The Promise Between Us Read online

  Callum stood, tugged up his sweat shorts, and began to clear the coffee table. His calf muscles, toned from the long bike rides with Jake, flexed. As he reached for her empty glass, he threw a smile over his shoulder. His conciliatory smile. After years of watching his face in undergraduate and graduate seminars, she could read every expression. What went on behind those expressions was another matter.

  Lilah had never believed the student rumors that painted Callum as gay, but lacked empirical evidence until she turned up—here—with a thank-you bottle of bourbon after her graduate hooding ceremony. When she woke up naked in his bed, she couldn’t decide whether she’d won the state lottery or should never again set foot in North Carolina. But then Callum looked at her as if she were the eighth wonder of the world, and said, “When did you realize I was in love with you? I thought I hid it pretty well.” Although, if Maisie hadn’t been down at Pinehurst with the grandparents that weekend, if Callum hadn’t been plastered, if not for the alcohol, would she have found the courage to make the first move Callum still teased her about? Not that she could remember. Bourbon—evil stuff.

  One thing she did remember, could never forget, was the exact moment her teacher crush had exploded into love. It was at the beginning of her second year of grad school. Her period started while she was sitting in the front row of his class, wearing white pants. She pretended to gather her stuff as everyone shuffled out, but Callum lingered. Finally he walked over, squatted down, and said, “Is something wrong?” And then the warmth between her legs switched to a gush, and she was fresh out of options. After she explained she was having a female problem that didn’t play nice with white jeans, something she would never have confessed to another professor, he fetched a sweater from his book bag. “I always carry an extra layer as protection against the library’s air-conditioning,” he said. “Wrap it around your waist and I’ll walk ahead of you to the nearest bathroom. Then I’ll give you a ride home so you can change.” She’d slept with that sweater for a week, tucking it under her cheek and inhaling his scent each night before—

  “Daddy?” Maisie appeared in the doorway, dangling a piece of paper and her loved-to-death stuffed rabbit, Lulabelle. With a red pencil slotted behind each ear, she was wearing a typical Maisie creation of polka-dot capri leggings and a psychedelic T-shirt. Lulabelle, who was hidden when friends came over, rarely left the bedroom, and Maisie was trying hard to drop Daddy. She had started referring to Callum as my dad, in a way that seemed to imply You’re not my mom.

  “Hey, peanut.” Callum opened his arms.

  Maisie launched herself at her father, and they clung to each other, forming the impenetrable unit that was Callum and Maisie. The youngest of five, Lilah had been lucky if either of her parents remembered her name. At Maisie’s age or now, at thirty.

  “Oof, thanks for knocking the stuffing out of me.” Callum stroked the long red hair that announced Maisie as his daughter. What had she inherited from her mom? “Is something wrong?”

  “My homework, Daddy. I can’t do it, I simply can’t.”

  Hefting herself onto her feet, Lilah glanced at the paper in Maisie’s right hand. “Not surprising, sweetie. Math is an instrument of the devil and definitely not as much fun as making up stories.” Lots of fantasy stories with mythical mothers who had superpowers. No pressure there.

  “Your mom has a point.” Callum winked at Lilah.

  Maisie burrowed into her dad, and he made soothing noises. “Talk to me, peanut.”

  “Math is super annoying and I can’t get it right.” Maisie spoke in a rush and then held up her homework. A large hole obliterated the answer to the first question.

  “Sweetheart—” When Callum spoke to Maisie it was as if nothing else mattered. “Come to me before you get this frustrated. What are parents for if not to share the misery of homework? Let’s take this into the kitchen and gobble an entire pint of Phish Food!”

  Maisie pulled back with knuckles on her hips, her homework hanging from one hand, Lulabelle from the other. “Really? You are going to eat half a tub of ice cream?”

  “If you’re going to force me to do math on a Saturday night, I’ll need a vast intake of calories.” He tickled her and she giggled.

  They headed into the kitchen. Lilah picked up the sections of the paper Callum had gathered together for recycling and his two empty beer bottles, and followed.

