Page 58 of The Locksmith's Promise

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “You want to come over and show these young punks how to do it?”

I chuckled with relief. “I’ll be right there.”

By the end of the night, I’d grown a foot and a half. I’d never felt so goddamn tall in my entire fucking life. Playing with Miller again, laughing and hitting that groove like I hadn’t felt since my last gig with Drivetrain, with Mikey and Corwin watching, their faces rapt? Fuck. There was nothing like it.

Calling Maggie and telling her I’d bring Corwin home could only have been matched by us going home to her together.

Watching her laugh as Cor mimicked me by playing air guitar.

Standing on the receiving end of her bright smile.

The squeeze of her hand as I left.

Nothing in the past eleven years even came close.

I lay back on my mattress, which had more than fulfilled its promise of plumping up, and took out the harmonica Lucky and Minty gave me.

Holding it to my mouth, I closed my eyes and played softly.

The sweet, crisp notes washed over me and reminded me who and what I was.

Things were complicated, more complicated than when I left, and who would have thought that was even a possibility?

Maggie had raised our son on her own for a decade.

Lucky for me, she wasn’t married to someone else with a few more kids.

She let me hold her. In the midst of the pain I caused her, she let me hold her.

I closed my eyes and let the plaintive notes echo the pleas in my soul.

There was a chance for us.

There had to be.

14

Anchored

Baxter

Keith and Laurie lived in the last house on a dead-end street, woodland flanking them on both sides. It was a beautiful home, a family home, and it stood in vivid juxtaposition to the darkness standing at the ready to swallow me.

Deja Vue wrapped around me like a tourniquet as I slowed and parked at the side of the road. Like stepping into a nightmare from the past, I hoped to God I might finally get it right and never have to revisit this moment in time again.

Swinging down from the truck, I stood in the same spot I had claimed for three grief-stricken days more than a decade earlier.

For the past ten years, I’d floated from one place to the next, doing my utmost to thwart my demons. Since my return to Moose Lake, the past had risen up like a band of Lilliputians and taken me down to the ground, tethering me to all that I was, all that I’d wanted to be, and everything I lost.

Here, I couldn’t hide from the sins of the past.

They swirled around me with the force of a gale wind.

When I woke up that morning beside a very naked Jenny, I was horrified nearly out of my mind. In my haste to get out of bed, I fell out onto the floor on my knees with my back on fire.

I had no memory of the night before.

It was far from the first time I’d gotten black-out drunk, but usually I remembered why I got myself in that state.

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