Keeping Promise Rock (34 page)

Deacon remembered the day his father died. He’d wanted to stay self-contained. He’d wanted to grieve like an adult, shoulder the weight of The Pulpit,
and be the older brother Crick had always needed. And then Crick had approached him like an equal, like a friend, and Deacon had leaned on him, fell into him, and another link of love had wrapped itself in the chain around Crick’s chest, whether he liked the weight or not.

Deacon had been so weak at Jon and Amy’s wedding. Weak and foolish and not thinking straight. The next day had been….

And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t say it was a mistake. He’d tried to give Crick everything—his freedom and love to make it perfect—and Crick had….

Crick, who had so many virtues Deacon admired, had suddenly been all about his one, most painful flaw.

Deacon looked at Promise Rock some more. Green-dappled shadows fluttered over the granite, the valley wind scoured the blooming flat of Levee Oaks, and he heard his own voice in the rushing quiet.

Please—I’m not here to fight, God. I’m not here to bargain. I’m just
here to ask. I kept my promises, as much as I could. Crick’s kept all of his.

This place, it’s our holy place, and we promised to be there for each other.

Please… just please. Please just let him live. I’ve got nothing to give you. I
can’t give up The Pulpit, because it’s not just mine anymore. I can’t
bargain with my life, because Crick’s going to need me when he gets
better. I can’t promise not to kill myself if he goes because I’m the next
best thing to a daddy, and Parish taught me better than that, so it would
be a lie. So I’ve got nothing, God. I’ve just got “please.” Please. Please.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but he was thankful to Lucy Star for her patience. Eventually, though, he had to move. Lucy Star deserved a nice canter, and his body was moving with the horse again, and that was the best therapy the world had to offer.

He spotted a rattlesnake on his way back, and his sense of responsibility spoke up and insisted he’d been goofing off for too long.

Benny found him in the garage, opening up the gun safe.

“Deacon!”

He looked up, startled, and saw that her face was white and she was shaking. “Benny? What’s wrong?” And then both of them together said,

“Has there been any news?”

Deacon blinked and closed the safe, keeping it from snicking shut with his ass before he turned to look at her. “There hasn’t been any news—I saw a rattlesnake moving in from the west field. Can’t let it set up shop, right?”

A considerable amount of tension flowed out of Benny, and she put her hand out to the doorframe to steady herself. Deacon made a connection that he didn’t think he’d ever make.

“Benny?”

She swallowed. “Yeah?”

“You and Parry—you’re mine. You’re”—and now he swallowed.

“You could be the only connection I have to Crick for a while. Parish raised me better than to leave people who need me, okay? That wouldn’t….” He breathed deeply and went for honesty.

“I can’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind, but one thought of you sent it running on its way, okay? No matter what happens, I won’t be letting you down.”

Benny nodded vehemently, and then, because she was Benny and so much like her brother, she launched herself at Deacon with enough force to back him into the gun safe and leave a bruise on his hip that would be there for weeks.

“I just saw the gun and got so scared,” she confessed, and he whispered into her hair (dyed an amazing color purple this month), “I know, baby. But I won’t leave my girls, okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded, but she was crying, and he held her for a long while after that. Finally she sniffled and wiped her face on his shirt and laughed and said, “But could you do me a favor?”

“What, Shorty?”

“Could you have Andrew go shoot the rattlesnake? The last time you did that you ended up shooting a horse—I don’t think your luck with guns is any better than Crick’s.”

He couldn’t help it. He broke into wet, snotty giggles, and so did she, and they clung together and giggled and cried some more until they heard the baby making noises to let them know she had woken up from her nap.

Benny wiped her face again and ran in to get the baby, and Deacon closed the gun safe very carefully and went to get Andrew. All things considered, Benny was probably right.

So they waited that day in some sort of terrible limbo. That night, when Deacon would usually be texting Crick, he called their DOD contact instead. The gruff, kind-voiced man had been replaced by a crisp, no-nonsense woman, and she told them that Second Lieutenant Francis had come through his first surgery and was waiting to stabilize before his second. “Call us tomorrow for an update,” she finished, “or we’ll call you if anything changes drastically.”

