Page 39 of The Locksmith's Promise

His deep voice carried back to me.

“You should know, Corwin isn’t the only one fantasizing about us being a family.”

10

Yesterday

Baxter

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.

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