  Maisie sat at the table, legs tucked up and Lulabelle stretched across her lap. Callum had already pulled out the Ben & Jerry’s and was rummaging in the drawer for spoons. He handed one to Maisie and offered one to Lilah. She shook her head and opened the stainless steel fridge in the high-tech kitchen that was nothing like her old galley kitchen. After grabbing a small bottle of Pellegrino, she leaned back across the counter to watch Callum do what he did so well: parent for two.

  “And Ava Grace is going all crazy girlie girl on me.” Maisie held up her palms in exasperated surrender. “She’s started talking about hairstyles.”

  “Not hairstyles.” Callum gave a mischievous grin.

  “Actually, yes, Daddy. She thinks we should be wearing matching ponytails and you know how I don’t like to have a ponytail. It hurts the back of my head! And I don’t want to be a twin. I want to look like me. But if I don’t start wearing my hair in a ponytail, she might think we’re not best friends anymore. It’s the causation of much stress.”

  “Causation?” Lilah laughed.

  Eyes wide, Maisie gave her the look that said, Oh, yeah. Giant cockroach.

  “Well, that’s super annoying.” Callum did his impression of a preteen pout. “So you had a falling-out with your best friend, and homework’s stinky.”

  “Affirmative.” Maisie picked at her toes.

  “Anything else to add to the list?”

  “Lilah’s right. Math is evil.” Maisie bolted up and dug into the ice cream.

  “And?”

  The fridge made the fizzing noise that still caught Lilah by surprise.

  “I think I was rude to Ms. Black. I didn’t mean to be, but I—”

  “Did you apologize?” Callum said.

  “Yes! Multiple times. But now I’m worried she hates me and she’ll be super glad when I leave for middle school. And I don’t want to leave her ever, and I don’t want her to hate me. Do you think she does? Hate me?”

  “Your teachers love you,” Callum said. “No one could hate you.”

  Maisie glanced at Lilah. Wow, that was so not fair.

  “I’m sure it’s fine, sweetheart. Ms. Black would have reprimanded you if you’d crossed a line, and as for Ava Grace, talk to her. You guys have been best friends since forever. I hate to think of you arguing.”

  “Oh, no, Daddy. We would never argue. Nev-errrr. But what if she decides she likes Ellie better than me because I won’t wear a ponytail? After all, three is a very difficult number.”

  “Friendships are tough, but you’re not responsible for other people’s feelings, and you have to be true to yourself.” Callum paused. “Never blindly follow what someone else wants you to do. There’s a word for that, when a person tries to make you do things—manipulation.”

  Hmm. Overkill for a comment on ponytails.

  “Talk to her,” Callum said. “Anything else going on in school?”

  “Actually, yyyes. I had to be on Parker’s team for ‘capture the flag’ yesterday, and he is such a cheater. He cheated so much that everyone was looking down on our team, and I had to say to Ava Grace and Ellie, ‘Please don’t blame my team for all these things.’ Cheaters are super stinky.”

  “Amen,” Lilah said.

  The kitchen clock ticked; Maisie looked at her dad, her gorgeous hazel eyes hidden by those horrendous black frames; the overhead fan hummed as the blades turned.

  “Did Parker get caught?” Callum said.

  “Oh, yes. Ms. Black never lets cheating go unpunished. It’s a carnation of lying.”

  “Incarnation,” Callum said.

  Maisie attacked
the ice cream, digging out the marshmallow. “I like the word manipulation. I’m going to remember it.”

  “Hey, stop eating all the good bits.” Callum snatched up the pint of Phish Food and clasped it to his chest.

  Maisie stuck out her chocolate-covered tongue, and Callum laughed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Shall we try this together, see if we can knock the homework out of the ballpark and then watch a movie on pay-per-view?”

  “I can stay up late?” Maisie grinned.

  “Sure. Saturday night with my girls? Sounds perfect.”

  “PG-13?”

  Callum peered over his glasses, and Maisie sighed dramatically.

  “Ellie’s dad lets her.”

  “One more word about PG-13, and there won’t be a movie.”

  “Fine.”

  “You know what, guys? Party on without me. I’m off for a long soak in the tub and an early night. And if either of you gets sick from gorging on ice cream, I’m not rubbing any tummies.” Lilah kissed the top of Maisie’s head and moved toward Callum.

