Page 11 of The Locksmith’s Promise (The Promise Duet #1)

Yesterday

B axter

I slipped into Miller and Maxine’s house undetected. Typically, they headed to bed once Mikey and his little brothers conked out. Miller and his wife were as deeply in love as my bandmates were with their girls.

Barrett and Willa.

Lennon and Junie.

Lucky and Minty.

So neatly in sync.

Maggie and I never had a chance, not with how my father set up the board, but I desperately wanted one. Maybe there was too much history between us, much of it painful and messy, but I couldn’t accept this ending.

Our story wasn’t over.

Not with the way she looked at me.

Not with the way my heart came alive when she was near.

I tossed my car keys on the battered tallboy, wincing as they clattered along the surface and landed beside the photo album I’d yet to crack open. Turning my back on it once again, I stripped down to my boxers and set my clothes on the well-worn, corduroy armchair in the corner.

Miller’s house was beautiful, and he and Maxine had more than ensured my comfort, but I needed space, a place I could make my own.

In Bridgewater, I’d come close. Maybe I should have brought the furniture I’d so painstakingly chosen, but not knowing if I would be staying, it didn’t seem feasible.

My boyhood bedroom, the one my mother custom decorated for me before she left, was the last place I truly called home.

When my father realized she was never coming back, he punished me for any real or perceived misconduct by taking something from me.

I began to hide anything I wanted to keep by giving it to friends to hold onto for me.

By the time he’d fully descended into the bottle, most anything of value had disappeared from my room.

I soon learned not to buy anything I didn’t want to lose.

The days of having to hide my things were over, but it seemed I was forever homeless. Rootless.

I had a line on a rental place on the same small block as Maggie and Corwin, but the landlords needed a couple more days to clean it up from the last tenant.

The little old lady who lived there before me left a lifetime’s worth of collectibles with no one in her family able to gather them until this past week.

God, I hoped to have more than a dusty collection of unwanted memorabilia by the time my days on earth ran out.

They promised I could have it by the weekend if I was willing to do the painting myself.

I jumped on their offer before they finished speaking.

It’s not like I didn’t have time on my hands, though I needed to focus on getting more work sooner rather than later.

It was difficult, moving back to a small town, where jobs were scarce. I would not endear myself to the people I left behind if I strode back in after ten years and stole somebody’s livelihood.

So far as I could tell, there was room for me. According to Miller, there was a high demand for handyman services if not general contracting, no locksmith in this town or any of the smaller hamlets surrounding us, and not a single guitar teacher for miles.

Standing in my boxers, I ran my palm over the front of the photo album, willing myself to get it over with.

My hand trembled.

Because here? Here was the history I missed.

The stories and memories we could have made together, forever lost.

My heart pounded in my chest because the family I wanted? The family I told Maggie I fantasized about us being?

It began without me, and the evidence lay between the pages of this book.

The silence of the house pressed in around me.

I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

There was never going to be a time looking at these pictures wouldn’t hurt. And maybe, to move forward with Maggie, I had to look back.

To understand where she was now, I had to know where she’d been and what she’d been through.

What they’d both been through without me.

Crawling across the bed, I settled with my back braced against the headboard. I stretched out my legs and crossed my ankles before gently placing the album on my lap.

I ran my hands over the cover, the faux leather worn, the flaking along the spine evidence of memories treasured long before they ever came to rest in my incapable hands.

I squeezed my eyes shut, tipped my head back against the wall, and opened the cover.

Braced myself.

And looked down.

Oh, God.

I sucked in a breath because nothing could have prepared me for Maggie.

Just as she looked when I left her.

My chest seized as my breath escaped in rough pants. My fingers shook as I stared down at her face on the page.

Maggie.

Oh, God. I wasn’t ready for this.

Not ready to see my Maggie’s sweet face sad and drawn.

My vision blurred, and I tipped my head back against the wall.

If only I hadn’t been drinking that night.

If only I hadn’t picked up the knife.

If only I’d left and taken Maggie with me, started fresh somewhere else. Together.

If only I hadn’t been afraid she wouldn’t come with me.

If only.

The two most hated words in the English language.

Pressing the flats of my fingers against my eyes, I steadied my breathing and swiped the moisture away. I had to do this.

I wanted to do this.

Inside me, the hunger to see Corwin grow up, raged.

The first few pages showed a mostly unsmiling Maggie with an ever-increasing bump.

I traced the sweet roundness of her belly with my finger, sickened at the knowledge of what I was doing while she’d been busy growing our baby.

The next page elicited a bark of laughter. Maggie’s tummy, round as a basketball, done up like a pumpkin for Hallowe’en with her mom and dad on either side of her in an apartment I didn’t recognize.

