to scour the neighborhood for you but we never found you. You were gone the rest of the day. I think you were grounded for a week after that.”

“Where did you go?” Charlie asks. “Did you find Mallory?”

Everyone is on the edge of their seats, even the ones who pretty much know the story. They’re acting like this is more interesting than my latest blockbuster movie. “There was only one place I knew she’d be. In the treehouse her dad built for her. Nobody else knew that was where she went when she was sad. I found her up there crying and I laid down next to her on the sleeping bag she kept there. We fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after dark. Dozens of people were looking for us.” I turn to Ethan. “I think I was grounded for a lot longer than a week.”

“So what happened then?” Kendra asks. “Did Mallory just keep calling you Thad? I mean, obviously the name stuck with you or you’d never have chosen it as your stage name.”

I shake my head. “No, she started calling me by my real name. But as we got older, every once in a while she would call me Thad as a joke.” I can’t help but break out in a huge smile when I tell the rest of the story. “When I was fourteen, she played an elaborate practical joke on me. It was my first day of high school and when my teachers called role, they all called me Thad. I had no idea what was going on. How could every single one of my teachers have gotten my name wrong? I had to explain to them it wasn’t my name but they didn’t believe me. One of them even showed me her class roster that she said came directly from the student database. The school ended up having to call my mom so she could bring my birth certificate to prove my name.”

Everyone on the couch is laughing. “She was hilarious,” Ethan says. “Man, I loved that girl.”

Yeah, me too.

“I like her already,” Kendra says. “Sounds like she’s got spunk. How did she manage to pull it off?”

“It took me weeks to get her to admit it. And it wasn’t until I heard her mom talking about how she had volunteered to teach a CPR class at the high school over the summer. Her mom was a nurse . . .” My head falls back against the couch as it dawns on me once again that she died and I wasn’t there for Mal. Just one more crappy thing I did in my life to the people I loved.

“So Mallory was at the school with her mom and somehow changed your name in the database?” Charlie asks.

“Pretty much,” I say, picking at a thread on my jeans.

“And you moved to California a few years later and never saw her again until last night?” Kendra asks.

“Well, I came back for a visit once after moving, and that was the last time I saw her until yesterday.” I grab my glass off the table and down the rest of my champagne. “Hey listen, if we’re all done with this little trip down memory lane, how about we get some grub?”

Charlie gives me a sad smile. She gets that there are some things you just don’t want to talk about. “Come on, it’s time to eat,” she says, heading to the kitchen.

Eli’s cries are amplified through the baby monitor as we take our places at the table. Charlie laughs. “Every time,” she says. “I swear that child knows exactly when we sit down to dinner.”

Kendra’s face lights up. “Could I? I mean, if you think he wouldn’t mind a stranger holding him through dinner.”

“He’s three months old,” Ethan says. “He wouldn’t care if Charles Manson held him.”

“Oh, no,” Charlie says, being the perfect hostess. “I couldn’t ask you to hold him during dinner.”

“You aren’t asking,” Kendra says. “I’m offering.”

“She pretty much flew three thousand miles across the country to see Eli,” I tell Charlie. “She drools over the pictures I show her. No offense to your cooking, but believe me when I say she’d be more satisfied holding your kid than eating your meal.”

Kendra swats me on the back of the head. “Be nice,” she says.

“Come on, Kendra,” Charlie says, motioning to the hallway. “Let’s go introduce the two of you.”

Dinner is incredible. And to my surprise, Kendra is expertly able to maneuver a baby in one hand and a fork in the other.

Afterward, the champagne is flowing freely and my cousin and brothers are getting noticeably drunk. I stopped at two glasses myself. It’s always my limit. Alcohol was never my problem, but addiction isn’t picky about choosing its vice so I don’t want to tempt fate.

“You should call her,” Kyle says, slurring his words.

I shoot him a venomous stare. “And you should lay off the sauce, doctor.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, I know you never got over the girl. Those first months in Cali were fucking torture, bro. It was alwaysMal thisandMal that.It was nauseating how much you talked about her. Don’t you at least want to know what became of her? Doesn’t it interest you at all? And didn’t you guys have some kind of pact that if neither of you were married by thirty, you’d get hitched? What happened, Chad?”

“Shut the hell up, Kyle, and mind your own fucking business,” I say, leaping off the couch to walk over to the windows so I can pretend to admire the view.

“Kyle, don’t,” Ethan says.

“What?” Kyle asks. “Someone has to pull his head out of his ass. She was there last night. That has to mean something.”

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