Promise Me (Book One of the Kirkland Family)

Promise Me: Chapter 2

Promise Me: Chapter 2

Justin Kirkland watched the red Honda tear out of the gas station’s parking lot.  Hannah Baker.  He had not laid eyes on that redhead in thirteen years.  Not since going to Luke’s high school graduation and hearing her sing on that stage, her battered guitar in her arms and her angelic voice filling the auditorium with words of tomorrow.  At that time, he’d just gotten himself married...to Beth, because he’d been stupid enough to not wear a condom one night.  That was a mistake he’d never made again.

Stupid had been his middle name for years.  The only good thing that came out of the marriage had been Josie.  His baby girl.  His own angel.  His beautiful headache.

He didn’t know how to raise a girl on the sunrise of her teen years.  And Josie was determined to make it impossible for him.  Dumping her off on his parents for the next three weeks seemed the only answer to his situation.  He had to do this one job himself.  There was no way around it.  The contract was too valuable to let someone else handle the assignment of testing the Navy’s new communications program, and he couldn’t take a thirteen-year-old girl on a submarine in the middle of the Atlantic.  If Josie thought she’d be bored with her grandmother and granddad on their soy bean farm for three weeks, then Justin could only imagine how she’d feel in a metal tube surrounded by all that water.  Not that the Navy would let her anyway.

And he’d be damned if Josie spent that time with her mother.  Beth’s new husband, Richie, was trouble.  Justin knew it the first time he saw the man.  He didn’t like the way Richie looked at Josie.  He didn’t like the way the sonofabitch looked at Beth, either, but his ex-wife wouldn’t listen to him now, anymore than she did when they were still married.  All he could do was protect his little girl and fight with Beth’s lawyers over supervised visitations.

God, he was tired of fighting.  He’d seen enough of that overseas while in the Navy.  Justin climbed into his truck and glanced at Josie.  She stubbornly turned away from him.  She looked so much like her mother, it gave him heartaches.  Would she turn out like Beth?  Seducing men to get what she wanted?  Justin tried his damnest to instill good morals in his daughter, but at thirteen, she was already talking about boyfriends and dating.  And her friend, Laura, wasn’t helping the situation.  A week ago, the two of them snuck out of Laura’s house when Josie slept over, and they went to a kegger at a high school boy’s house.

That had been the last straw.  In the past year, the girlfriends skipped school several times, stole from a store at the mall, and got caught smoking behind the football stadium bathrooms.  At first, Justin figured Josie was just trying to gain his attention or rebel against his divorce, even two years later, but nothing he tried -- the talks, the groundings, the arguments -- did any good.

A few weeks of summer in the middle of soy bean fields wasn’t ideal for a girl desperate to grow up too soon, but Justin was out of options.  At least here, in his hometown in Arkansas, she couldn’t get into too much trouble.  She’d have to walk ten miles to get to town, and he knew that the people here were a little more grounded than in most places.  They’d keep an eye on her.  They were nosey like that.

As he drove along the gravel road, leading to his parent’s farmhouse, his thoughts turned to this place he grew up in.  He couldn’t count how many times he yearned to get away from it, and now, it felt like it was the only place he belonged.  When he entered the Navy after 9/11, he’d been excited to see the world and kick some terrorist ass.  At that time, he’d been married to Beth for almost three years, and kicked his own ass for the biggest mistake of his life.  Josie had still been only a babe in his eyes.  Leaving her was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he selfishly enlisted anyway.

During the six years of his military career, he learned about radios and radar.  He discovered he had a knack for the technology... finally something he was good at besides driving a tractor and hauling soy beans.  Now, at the age of thirty-four, he was one of the best damn independent communications contractors in the country.  Which was why he had to spend most of June on a submarine, training naval officers on a new radio system.

Sighing as he parked in front of his dad’s beat-up Chevy, he turned off the ignition and looked at his daughter.  “Josie...I know you don’t want to be here, but you used to have so much fun with your grandparents.”