Why didn’t she come home when she found out she was pregnant? Wouldn’t she have been better off with her mom and dad than out on her own?

What could my father have done?

The next page showed a triumphant Maggie, face flushed, sweat dotting the perimeter of her hairline. Corwin lay on her chest, his tiny face red and disgruntled.

I swallowed audibly, forcing the lump in my throat to go down so I could go on.

Page after page told the story of that first year.

Maggie lying on the couch, Corwin sleeping on her chest, a plate of dinner I imagine had long gone cold on the end table beside her.

Standing in the church with him swaddled in white in her arms, her stomach still distended and swollen from childbirth.

She shouldn’t have been on her feet.

She definitely shouldn’t have been standing there alone.

Page after page documented the weeks that passed with Maggie appearing less and less often. Then a few pictures showed Maggie’s sweet face grown sallow and thin followed by a gap in time.

The dates on the pages leapt six weeks forward.

Grandma and grandpa were back on the scene.

Maggie’s face slowly filled out, her eyes coming back to life, a slow reawakening.

A small smile.

Then another.

Until she was back to the Maggie I remembered.

I was hungry to see more of her, but not disappointed as Corwin took centre stage.

A gummy grin. Two small teeth. Followed by two more.

Corwin’s first steps, Maggie clapping with excitement, her parents’ pride evident in their wide smiles.

Corwin’s nursery, decorated with music notes and guitar cut-outs.

God help me.

His first birthday marked by his first cinnamon bun, cream cheese icing smeared over his round, pudgy cheeks.

The tears in her pretty, kaleidoscope eyes.

Corwin Xavier Raynor.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

His middle name, the one we chose together.

And what had I been doing that first year? Drinking and fighting and fucking my way through every weekend.

Where was I the second year? Scraping myself off the floor, living hand to mouth in a roach-infested apartment.

The third year? In trade school. That was the year I bought a guitar to replace the one my father smashed over my back.

Then came music lessons and hours of practice between working every job I could get my hands on.

If I wasn’t working, I was playing.

Soaking my hands in ice water every night so I could do it all again the next day.

I joined one band after another before growing restless, striving to move on while stuck in the dreams of the past.

Ever searching.

Ever waiting to be worthy despite my betrayal.

Despite that first year.

There were no more women for all the years after.

But I doubted that would make up for the betrayal of the first.

Could she forgive me?

Had there been others for her?

I closed my eyes. The thought soured my stomach. But page after page of the dull, flat, look in her eyes hurt more.

Nothing prepared me for what I found on the last page.

Pressed between the plastic sheets of the page lay the love letter I wrote her after our first official date.

The delicate gold chain I bought her adorned with her initial.

And mine.

Pressed wildflowers from one of our hikes.

A blurry photograph, our foreheads together, mouths open wide in laughter.

A close-up of her hand in mine.

A picture of me on my first birthday, sticky cinnamon bun crushed between my chubby fingers, sitting on my mother’s knee. Her hair obscured half of her face as she dipped her face toward mine, but her smile shone wide and bright.

I could almost feel its warmth.

Why didn’t she take me with her?

Running my finger over the sheet, I traced a dinner receipt, a movie ticket stub, and a hotel key.

Evidence of my broken promise.

Please, God, give me a chance to make good on it.

Closing the page on the past, I set the album aside and stared into space.

I’d loved her. I’d loved her with everything in me, and even yet, I had no idea of the treasure I’d held in my arms.

If only I could go back, I’d do everything differently.

I’d do more.

Give more.

Give fucking everything.

Fury for the sins of the past, the sins of my father, and the sins of that first year lashed every corner of my mind like a bullwhip.

There was nowhere to hide from the shame and regret. Powerless and hopeless, companions I knew well and swore I’d never visit again, swept me into despair and slammed the door shut.

“Please.”

A guttural sob broke from my throat.

I grit my teeth.

Please.

The first tear fell.

Creating a crack in the dam for the rest.

One on top of the other, sticking in my throat, choking me.

I turned onto my stomach and pressed my face into the pillow like I had done all too often as a child, praying it muffled the sound as my past rose up to suffocate me.

How much suffering is one soul supposed to bear?

Every muscle in my body locked tight against the onslaught of grief that had never been permitted to surface.

I didn’t hear my bedroom door open, but I didn’t acknowledge Miller when he said my name.

I didn’t move when the door snicked shut or when he cursed at the sight of my naked back.

Nor did I object when his weight hit the mattress, or when he curled his massive body around mine.

But when his tears hit my face, I latched onto his wrist. The years melted away like the last grains of sands slipping through the glass, and I cried like it was yesterday.

For the yesterdays I missed.

And the yesterdays I wished had never been.