“Oh good,” Deacon snapped, feeling like his entire life had slipped into a surreal universe where air had turned to Jell-o. “So every time the phone rings, we get to think Crick is dead?” 232

The woman in Germany gave a surprised little snort and became a human being. “No, sir, I’m sorry—we’ll call you if he’s stabilized too.

Please, don’t assume the worst. The doctors say he’s fighting pretty hard.” Deacon mumbled “thank you” and hung up. “Fighting hard?” he asked, even though Benny hadn’t heard that part of the conversation.

“He’d goddamned better be.”

The phone rang even as he said it, and he snatched it up and said,

“How is he?”

Jon said, “I was hoping you could tell me, you stupid asshole—how hard is it to pick up the goddamned phone?” Deacon snorted and passed on the newest update, and Jon said, “And by the way, I stopped Patrick from selling the yearling.”

“Why’d you do that? We’re going to need the—”

“Plane tickets and hotel fare are on me, Deacon.”

“Don’t make me beat the shit out of you,” Deacon growled.

Wonderful. Another asshole who didn’t think he had any pride.

“Backatcha, dumbshit. My family has six gazillion travel miles that they never use—you get them. My parents owe you for raising me, so shut up about it.”

Deacon took a deep breath through his nose and prepared to say
No,
thank you anyway,
when Jon said, “Don’t tell me we’re not family enough to do this for you, Deacon. It would break my heart.” Deacon let out that deep breath. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured, giving Jon the numbers and vendors so he could pay for their tickets. He didn’t tell Jon that they would probably have to sell the yearling anyway, just to keep making payments and feed the family while they were gone. It meant too much to his friend to piss on his parade now.

And then there was more waiting. The next morning Crick was back in surgery, and they were off to do their thing. Benny came back from Amy’s with a scarf that could have fit around the house, and Deacon suggested she make it a little wider the next time and maybe make a blanket for the baby. Benny blinked at him, looked at the four miles of knitted acrylic rope she’d produced, and said that might be a good idea for something to do on the plane as well.

That night, Crick was out of surgery and fighting for his life. Deacon and Benny didn’t even pretend to go to bed. They sat on the couch and watched the DVDs of Crick’s favorite shows one after another until they Keeping Promise Rock

fell asleep, Deacon on his end and Benny on hers. They were in the middle of season four of
Gilmore Girls,
the one with the guy in it who reminded Deacon of Crick, except Crick’s eyes were brown and his smile was a lot goofier.

The next day there was no change, and Deacon hung the phone up and put his fist through the wall of the laundry room, not even sure he’d done it until Benny came running in with the first aid kit. But she patched up his hand, and he patched up the wall and was sanding it smooth when the phone rang again.

It was the older, gruff guy, and he sounded really tired, but he told them that Crick was out of danger.

“We’ll be shipping him to Virginia tomorrow morning—you’ll be able to see him the next day.”

Deacon sank to the floor then, still holding the drywall bucket, and said a silent “thank you” to God, who was apparently done beating the shit out of them and had decided to leave them to their own devices to screw things up.

Benny trotted in and saw him, and because she was Crick’s sister, she thought the worst. “Crick… Oh my God…
Crick
….”

“Pack the baby’s bag, Benny,” Deacon said serenely. “We’re going to Virginia.”

They were about done in then. They had to sleep that night, and sleep early, if they were going to have the ranch ready to take the red-eye out of Sacramento the next night. Deacon lay in bed that night looking around. The walls were still painted olive green and purple, and the trim and the pillows and the finishing touches were all still Crick’s. Yeah, they had two years on them now, but they hadn’t been hard years—Deacon had probably slept on the couch more than he’d slept in his own bed.

Sometime since February, he’d bought a calendar with fuzzy kittens on it and pinned it in the spot he was saving for Crick’s promised sketch.

He’d been thinking Hunk of the Month, but….

He closed his eyes and thought of Crick’s body and wondered about his own. In spite of his glib texts to Crick, he hadn’t felt anything—desire, arousal, anything—for as long as he could remember. It was like his body had slipped under, into some world of its own, on sexual hold somehow.