“There’s nothing to do here,” she grumped.

“There’s the horses,” he reminded her.  “You used to love to ride.”

“I have no friends here,” she said sourly.  “No one to talk to.”

Justin saw Mary Alice Kirkland, his mother, come out onto the wrap-around porch, flapping her arms at them and smiling broadly.  The dark night could not quite hide her happiness at having her granddaughter for a good chunk of the summer.  Justin shifted to Josie.  “Please don’t be difficult for them,” he said softly.  “They love you.  And it’s not forever.  When I get back, we can spend the rest of your vacation together.  I’ll even take you to Alaska if you want, like we did that one summer.”

Josie rolled her eyes, but her face lost its pout.  “Dad, I was seven.  Back then, I liked hiking and camping.”  Her gaze shifted outside her window to her grandmother.  Justin’s dad, Ronald Kirkland, emerged from the front door behind his wife with that arthritic blue tick hound always beside his father’s leg.  “Don’t worry,” Josie said, unbuckling her seat belt and opening the door on her side.  The interior dome light came on, highlighting her golden curls.  “I promise I won’t get in trouble.  How can I?  There’s nothing to do around here.”

She hopped out of the truck and ran to her grandmother, hugging the older woman and then turning to her granddad, giving him a kiss on his weathered cheek.  Justin slowly followed.  No, there wasn’t anything to do around here, which was the one reason he left this place back in his misguided youth and ran off to explore the world.  But after all these years, he eventually found out that the world didn’t offer the love and security that this place imbued in a person’s soul.

How he wished he could go back in time and slap himself.

*****

Two hours later, Justin crawled into bed, exhausted beyond the ability to think straight.  He and Josie visited with his parents for a while, but it was so late when they arrived, that they all finally decided to call it a night.  Josie was set up in his brother’s old bedroom, which his parent’s redecorated for Josie’s stay, and he was sleeping in his own.  Just as he was about to succumb to sleep, he heard a screech and ten seconds later, Josie barged into his room.

“You blocked my computer?!” his daughter yelled at him from the doorway, standing there in her pink polka-dot pajamas and a pony tail.

“Keep your voice down,” he told her and sat up.  “Mom and Dad are sleeping.”

“No, we’re not!” came the shout from down the hall.  Justin groaned.

“I don’t believe you!” Josie complained.  “How am I supposed to talk to Laura?”

“I don’t want you to talk to Laura,” he calmly said, scrubbing what was left of sleep off his face.  “She’s not been a good friend.”

“She’s the only friend I have!  God, you’re so mean, Daddy!  What am I supposed to do if I can’t talk to Laura?”

Justin grinned like his mom and dad used to do when he’d asked them similar questions. “Chores.”

Josie let out a furious growl and slammed the door as she left.  A second door slammed after that.  Justin settled back down into the mattress, punching his pillow under his head.  He knew he was doing the right thing bringing her here.  If Josie stayed on her current path, then she’d become hell on wheels as she got further into her teen years.  He could barely handle her now.  Some fresh air and good loving from her grandparents would do her some good.  There were country roots here.  Good families.  Honest folk.  Hard work.  Josie had it too easy these past thirteen years, living in Savannah, going to the beach and shopping and spending too much time around people who took their good fortunes for granted.

People like Beth...and Hannah Baker.  

Hannah had grown up here, too, but she was one of those exceptions.  She always thought that she could smile and sing her pretty songs and get whatever she wanted.  Just like his ex-wife and her cheating all through their marriage.  The last he heard of Hannah Baker, she dumped his brother and moved off to California to spread her smile around and probably her legs, too.  Now, she was back, not able to make a go in the sunny state.  Typical.  Couldn’t dazzle those sun-tanned celebrities, so she came back to Arkansas...most likely thinking she was better than everyone here just because she’d been to Hollywood.

