Broken Promise Read Free Page B

okay?”
    The sound I’d heard earlier became louder.
    It was, in fact, a baby. Nine months to a year old, I guessed. Not sure whether it was a boy or girl, although it was wrapped in a blue blanket.
    What I’d heard were feeding noises. The baby was sucking contentedly on a rubber nipple, its tiny fingers attempting to grip the plastic feeding bottle.
    Marla held the bottle in one hand, cradling the infant in her other arm. She was seated in a cushioned chair in the corner of the bedroom. On the bed, bags of diapers, baby clothes, a container of wipes.
    “Marla?”
    She studied my face and whispered, “I heard you call out, but I couldn’t come to the door. And I didn’t want to shout. I think Matthew’s nearly asleep.”
    I stepped tentatively into the room. “Matthew?”
    Marla smiled, nodded. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
    Slowly, I said, “Yes. He is.” A pause, then: “Who’s Matthew, Marla?”
    “What do you mean?” Marla said, cocking her head in puzzlement. “Matthew is Matthew.”
    “What I mean . . . Who does Matthew belong to? Are you doing some babysitting for someone?”
    Marla blinked. “Matthew belongs to me, David. Matthew’s my baby.”
    I cleared a spot and sat on the edge of the bed, close to my cousin. “And when did Matthew arrive, Marla?”
    “Ten months ago,” she said without hesitation. “On the twelfth of July.”
    “But . . . I’ve been over here a few times in the last ten months, and this is the first chance I’ve had to meet him. So I guess I’m a little puzzled.”
    “It’s hard . . . to explain,” Marla said. “An angel brought him to me.”
    “I need a little more than that,” I said softly.
    “That’s all I can say. It’s like a miracle.”
    “Marla, your baby—”
    “I don’t want to talk about that,” she whispered, turning her head away from me, studying the baby’s face.
    I pressed on gently, as if I were slowly driving onto a rickety bridge I feared would give way beneath me. “Marla, what happened to you . . . and your baby . . . was a tragedy. We all felt so terrible for you.”
    Ten months ago. It had been a sad time for everyone, but for Marla it had been devastating.
    She lightly touched a finger to Matthew’s button nose. “You are so adorable,” she said.
    “Marla, I need you to tell me whose baby this really is.” I hesitated. “And why there’s blood on your front door.”

THREE
    DETECTIVE Barry Duckworth, on this, the twentieth anniversary of his joining the Promise Falls Police Department, was thinking he was facing the greatest challenge of his career.
    Would he be able to drive past the doughnut shop on his way to the station without hitting the drive-through for a coffee and a chocolate frosted?
    After all, if there was ever a day where he felt entitled to a treat, this was it. Twenty years with the department, nearly fourteen of them as a detective. Wasn’t that a cause for celebration?
    Except this was only the second week of his latest attempt to lose weight. He’d tipped the scales at two hundred and eighty pounds in the past month and decided maybe it was time to finally do something about it. Maureen, bless her, had stopped nagging him about his size, figuring the choice to cut back had to be his. So, two weeks earlier, he decided the first step would be to forgo the doughnut he inhaled every morning. According to the doughnut chain’s Web site, his favorite pastry was about three hundred calories. Jesus. So if you cut out that doughnut, over five days you were eliminating fifteen hundred calories from your diet. Over a year, that was seventy-two thousand calories.
    It would be like going without food for something on the order of three weeks.
    It wasn’t the only step he was trying to take. He’d cut out dessert. Okay, that wasn’t exactly right. He’d cut out his second dessert. Whenever Maureen made a pie—especially if it was lemon meringue—he could never limit himself to one slice. He’d