Page 1 of Every Promise Broken

PROLOGUE

Whit Bowman, Five Years Ago

Pulling up outside of my house, I put the car in park, but I don’t get out yet. It’s been a long, grueling day, and I need a minute of silence and solitude before I go inside and face the brick wall that’s erected between me and my husband. A wall I didn’t build, nor did I want in place, but it’s one I can’t penetrate either way. In the matter of a few months, I’ve watched my once-loving husband transform into somebody I don’t recognize. I’ve watched grief eat at him, destroy him from the inside out, and rip us apart. Sixty-seven days ago, my sweet, heart-of-an-angel husband lost his parents in a terrible, brutal car accident, and he hasn’t been the same since.

Grief is something I’m familiar with, having lost my own mother a few years ago, but where I leaned on him through it all, he’s pushed me away. He’s pushed everybody away. Losing a parent is a pain unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced, and you’re bound to come out of it a different person than you were before, but dammit, I miss my husband. I miss feelinghis touch. His love. I miss sharing how our days were over dinner. I miss dancing in the kitchen late at night. I miss him so damn much, and the hardest part about it all is, physically, he hasn’t gone anywhere. When I finally work up the courage to go inside, he’ll be in there, quiet and closed off. Probably on his second or third glass of whiskey of the evening.

He’s here, but not really. Mentally, he’s checked out.

Sometimes I don’t even know if he realizes I’m there. We sleep beside each other every single night, but at some point after I’ve fallen asleep, he leaves. I’ll wake up in the morning, and he’ll be passed out on the couch in the living room, in the rocking chair on the front porch, or even clear out in the loft above the barn.

After several long minutes, I exhale a deep, exhausted sigh, turn off the ignition to my truck, and I climb out. It’s time to face the music. The sad, lovesick part of me holds on to the hope that maybe tonight will be different. Maybe tonight he’ll open up to me, let me in. Let me hold him. Maybe he’ll finally cry on my shoulder and let me take his pain away. Maybe we’ll finally connect in a way we haven’t since before the accident. Maybe tonight will finally be the night that we make love again. It’s been months, and I barely remember what it feels like to have his hands on my body, his hot breath on my neck.

The house is dark as I walk through the front door. Kicking off my shoes and hanging up my coat, I pad through the quiet home in search of Conrad. My guess is he’s out on the back porch, a drink in his hand and a hollow look in his eyes. Either that, or the bedroom. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d come home from work to dinner on the table and a kiss on the cheek. I don’t bother turning on the kitchen light as I pass through toward the back door. The window sitting in front of the sink that overlooks the backyard tells me I’m right. He’s out there. The bottle of whiskey is opened on the counter, with an amber messtrickled beside it where I’m guessing he spilled while pouring himself a glass.

Conrad doesn’t bother looking up as I step onto the porch, nor does he glance my way when I drop down into the swing right beside him. A pack of Marlboro Reds sits on the table between the two chairs, a Zippo on one side of it and his nearly empty rocks glass on the other. Silence settles between us for a moment. It’s tense and uncomfortable, and still so foreign to me. It never used to be like this. Things never felt this hard between him and I.

“How was your day?” I finally ask, my voice quiet, timid. Like he’s a wild animal I’m trying not to spook.

That at least gets him to look at me. His once vibrant chestnut eyes now regard me with an emptiness I don’t recognize. They’re muted, like he’s hollow inside. Like everything that once made Conrad who he is has been carved out.

“Fine,” he replies. It’s what he says every night when I come home and ask him that same question. Four letters. One syllable. A lie. He’s not fine. He’s destroyed and riddled with grief that he doesn’t know how to deal with. He’s numb.

“Have you eaten yet?” I ask. “I can make us something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

My eyes dip to take in the glass filled with whiskey. The cigarettes he never used to smoke. The way they’re taunting me. “Have you eaten at all today?”

Conrad’s jaw clenches as he bites down on his molars, and I already know before he says a word that was the wrong question to ask. “I’m not a fucking child, Whit.” There’s a harshness to his words that, before his parents died, he’d never taken with me. It’s still jarring, even months later. “You don’t need to treat me as such. Yes, I’ve fucking eaten today. There’s no need to babysit me.”

Flinching at his tone, my thumb rolls my wedding ring around on my finger over and over again as I force myself to breathe in, then out. Wanting to soothe him without pissing him off further. “I know you’re not a child, Connie,” I say softly. “I’m just trying to help. I’m worried about you, and you won’t let me in.”

“You don’t need to be worried about me,” he bites out, grabbing the glass off the table so roughly it sloshes over, covering his hand. “I said I’m fine.”

My heart shatters for him over how not fine he is, but it also breaks a little for me too. My husband feels like a stranger to me, and I don’t know how to fix it. It feels like my marriage is drifting away right before my eyes, and there’s nothing I can do.

Before I have a chance to respond, he’s out of the swing and in the house, the screen door slamming behind him. Hurt pricks the back of my eyes and tears spill down my cheeks. I don’t know how long I sit on this porch, letting all the emotion expel from my body, but by the time I go back inside, Conrad is nowhere to be found. I don’t bother looking for him, either. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to talk, and there’s only so many times I can be pushed away before my ego can’t handle it anymore.

My marriage is the single most important thing in my life, and all I want is to be there for my husband. But the more time that passes, the more I think our marriage died that night in that crash alongside his parents. I’m losing him, and I’m terrified.

1

Whit Bowman

Present Day

Iremember being a kid, and my biggest worry was whether I’d get to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy on television after school. I also remember how badly I wanted to grow up. Be an adult who got to do what he wanted, when he wanted. I could watch Bill Nye at midnight with no parents around to tell me that staying up late watching TV was bad for me. Hell, I couldbecomeBill Nye if that was my dream.

And I did want that for many years.

The scientist who everybody thought was cool. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized not everyone thought he was as cool as I did. In fact, most people thought he was kind of weird, and a good majority of the kids at school dreaded days when we had to watch his videos.

But I thought he was thecoolest. Science was my favorite subject in school. Same with math. They came easily to me forthe most part, and what didn’t come as easily challenged me, and there’s nothing I love more than a good challenge of the mind.

Growing up was so important to me as a child. I was in such a hurry, and now that I’m here, in my early thirties, with entirely too much on my plate, I’d rather go back to elementary school lunches and Bill Nye on PBS after my homework was done.

Those were simpler times. I had no idea what I was asking for. My meals were planned out for me, my laundry washed and folded, and I never had to worry about pesky adult things… like money. Or in my case, a lack thereof.

---