Justin closed his eyes, praying for sleep, but all he could see was Hannah glaring at him at that gas station.  She sure was a sweet package.  Always had been.  Red hair, those hazel green-gold eyes, long legs, small waist, nice round breasts and an ass that almost always got a second and third glance.  The years had been very kind to her.  And she could sing like an angel, and act like a starlet, if his memories were accurate.  It was no wonder his little brother had been smitten with her.  But Luke had finally gotten over the songbird and married himself a wonderful woman, if a little bit nagging.

But as pleasant as Hannah Baker was to look at, Justin was done with women for a while.  Beth cured him of any desire to have a relationship with another woman.  And Josie was quickly quelling any sexual appetite he might have.  One child with an attitude problem was enough.  Still...thinking about wrapping Hannah Baker’s long, shapely legs around him as he buried himself to the hilt in her luscious body...

He groaned and turned on his side.  He’d been too long without a woman if he was thinking of Hannah that way.  She was nice to look at, but Justin had never been charmed by looks alone.  However, his groin didn’t hold the same opinion.  After two years of abstinence since the divorce, and practically a celibate marriage, just about any woman would do.  Even Hannah Baker.  Bending her over the hood of the red Honda...wrapping his fingers in the strands of her red hair, flipping up the skirt of that skimpy little sundress...oh, yeah...Justin, began to ache.  Imagining it...the flicker of the fluorescent lights, the buzzing of bugs all around them, the feel of a hot summer night making him sweat and her sweat...

Ah, hell.  Now, he’d never get to sleep, and masturbating with his parents just two doors down made him feel nauseous.  Christ, he was a thirty-four-year-old, grown, mature man!  Get control!

Justin clenched his eyes and grabbed hold of his pillow to keep his hands off himself.  Think of something else!  Baseball...submarines...cold showers...Josie dating...

Yup, that did the trick.

He shuddered.  Josie dating a boy.  Any boy.  God help me!  I’ll kill the little bastard.

*****

Justin spent two days at his parents' home, recouping from the long drive from Georgia.  He barely left the farm, except once to take Josie into town to Walmart so she could pick up a few things she forgot to bring with her.  As Josie steered him through the cosmetic section toward the feminine product aisle, he gulped loudly and thought, F*ck, I'm not ready for her to be going through this stuff.  But she had been.  His sweet, young daughter started getting her period last year just after her twelfth birthday, and Justin got sick to his stomach when he found out.  Literally.  He threw up and everything.  Then he raced her to their doctor and demanded to know why a twelve-year-old was menstruating.  She was too damn young!  In the last year and half, he couldn’t recall how many times she wrote “pads” on his shopping list, and he’d been forced to personally go buy the things.

I should have brought Mom with us, he thought.  But his mother had her water aerobics this afternoon, and she couldn’t come with them.

So there he stood, not for the first time, ten feet back from the dreaded products and gripping the shopping cart with white knuckles.  Josie thought it was funny as hell.  She kept grinning evilly at him and asking, in her loud voice, “Daddy, what should I get?  Scented with wings?  Or Unscented?”

“Josie, give me a break,” he groaned in return and backed up out of her sight.  But then he spied a head of red hair and that ass which consumed his dreams these past two nights.  Hannah Baker was walking away from him, carrying a bottle of laundry detergent and a hanger of silky multicolored panties, and he grimaced.  Great.  Now I’ll be thinking of her in nothing but that scrap of rainbow on the hood of her car for the next three weeks.

She didn’t see him, or if she had, then she wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of seeing her lovely hazel eyes spark up.  Did she remember him yet?  She only dated Luke during her senior year in high school, and Justin had been away trying to finish his degree at college while wrapping his head around a new marriage and a new baby.  During that time, he spent a total of about five hours in her presence.  And if he remembered, they shared only one short conversation about her song writing.  But that was about it.  

She doesn’t remember me.