  He circled an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a chaste kiss. “Sweet dreams, my darling.” Then he leaned in to whisper. “Wake you later?”

  “People! Child present?” Maisie made a slashing motion across her throat.

  As Lilah climbed the stairs, her family giggled in the kitchen below. Halfway up, she paused to catch her breath by the stained glass window Callum’s first wife had chosen. The garish purple-and-green iris design was on Lilah’s to-be-replaced list, but even so, it was unlikely she could exorcise the whiff of mold. No one had noticed that the porthole window leaked after it was fitted, allowing rain to seep into the frame of the house, undetected. The smell, a rotting memory of Katelyn MacDonald, lingered.

  Lilah started chewing her thumbnail and then stopped. Maisie had an unpleasant habit of gnawing on her fingernails as if trying to chew herself raw. Lilah had always prided herself on not being a nail-biter, and now, thanks to a dead woman, she was.

  What did it mean to be obsessed with a ghost?

  THREE

  KATIE

  Manipulating six thousand degrees of heat never lost its novelty. Neither did controlling power tools that spun and whirred and sparked. Through Katie’s auto-darkening helmet, her world was black except for the dot of green light, silent but for the sound that always reminded her of sausages sizzling or sparklers crackling. She released the trigger, and the green burst became an orange glow. Her MIG welder cut out with a satisfied puff.

  Katie flipped up her mask and slid out her earplugs, leaving them to dangle from the orange connector cord around her neck. Grinders and chop saws screeched and whined in the old tobacco warehouse with the leaking roof and occasional rodent. Other artists in the Durham Sculpture Workshop banged things together and apart as they turned scrap metal into treasure. Green Day’s cover of “Like a Rolling Stone” started blasting.

  Smiling, Katie leaned in to examine the tack welds on the backside of the frame. Four, one in each corner. Three was the easiest, but four was better. Next, she prepared for the weld bead, which would fill the space between the joined pieces of metal. She marked up the iron with soapstone, rested her left foot on the shelf under her worktable, and angled her body to be perpendicular to the weld.

  The helmet came back down, the earplugs went back into place, and sparks flew. Katie lost herself in the simplicity of the process: she pushed the trigger, electricity traveled down the copper-coated steel wire, electrons jumped from the tip of the welder to the metal, and the shielding gas sprayed out to push away the oxygen. Electrons, gas, wire, and heat all worked together to create a simple bind that, if done right, held.

  Damn. She couldn’t see properly. Ben, the star of the studio, who had taken her on as his personal project, taught her the two cardinal rules of welding: comfort and clear vision. When you couldn’t see what you were doing, it was time to stop. The welder clicked, and Katie tugged off her helmet.

  A baby cloud of smoke hovered over her work. She made fresh marks with the soapstone and kept her leather-covered fingers away from the weld. It might have turned to the consistency of silver putty, but it was still nine hundred degrees of burn. In the early days, before Ben had taught her about protection and safety, she made the mistake of wearing a cropped T-shirt to a welding class and came home with a burn across her stomach.

  Katie inhaled, her sense of smell the best early warning system against sparks landing somewhere they shouldn’t. She detected nothing worse than a burning residue reminiscent of a dentist drilling.

  At the back of her workbench lay That Perfect Moment, the piece for the frame she was welding. She had treated the old brass kickplate with various patinas: the splash of red was applied with heat, the blue waves came from a chemical reaction. The two dark shapes under the light of the mystical moon were the hallmarks of a Katie Mack piece. No one but Katie and her sister, Delaney, knew the secret: the shapes represented a mother and a daughter. But how to attach the ragged sliver of copper without losing the slight shadow it threw toward the figures? The problem niggled, threatened to become a delay. A cause for alarm. Katie tapped the worktop and stopped. If she slipped a washer underneath the copper, then bolted it, that would raise it enough to keep the shadow.

  A large hand pressed down on her shoulder, and Katie smiled. Even with his infrequent girlfriends, Ben wasn’t a toucher, but he knew never to surprise her during reentry to the real world. How had he learned so much when she’d given him so little to work with?

