Forever Promised (45 page)

Her stomach was big enough to set her knitting down on when she went to take a drink of chocolate
without
the coffee, and she had one of those O pillows under her ass to help stave off the hemorrhoids. With all her comfort needs attended to, it was a perfect moment.

Until Kimmy brought up the one subject guaranteed to kill a moment, shoot it in the heart, strangle it, and stomp on it, dead.

“Benny?”

“Yeah?” The baby blanket was coming along—not as fast as Benny usually went, but that time on her ass had given her an edge.

“You think you and Crick might be ready to talk to your sister?”

Benny dropped a stitch and spent longer than she needed to finding it and fishing it back up through the delicate white wool. Crick wisely put down
his
knitting, because his stitches were painstaking enough without losing them.

When she had her knitting situated (and didn’t have an excuse not to broach the problem), she rested it on her stomach and tentatively looked at Crick.

Crick was regarding her patiently, like he’d been waiting for her to make eye contact. Whatever he saw there, he was the one who took the lead.

“Is she still a flaming twat?” he asked, and Kimmy hurriedly covered her mouth with her sleeve as she spit out hot chocolate coffee or whatever the hell Crick had been pouring down their throats that made Benny need to pee.

Benny didn’t even check the floor to see if Parry had heard. She’d heard, and Drew’s strangled “Dammit, Crick!” proved it.

Kimmy wiped her mouth and shook her head. “Okay. How you’re not straight and we’re not dating, I will
never
know. But yeah. She’s still not sweetness and light, okay? If you can imagine his mouth on the girl from
The Exorcist
, well, then, there you go.”

“And we want to talk to her why?”

Crick smacked her with his lame hand—
hard.

“Dammit, Crick!”

“Oh, sure, but flaming twa—twinkie is a bad thing to call someone!”

“You
hit
me!”

“She’s our sister!”

Benny whimpered. “Well, is it so bad I’ve been pretending she’s not?”

When she’d first come to The Pulpit, she’d wanted nothing more than for Missy and Crystal to come live with her. She had it
good.
For the first time in her life, she had comfort, and someone who cared, and a reason to work in school and a room that didn’t smell like piss and mildew. She’d wanted that for them too.

But seven years had passed. When she and Crick had been sending them hopeful gifts, that had been one thing. But this wasn’t a gift or an “I missed you so much.” Benny and Crick had gotten out, and Crystal and Missy hadn’t. It wasn’t their fault—never had been—but bearing the brunt of Missy’s hate because Benny had gotten out of the house was just not something she wanted on her plate right now.

“No,” Kimmy murmured, and that quickly she went from just being a friend to being on the clock. “Benny, it’s not so bad. You and Crick tried, and there had to come a time when you moved on with what you had. But… this whole Sweetie thing—”

“Has there been any word?” For Mikhail’s sake, please?

Kimmy shook her head no. “And see, Mikhail—they used to fight like cats and dogs. Sweetie was his favorite, we all knew it, but your sister—it was like she went out of her way to piss him off.”

“Mission accomplished,” Benny said, because, well,
duh
!

Kimmy shook her head. “No. You don’t understand. She thought she was doing it because she hated him, but really?” Kimmy put down her knitting for a minute so she could try to talk with her hands. “You don’t see the dynamic at Promise House. I’m not a leader—I’ve
never
been the leader. But I can be a good little soldier, and I’m fine with that.”

“Well, yeah,” Benny said, thinking about it for the first time. “Shane’s the leader—he’s the big daddy bear—”

“And Mikhail, whether he sees it or not, is the mama. Well, from what I know about your house growing up,
nobody
wanted the daddy bear’s attention, am I right?”

“That would be damned accurate,” Crick said evenly, and Benny winced.

“Good. But what about mama bear?”

“We… we
wanted
it,” Benny said, and then she looked at her brother. “But, you know, Crick sort of filled in. She… she was really just… I don’t know. Void. Not there. Absent.”