But he knew all about Hannah Baker.  Daughter to James Baker, owner of a farm and garden supply store.  Mother gone, though he couldn’t recall why, or if she died.  But back when, Hannah was all Luke would talk about.  Justin would call home from college every Sunday, and his brother told him about how beautiful she was, and how great she sang, and about her recent school play in which she played some wonderful character or another.  Luke told Justin that she was allergic to strawberries, which was a bummer...Luke’s words, not Justin’s.  And that Hannah nearly burned down the chemistry lab one Wednesday in March, and how she tried to get her hair cut like Jennifer Aniston, but the stylist screwed it up, and she thought she looked horrible, crying her eyes out for days.  Justin knew her nicknames, could pinpoint her birthmark on her left shoulder, and could probably fit her for a pair of jeans, considering how Luke always described Hannah’s shape and curves over the phone.

But that was Luke.  At four years younger than Justin, Luke had always looked up to his older brother, his hero who could do no harm, and Luke would tell him anything...and everything.  Justin still recalled the phone conversation when Luke called him after midnight on a Saturday, practically grinning through the phone line as he described his and Hannah’s first time together.

In the basement.  On his dad’s couch.

Ewww...

Justin had never been able to sit on that tweed couch ever again.  

“Daaaaddyyyyy!” Josie sang out, skipping over to him and giving him a reason to stop thinking about Hannah and his brother squeaking springs on the basement sofa.  Josie dumped an armful of packages into the cart.  “I’m done here.”

“Thank God!”

“Grandma says I’ll need some sturdy boots,” she informed him, and Justin hung his head.  Shoes.  Females and their shoes.  Josie could spend hours in the shoe department at Macy’s.  

“Lead the way,” he groaned and waved her out of the tampon aisle.

“Can I get two pair?” she asked, walking ahead of him, using that voice of hers which told him, You’re ditching me in Timbuktu, the least you can do is spoil me for a few hours.

Gotta love that parental guilt.  “Yeah, sure.”  

Josie clapped and squealed and raced off.  Justin followed behind, keeping an eye out for red hair.  That last thing he needed right now was Hannah seeing him with a cart full of pink, flowery panty protectors and coconut body wash.  After the way he behaved last night, she’d never let him live this down.

*****

Quoting her shopping list in her head -- detergent, envelopes, pellets for Teddy...ooh, cute panties --  Hannah rushed through the crowded big box called Walmart in hopes of getting home in time to catch "Storage Wars" on television.  She didn't know why she was so fascinated with that show, but she never missed an episode.  It made her want to go through all of her dad's old trunks in the attic to see if there was anything valuable in them.  Not that she'd actually sell her father's belongings, but it was nice to wonder about that kind of thing.

Passing the shoes on her way to the stationary, and further back to the pet section, she heard a familiar voice say, "Don't even think about it, Josie.  Your grandmother said boots...not spiked heels with vinyl legs warmers in lieu of boots."

Hannah skidded to a stop and ducked behind a wire crate full of pillows.  She knew there was a reason Walmart blocked the aisles with these damn sale displays.  

It was him.  That rude man from the other night.  She had not figured out who he was because she couldn't find her yearbooks.  Another good reason to get into the attic.

Josie, the cute blond girl, held up a pair of black, shiny heeled boots with a hopeful grin.  The hoochie-mama kind that stretched all the way up past the knee and Hannah wouldn't be caught dead in.   Josie’s father scowled and shook his head.  "But they're on sale!"

"I don't care if they're lined with hundred dollar bills.  You're not getting them."

Hannah bit back a grin of her own.  Daddy's got his hands full with this one.  She watched for a few minutes longer while father and daughter battled over boots and a pair of gold glitter flats.  But eventually, she had to get out of there before he saw her.  Grabbing the rest of her items, she made her way to the closest check-out line.

But this was Walmart.  Hannah never failed to get behind the person who’s credit card wouldn’t work, or the person who had to check the price of every single item in her over-flowing cart.  Patience was a godly virtue in this place, yet a good place to catch up on her reading.  “Huh,” she muttered to herself, flipping through a fashion magazine, “Those are so not real.”