The only exception had been the drunken mistake with Becca, and he couldn’t remember that, not that he wanted to much anyway.

What would it be like to share a bed again?

Imagining Crick breathing next to him was what sent him off to sleep.

The plane ride seemed over much too quickly, and Deacon only remembered the hotel room so he could get back to it. He and Benny were tear-assing down the hall of the hospital when they were abruptly stopped by the sound of a familiar—and unwelcome—voice.

“I don’t care what he says,” whined Melanie Coats. Her usually tangled hair was back in a smooth braid, and she’d recently purchased a blue polyester pantsuit. “My entire church put up for this plane ticket—

I’ve got to see him.”

“The patient doesn’t want to see you,” the doctor with the clipboard said sharply, looking at the two MPs next to him with expectant eyes.

“Well of all the ungrateful….” Melanie turned away and caught sight of Deacon and Benny watching her warily as she stalked away.

“It figures you’d be here,” she sneered. “We’d hoped the Army would make a man out of him—but not with you hanging around to—” Deacon stepped in and ducked his head, pitching his voice very, very low. “Your son was injured for his country, Melanie. If you don’t want the social worker to show up at your house instead of mine, you’d better not say a word to damage his reputation here. That’s his decision, and I’ll die to honor it.”

It was an empty threat—Deacon and Benny had told the social workers repeatedly that Crystal and Missy were in worse straits with their parents than they had been at
The Pulpit
,
but no one had listened. Melanie didn’t know that, though, and Deacon was fifteen yards at most from finally seeing Crick, and he put all of that frustration in his voice.

Crick’s mom backed away, looked furtively around, and slunk off to her hotel room, Deacon assumed. He knew it wouldn’t be over—Driving While Gay was bad enough, but a lot of people went to Melanie’s church.

He was sure his poor ranch would suffer some more bad business, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to spare Crick one minute of that woman’s company, especially now.

The two MPs hadn’t left the doctor’s side, and they looked suspiciously at the three of them—even the baby—as Deacon approached and asked for Crick’s room.

“Only family is allowed,” they said sternly.

“I’m his sister,” Benny said, “and this is my baby, and”—she looked at Deacon, and Deacon could see her eyes widen as it sank in. Deacon might have been Crick’s one and only emergency contact on the list, but he wasn’t—at least in the eyes of the military—family.

“This is my husb—”

“Bernice Angela Coats, you will not say that lie when your brother is just down the hall,” Deacon snapped, and Benny turned unhappy eyes towards him.

“But Deacon….”

“Go see him,” Deacon said roughly. “Let him know we haven’t blown him off for a day at the beach, okay?” Benny bit her lip and nodded, eyes bright, and pushed Parry Angel’s stroller down the hall while the baby squealed happily into the echo.

“Look,” he said to the doctor, ignoring the MPs, “I don’t care what that woman said to you about who she is, but we’re his family.”

“Sir,” the doctor said, pitched at a whine—he was a busy man with things to do, and Deacon had no doubt about it, but dammit, this was
Crick.

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, Doctor,” Deacon snapped. “You listen to me. My father and I raised that boy. When he was nine, we took him in and taught him about horses and about family when his family taught him nothing but how to dodge a bottle. We celebrated his birthdays and his report cards and told him he was smart and had faith in him like nobody else in his life.

I was there when he turned eleven and his parents forgot his birthday, and I was there when he was twelve and got busted doing bad shit behind the bleachers. I was there when his best friend died in the tenth grade, and I was
there
,
goddammit, when that rank bitch dumped his shit on the lawn without so much as a ‘good-fucking-bye’ to him that same night. I was
there
when we scattered my father’s ashes and he cried like I couldn’t because it hurt so bad. I was
there
when he broke our hearts and took all that talent and signed up for the Army, and I am
here now—
not because my church sent me, but because I spent blood, sweat, and tears to see him well.
I’ll
be the one changing his bandages.
I’ll
be the one helping him to the bathroom.
I’ll
be the one driving him to physical therapy, and if that doesn’t qualify me to go in his room and see him right now then there is
nothing
on the planet that does.” 236