Today's Promises (Promises #2)(30)

Allison is going to walk this summer, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.





Flynn



“We must come to accept that which we cannot change. Take comfort, however, in knowing there is a bigger picture at play in the universe. Yes, we may be blind when it comes to what the Lord has in store for us, but trust me, my flock, He will never give us more than we can bear. And, eventually, we will see the light.”

I’m listening intently to the minister, leaning forward on the pew, even. But not Jaynie. Nope. She’s too busy fidgeting next to me. She hasn’t heard a single word. Perhaps bringing her to church, to listen to this sermon, wasn’t such a bright idea.

Confirming my suspicions, she leans in to me when I sit back and whispers in my ear, “Can we go soon?”

“In a few minutes, okay? Hang in there, the service is almost over.”

Jaynie sighs, loudly. She’s clearly not pleased with my response. Smoothing the light cottony material of her latest thrift store find, a lavender-colored dress, she lets out an irritated groan.

Despite her agitation and restlessness, my girl still looks so pretty today. All dressed up, and with her usually loose auburn hair pinned up in a messy bun, I can barely keep my eyes off her.

Too bad she’s so unhappy with me. If she wasn’t, the first thing I’d do when we get out of here would be go home, let her hair down slowly in a cascade of curls, and shimmy that sheath dress right the hell off of her.

I don’t think that’ll be happening, though. Not after I dragged her to this Sunday service.

Attending church was all my idea. When I first threw it out, Jaynie looked at me like I’d gone crazy. I guess because we’re not overtly religious people. Still, I was hoping she’d find some solace in the minister’s words, especially when I saw in a bulletin someone left in the sandwich shop and it indicated today’s sermon was to be about ‘accepting that in our lives which we cannot change.’

From the look on Jaynie’s face at the moment, though, and her clear desire to go home, I think I was hoping for too much.

It’s a shame too, since we have a problem—a big problem.

Ever since Detective Silver informed us that without hospital records there is no case to build against Allison, and with the excavation of the old barn still looking like a bust, Jaynie has fallen into a serious funk.

Not only have her nightmares increased in frequency, but she’s been hoarding more food than ever. Plus, there’s a new development. Jaynie has taken to fastidiously cleaning our little apartment every Sunday, like—no pun intended—religiously.

The significance isn’t lost on me, Sunday used to be cleaning day at our former foster home.

“Oh, one more thing,” Jaynie blurts out, a bit on the loud side.

The white-haired lady on the other side of her shoots her an admonishing glare, along with an annoyed, “Shhh!”

Jaynie sheepishly replies, “Sorry, ma’am.”

In a greatly lowered voice, Jaynie cups her hand around her mouth and says to me, “We need to stop at the grocery store on the way home. I’m out of that Scrubbing Bubbles stuff. You know the one, the cleaner I like to use in the tub.”

Oh, I know it. I know it all too well. We’ve never had such a sparkling clean tub, all porcelain-white and shiny as all get out. The sink is amazing too, and the toilet. Plus, don’t even get me started on the glowing linoleum floor.

Despite the rigorous Sunday cleaning Jaynie has adhered to, she sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night simply to shine up something anew. I caught her just the other night when I got up to take a piss.

There she was, on her knees in the bathroom, scrubbing our already shiny-as-glass tub. As I whipped out my dick and let a stream of urine flow into the pristine toilet, she informed me—as nonchalantly as if we were having a discussion of the benefits of cleaning in the middle of the day, instead of in the middle of the night—that the tub absolutely had to match the sterile cleanliness of the sink.

“Whatever you say,” I murmured groggily. “They both look good to me.”

“Of course you’d say that,” she snapped back, eyeing me over her shoulder as I flushed the commode. “You don’t see all the dirt like I do, Flynn.”

“I guess I don’t,” I conceded, knowing then for sure that this cleaning obsession was another symptom of the bigger problem.

I was then ordered to squirt some of that blue stuff in the toilet. “Let it soak,” she told me. “You can go back to bed. I’ll get to it after the tub.”

She resumed scrubbing, and I left.

Heaven help us, but I truly think Jaynie believes she can scrub and disinfect our worries away. That’s what this latest obsession is all about.

Ah, if only things were that simple.

But if this new cleaning craze helps her cope, who am I to make her stop? I fear the alternative, anyway.

Patting her knee, I say in a comforting tone, “Sure, babe. We can stop at the store.”

Later, when we arrive back to our apartment—after the detour to the grocery store, of course—Jaynie shrugs out of her dress, and then throws on a pair of white boy shorts and a pink tank top.

Sighing, I sit down on the edge of the bed.

When Jaynie heads to the bathroom, as I knew she immediately would, she grabs up a sponge and the new can of cleaner we just bought.