When Hannah finally got home, she pulled Teddy from his cage and nuzzled him against her neck.  The guinea pig she bought on her last birthday was the only male in this world who still loved her.  It was sad really, but Teddy was a simple love.  As long as she fed him, played with him and kept his cage relatively clean, he was a happy rodent.  

"Hey, baby," she cooed against his fur.  "Did you miss me?  Momma's got a carrot for you."

Teddy nudged his nose under her ear and chittered at her.  All the websites said guinea pigs did that when they "talked" to their owners...like an endearment for her.  She honestly didn't care if it meant Teddy needed to poop really bad.  He was sweet, whatever he squeaked and chirped about.

"Come on, sweetie.  Let's watch a bunch of grown men argue like children over someone else's old junk."  She propped him on her chest while she reclined on the sofa and flipped through the channels.  Teddy munched on his baby carrots -- it was amazing how much weight he gained from lettuce and carrots -- and Hannah was able to steal a few before he sank his teeth into them.  That was one of his many endearing quirks.  He liked to take a small chunk out of each carrot, claiming them as his own, before actually settling down to eat.  Into the second commercial break, he started that low squeaking which meant, Watch out, lady...I've gotta pee.

Hannah hopped up and put him back in his cage.   He didn't mind.  She gave him some fresh pellets and hay, and he stretched out to nibble from his hay ball.  Yup, a simple love.  If only there were more men in the world like Teddy.  He couldn't appease all her needs, of course, but he gave her some cuddles when she needed it, entertainment when he was feeling feisty, and someone to talk to late at night when she couldn't sleep.

Besides sex, what more could a girl ask for?

"Don't worry, sweetie," she told Teddy through the bars of his cage.  "Even if I did find a man who's terrific between the sheets, I still wouldn't replace you."

With nothing else to do, Hannah dug through a  drawer for a flashlight and headed toward the attic stairs.   Somewhere up here was a box of stuff from her high school days.  She tossed it in a corner behind her grandad's army locker right before she scurried off for California, but things had been moved around a lot since then, especially when her mom decided to make an appearance after Dad's funeral, searching for a copy of his will and claiming she had a right to the store and house.  Not bloody likely, Hannah sneered in her mind, imitating her mother's fake British accent.  She didn't want the place when she lived here, sharing the running operations of the store with Hannah's father.   Lawna Miles-Baker only wanted the money the two properties would provide when sold.

Poking her head through the trapdoor at the top of the stairs, Hannah fumbled with the flashlight until she could flip on the lone lightbulb hanging in the middle of the attic beams.  "Now, where is that box?"

For an hour, she searched around in cardboard boxes and old trunks.  She found the china tea set she got on her fifth birthday, her dad's old duck calls and hunting rifles, a cedar trunk full of her grandmother's quilts and lace doilies, and--

Wait!  Aha!  Hannah shook her hips in a weird little jig as she pulled a stack of yearbooks from under a letterman's jacket...Luke's jacket.  She never got a chance to give it back after she broke her promise to love him forever...the only promise she’d ever renegaded on.  She hugged the books to her chest as she inhaled the old wool on the jacket.  

Okay, nope...doesn't smell like him anymore.  That's a shame.  He used to smell so good.

With a sigh of regret, she slipped her arms into the sleeves, burst out in a fit of violent sneezes from the dust and worked her way back to the stairs and decent lighting.  "Alright, Mr. Tall and Obnoxious, let's find out who you are."

First, she flipped through her senior yearbook, sitting at the top of the stairs.  Twice.  He wasn't in there, but she stared for long moments at every picture of Luke, and reminisced over some other people she'd known fairly well.  I forgot about Janie and her glasses!  Oh, my lands!  And look at Butch Yarborough!  He's lost so much weight since then!  Can't believe he married Trish Adler.