Kimmy nodded like she’d known this. “Well, for a little while, Missy had a mama bear that gave a shit.”

And Benny got it. “Oh. Oh no.”

Kimmy’s voice got a little thick. “He… he tries to hide it, but he’s still so hurt. When he opens his mouth to ask a kid to do something, you can see—sometimes he’s asking for Sweetie, and then he remembers, and he has to find another name. He… he almost hit her, the night Sweetie disappeared. Shane stopped him, but… you didn’t see his face, Benny. It was like… like when he shut down the part that wanted to kill your sister, he shut down any part that could have given a shit. And she… she misses it. She misses
him.
And she’s given up trying to get his attention. She doesn’t act out anymore, but… she doesn’t wash her hair anymore. We have to remind her to brush her teeth. She’s… she’s….”

“Void,” Benny repeated dully. “Absent. Not really there.”

Kimmy nodded. “Exactly.”

Benny sighed and resumed her knitting thoughtfully. Next to her, Crick did the same.

“We could come and see her, right?”

Kimmy smiled a little. “Yeah. That would be great. Tomorrow the kids are all going to the mall—it’s sort of a special event. Everyone has money saved, and it’s a good chance for them to go get something that they really want. We’ve got a chaperone for every two kids—do one of you want to go?”

“I’ll go,” Crick said quietly, throwing his yarn.

Benny looked at him, feeling hormonal and weepy and grateful. “Yeah?”

Crick patted her arm gently, taking the sting out of where he’d thrown his hand at her before. “You said it yourself, Benny. I was the mama bear. That sounds like what she needs.”

Benny gave it up and let her eyes flood over. She grabbed his gnarled hand and brought it to her lips and kissed it. Her stupid useless brother. Deacon may have saved her when she needed it, but damn if Crick hadn’t tried to do it before then.

“You were the best mama bear a girl could have,” she said, and Crick wiped carefully under her eyes with his thumb.

“Practice,” he said with a little smile.

They both picked up their knitting at the same time. It wasn’t until she heard Jeff snoring in the corner of the couch that she looked up and realized he’d been asleep through the entire exchange, and she choked back a giggle. Kimmy and Crick giggled too, and until Deacon walked in, the only sounds were the low babble of the television, their needles, and the rain.

Crick
:
Things to Wake Up To

H
E
DID
what Kimmy had asked, right? He showed up with his wallet and the little sedan Deacon had bought for him when he’d returned from Iraq, prepared to be the good big brother and spend time with his sister.

Kimmy greeted him as he pulled up. She made the little finger-up gesture, and he unclicked the car door. She hopped in and said, “Keep it idling, hon. I think you’ll be turning around to go home.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.” Kimmy actually leaned against his arm, and since the car was in park, he humored her and gave her a one-armed hug. “She… she stole something this morning. It was something stupid—a book one of the other kids was reading—and she left it on her dresser. Normally this would be her third strike—we should already be sending her to juvie—but….”

Crick filled in the blank. “That’s what she wants,” he said sadly.

“Yeah,” Kimmy murmured.

“Well, can I talk to her?”

“She’s in the timeout room,” Kimmy explained. “It’s not going to do much good, but it’s the punishment we set out, right? Marion is going to stay and watch her, and, well….”

Crick looked up and saw the rest of the residents lined up on the porch. They were talking animatedly, and behind him, Shane, Mikhail, and Lucas were all waiting to move their vehicles into place to pick up kids. He wondered which lucky bastards got to ride in Shane’s GTO, and at the same time he wondered which poor fuckers would have to ride in the giant Chevy van Mikhail had nicknamed The Purple Brick
.
And then he put that aside and wondered, “What should I do?”

“Come by next week,” Kimmy said. “We’ll set up a time and not warn her until an hour before. In a way, the fact that she did this is a good thing.”

“Explain the hell out of that!” Crick snapped and then felt bad.

