Today's Promises (Promises #2)(40)

“You told me the other day that I was strong,” I remind him.

“You are.”

“So?”

“Yeah, okay, but why push it?” He grabs my hand once more. “Come on. Let’s just get out of this place.”

Not angry, but needing to stand my ground and let Flynn know I’m done with being a prisoner of fear, I twist from his hold. “No, Flynn. We have to do this, okay? I have to do this. And I can. I finally can.”

He searches my eyes, and seeing the truth, he finally relents. “Okay, Jaynie.”

He then slides one of the heavy doors open the whole way, only to reveal more darkness and the stench of spilled booze from all the partying that’s occurred up here since this place was shut down.

Wrinkling my nose, I mutter, “Yuck. Let’s just get in there and see what we can find as fast as we can.”

In the end, though, Flynn turns out to be correct. Not about thinking we should’ve left in order to protect my emotions. No, I hold up just fine in the barn. It’s something simpler—the lack of lighting in the building—that makes searching nearly impossible.

But, first, we do try.

Among the eerie shadows of turned-over tables and busted-up chairs, we look here and there. Even so, we find not a single shred of evidence to indicate a girl was ever buried in the barn.

The only thing of interest I do come upon, like a sad blast from the past, is the going-away card the twins made for Mandy last summer. They never had the opportunity to give it to her, however, since Allison kicked Mandy out of the house in the middle of the night, days before her planned departure that would’ve fallen on her eighteenth birthday.

“Check this out.” I hand the folded piece of ivory parchment over to Flynn. “Remember when I found this card last fall?”

He nods, turning the paper over in his hands. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I meant to save it for Mandy back then.” I sigh. “I guess that day I found it, I wasn’t thinking straight. I must’ve set it down and forgotten about it. Shit, Flynn, I was so out of it by then I don’t even recall doing that.”

“There was a lot going on at the time,” he reminds me.

I shiver, and it’s not from the cool evening air. “There sure was,” I quietly agree.

I glance away, and he clears his throat. After a beat, he unfolds the card, revealing Cody and Callie’s pastel-inked heartfelt messages to the girl they’ve viewed as their mom long before they ended up in Morgantown with her.

We love you.

See you soon.

We promise to be on our best behavior so we can come live with you.

Don’t forget us, Mandy. You’re our mommy now.

Even in the near-darkness of the barn, I don’t miss the tears that form in Flynn’s eyes.

“I’m so glad the twins are with Mandy,” I murmur.

“Yeah,” he rasps, “I am too.”

I wrap my arms around him as I reach over and glide my finger over the twins’ sweet words. “We should take this with us and give it to Mandy, like I originally planned.”

“We definitely should,” Flynn says, before folding up and pocketing the card.

Before we depart we conduct one final search of the premises.

Coming up empty-handed the second go-round, Flynn insists we leave. “We’ll come back another day,” he says. But it’s uttered with little conviction.

I nod and agree, but the truth is, despite feeling better than I have in a long while, we need a break from this place. Healing may have been found up in the forest, but we need time for it to set in, like fresh oils on a painting.

As we depart, our return looms imminent.

But it will not come tomorrow… or the next day… or the day after that.





Flynn



Jaynie is healing, finally. And it’s a real kind of healing, not a back-and-forth dance between the past and the present.

I find out quickly that with healing comes change. Good, positive change and more than just one. There are changes for both of us, in fact.

One early morning, following a night with not a single nightmare, she and I come to a decision.

“I think we should ditch our secret stashes of food,” I declare. “We should start living like normal people. What do you think?”

“Yes,” Jaynie says, putting up no resistance. “I’ve actually been thinking that same exact thing.”

This is good, really good.

We don’t toss the food; that would be a waste. What we do decide to do is leave all the candy bars out in the open, on prominent display on the nightstand.

Fuck, that’s still rough.

The next morning, as we’re leaving for work, Jaynie remarks, “Shit, this feels weird. Leaving all our candy bars out in the open like that.”

“We have to stay strong,” I remind her.

“Yeah, I know.”

When I still sense hesitation, I add, “It’s not like someone’s going to come in our room and steal them.” I sound far more confident than I feel as I hurry Jaynie out through the door and lock up behind us. “We and Bill have the only keys,” I go on. “And Bill would never let himself in to our apartment, not as long as we still live here.”

“I know,” she replies. “But it still feels strange, Flynn.”