  She pulled off her gloves, removed her earplugs, and turned to the huge figure in a black sleeveless T-shirt and a tie-dye skullcap. His gray eyes were hidden behind red-framed safety glasses. As usual, they needed a good wipe. She almost reached for them, saying, Here, let me.

  “You missed another school group,” he said. “What’s the excuse this time?”

  “Kids in a place where a thousand things can cause danger isn’t my scene.” Katie lowered her safety glasses, turned off the gases on her welder, and undid the ground clamp.

  “Nor mine. One spark on a kid’s jeans, and—”

  “Can we not go there? Stuff of nightmares for me.”

  “Jesus, Katie. We keep having this conversation. I don’t want kids in here, either, but someone has to be the safety patrol, and you’re a natural with kids. I’m not. You should be the one in charge of the school groups.”

  “I can’t.” She didn’t mean to snap.

  With a sigh, Ben pulled off his glasses and skullcap.

  Katie glanced at her clock. She’d lost four hours to her art. “Sorry, I’m running late. Need to get back to the day job and write those fourth-grade items.” Ben had never expressed curiosity about why she wrote and scored standardized tests, but then he never asked the tough questions. Not even when, five years ago, she moved back to central North Carolina to become his intern with a determination that had surprised her and Delaney. And Ben.

  “I need five minutes of your time,” Ben said. “Don’t make me beg.”

  Trent wandered over. He hadn’t been around in days, thanks to the demands of his paid welding job. Ben never understood how anyone could work a mindless nine-to-five in welding and then find the energy to use the same process to create art. But Ben was earning his living as an artist; he could afford to be rigid. Or was it, quite simply, that he always knew what he wanted? Certainty—the one thing she craved, the one thing life could never provide.

  “What’s up?” Trent said.

  “Safety glasses?” Ben pointed at the box of glasses inside the door. Part of his new “safety first” campaign—implemented after Trent’s ophthalmologist had removed several shards of metal from his right eye—the box was mostly ignored.

  Trent replied with an impish grin. “Did you guys see the FireFest video on YouTube? I think they got my good side.”

  “You won’t have a good side if you don’t wear safety glasses,” Ben said.

  “Come on, man. Lig
hten up.”

  “I don’t do light. Katie—” Ben held up a hand. Two fresh cuts sliced his palm. “Wait two minutes.”

  And then he asked Trent about an upcoming class they had agreed to co-teach. They made a good team in the classroom, despite their different styles—and physiques. Thanks to all the lifting and hauling of steel, Ben was a Viking built for battle; Trent was a mix of scrappy street fighter and Dudley Moore in Santa Claus: The Movie.

  Katie finished clearing up and let her mind drift back to FireFest. The three of them had slept in Ben’s truck to save money. He insisted she and Trent take the back—the small woman and the small gay man—while he squashed his six-foot-four frame between the steering wheel and their crap on the passenger seat. Ben was quiet and distracted all weekend. Iron pours could bewitch with their primal, unchoreographed ballet of fire, but casting wasn’t Ben’s thing. He was strictly a large-sheets-of-steel guy and grew restless when he was away from his art for too long. No, he’d gone to watch over her in true mother-hen fashion. And in the snap of a millisecond, her mind bounced back to the place it shouldn’t go. But the annual photo of Maisie could arrive in Delaney’s PO box any day, and this waiting was always a time of atonement and, worse, hope. Cal was later than usual. Why? Why hadn’t he mailed the photo right after Maisie’s birthday? Had something happened, happened to Maisie?

  Katie pulled her phone from the flapped pocket of her leather apron. She needed to leave, get some air.

  “Coffee break in an hour?” Trent called out as he ambled toward his area.

  “You just got here!” Ben called back and then turned his gray eyes on her. “Don’t even think about leaving.”

  Katie glanced at the clock again.

  “Come on, you know it won’t hurt if you’re five minutes late.” He frowned at her.

  Yes, it will. I’ll be off schedule, and off schedule is a bad place for me.

  “The director of the Contemporary Art Museum emailed me last night. Everything’s going ahead as planned for our September show,” Ben continued. “And they’ve chosen the kids who are going to be our docents, or public guides.”