Kimmy toyed with the end of her waist-length braid and shrugged. “It’s the first sign of life we’ve seen from her since December. She was actively trying to get away from you.”

Crick groaned and leaned his head against the steering wheel. It was a basic Saturn sedan, gold on the outside, cream on the inside, vinyl steering wheel cover. All things considered, his discussion in Jeff’s Mini Cooper had been a lot more fun. “Wonderful. Fucking wonderful. You know I’m going to be a father soon, right? And this kid—who I raised until she was, like, nine—won’t talk to me. Why was it we didn’t come see her earlier?”

“Because your family situation was six kinds of fucked up,” Kimmy said. “And she didn’t want to see you then either. That’s what the place is for, Crick—they say they don’t want to deal with it, we sign the papers that say we respect that. Your stepdad died, and, well, Shane and I just keep putting off having her sign a new agreement, so we can do stupid shit like try to get her to talk to you.”

Crick nodded. “Stupid shit. This was stupid shit. Do you think Benny would want to keep that baby? She’s a good mom. She’ll be fine. I mean, who wouldn’t want Deacon’s baby? Ouch!”

“Stop being an asshole. You don’t mean any of that, so stop saying it. The situation is fucked. What can I say? This is the first time her accountability for her actions has ever stared her in the eyes and spit in her face. She’s not taking it well.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to the fucking family.”

Kimmy gave a surprisingly kind smile. “The human family, Crick. We all fuck up. Sometimes the consequences are….” Her voice dropped. “Out of proportion. Out of proportion for our original sin. I mean, look at the frickin’ Bible, right? All they did was eat an apple.”

Crick actually smiled at that—and then Kimmy got out and he went home.

T
HAT
had been the last time he’d tried—and the last time anyone had talked about it either. Of course, it was weird the way that stuff could come back and kick you in the ass.

“Crick! Crick! Wake up!”

Crick squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “Benny, what in the hell—?”

“Look—you can
see
it kick this time! Look!”

Crick grunted. Yeah, sure, that’s what she’d been saying for the past month, and Deacon had actually seen it. “You woke me up to tell me the baby’s kicking? Aren’t you
tired
?”

Being tired was the whole reason Benny had stayed over. They’d painted Parry’s old room and turned it into the baby’s room that weekend, and it hadn’t turned out bad. The field of daisies stretched along all four walls, with the crash of the sea beyond it. A horse stood in the middle of one wall, ankle-deep in daisies, and everything three feet from the ceiling and up was a cobalt sky blue with big puffy clouds. A girl or a boy, this baby was going to have something to
see
when it laid in the crib.

The crib actually arrived when they were in the middle of painting.

Deacon had assembled it, and the changing table as well—and that was a whole other story. While he’d been putting the crib together, Drew had cleared out Benny’s old room, and they’d debated whether or not to leave Benny’s bed there or to make it a playroom. They’d decided to split the difference, but Crick needed to paint
that
one too, so they left the bed in the center of the room and, well, Crick had more work to do that weekend.

His game arm and leg ached, his back ached from compensating for them, and his good arm ached from painting. His head ached from the paint fumes (in spite of the open window into the rainy night), and his stomach muscles ached from… hell. From holding up everything else.

And he was still in better shape than Deacon.

The only thing that had driven Deacon inside to help them with the rooms had been getting stepped on by the damned horse. His boots had stopped some of it—although his instep was pretty damned bruised—but the horse had been shod and the shoe had sliced through his jeans and peeled the skin off his shin to the bone.

Drew had the horse in the pen and Deacon in the truck to the ER before Crick even knew he was hurt. Benny had stuck her head outside to call for lunch and they were gone. She put on her mud boots to lead the horse into the stable and then rubbed him down before returning back to Crick’s chicken soup waiting for her at the table with Parry. (Parry
loved
painting with them. She
especially
loved the little shower cap Benny bought her to keep paint out of her hair. There had been an incident when they’d been getting the mother-in-law cottage ready that none
of them were likely to forget soon.)