Then she got to her senior picture.  It was a good one, she admitted to herself.  That was the year her skin finally cleared up and her braces removed, and she'd been proud to smile and show it off a little more.  As she turned pages, she saw more of herself in other pictures, some candid, some posed for clubs and school groups.  And she noticed other things for the first time.  She and Luke dancing at prom...and there in the corner, Eric Linden was looking at them with an odd expression.  And in the glee club photo, Bethany Drake looked down a row of students to Hannah as though wanting to stab her with a ballpoint pen.  Hannah frowned.  Bethany, if she remembered correctly, had gone through a bad break up that year...with Eric.  

Hannah's fingers froze in the act of turning the page.  Quickly she searched for the prom photo again.  It wasn't an odd look in Eric's eyes anymore.  It was jealousy.  

That can't be right.  Luke and Eric were such good friends.

...Stringing my brother and his idiotic friends along...

Hannah gasped.

No!

She chunked three of the yearbooks aside.  They were worthless for what she was looking for.  The fourth book, her freshman year...the senior pages...and there he was...right between Martin Johnson and Shelley Kook...Justin Kirkland, Luke's older brother.

The man from the gas station.  He called her Songbird.  He spoke as though he knew her, but Hannah barely knew him at all.  Though Luke talked about him all the time.

In the months she dated Luke, she saw his brother only a handful of times.  Justin had been a lanky, electronics geek with too-big ears and a broad grin, even here in his senior picture, he was nothing like the man she saw at the gas station.  Never in a million years would she had recognized him.  The eyes were the same, that vibrant green, and there was that tiny dimple on his chin which marked him as a Kirkland.

"I'd love to be there when you figure it out."

I bet you would.  Hannah got shivers, as though she was being watched, but that was ridiculous.  Just a draft from the attic.  And being alone in this big house all by herself, late at night, like it was now, all quiet and creepy in that An American Haunting kind of way...which was one of the reasons she bought Teddy, though a massive watchdog would have been smarter, but Hannah was never comfortable around bigger animals.  Cats scared her, because of the claws and those glowing eyes, and dogs made her jumpy because of all that barking, and really what was the point of any other pet?  Guinea pigs were the perfect pets.  They were just big enough to hold without giving up your favorite spot on the couch, they had individual personalities and loved attention, and they can go back in their cages when its time to eat or leave for work and not have a pair of beady eyes watching you every move in hopes of a table scrap or to get to come along with you.

Yeah,.Teddy was a great companion, but he was no match for the heebie-jeebies Hannah suffered from looking at Justin Kirkland's picture.  At least he grew into those ears, she thought.  In fact, remembering his broad shoulders and thick arm muscles from the other night, bunching under the short sleeves of a gray t-shirt...he grew into a lot more than just his ears.

Now her shivers were more of the tingly kind, and that was ridiculous, too!  He'd been rude and obnoxious and grating, and...no tingles!  He's a jerk.  AND he’s a father!  He gets no tingles!

But when she curled her arm around the yearbook, took the stairs two at a time to the bottom floor and slipped in her socks on the hardwood floors to get to her computer in the study, the tingle were still there.  And they grew as she stalked his Facebook page, like she had his brother’s.  Really...the two of them shouldn’t just leave this stuff up for the whole world to see...some security measures are always nice...

She didn’t have to befriend them or anything to look all around their private/public lives.  She scanned every picture on Justin’s page -- most of them of his daughter (now that’s just not safe at all) -- and funneled through his friends list.  Then she did the same with Luke.  

Of the two, Hannah grudgingly admitted...Justin was better looking.  She found a picture of him smiling with Josie in front of  Cinderella’s castle at Disney World, and Hannah couldn’t tear her eyes away from his...those green laser beams, not a fleck of gold or blue in them.  Pure green.  Forest green.  Like the trees outside her backdoor.  Country green.

A country boy.

A rude, bitter, divorced country boy.  There were several things wrong with that.  All bad points.  Hannah sighed.  Such a shameful waste.  A good-looking man like him.  Thank goodness I’ve never been turned on by looks alone.

Hannah powered down her computer and went to bed.  She dreamed of buzzing insects, stiletto heels and her pressed up against a black tailgate while a man with green eyes gave her the best orgasm of her life.