Free Keeping Promise Rock by Amy Lane Page A

winter rains, which had been plentiful, for once. It had almost flooded this year—always a worry in this 54

    area of Sacramento—but the rains let off at the last moment, and everybody had let out a collective sigh of relief. Didn’t mean they weren’t due, just meant they weren’t due this year.
    “In about a month,” Deacon said absently, “this whole field will be a riot of flowers… those yellow ones that make the air smell good. I love that time.”
    “Me too,” Crick told him. He had the field of flowers in his sketchbook, but since he had done it in charcoal and not watercolors, it didn’t really sing.
    “My mother drank herself to death, did you know that?” Deacon’s voice was so remote and empty that it took a moment for the words to sink in, and Crick’s lungs almost froze with sudden pain.
    “No,” he said, looking at Deacon in horror. “I didn’t know that.” Deacon nodded. “Parish was starting the ranch, and he was working a job to make the payments and then coming home and working the horses and… and she would get so lonely.”
    “She had you,” Crick said, not sure how you could leave a baby like that, no matter how lonely you were.
    “I was little—Parish said I was pretty self-sufficient. I could dress myself, make a sandwich, it was no big deal. And she was good about it.
    Waited until I was down for a nap or when I went to bed, and then she’d just… drink. Steadily, for about three hours and Parish got home and she’d be passed out on the couch. And then she got sick—her liver started backing up, and she ended up in bed. We didn’t have health insurance then—and, you know, she wouldn’t stop drinking.”
    “Oh God, Deacon… I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” Crick had always had sort of an idealized vision of Deacon’s late mother—her picture on the mantel had been a dreamy, soft-focus female version of her son. He’d thought she’d died of cancer, or pneumonia or….
    Or anything but the same thing that made step-Bob throw whiskey bottles at him when he wasn’t quick enough to duck.
    Deacon shrugged like it was no big deal, like everybody knew and Crick hadn’t had to find out on the worst day of their lives. “Yeah… well, the thing is, after Parish came home and found me in the stables, I kept asking him when he was going to go away. I figured if she could, then he could, and I just wanted to….”

    A hiccup then. A real, honest to God hiccup of humanity, a sudden closeness to that distant, nobody-home voice.
    “Just wanted to know, right? So I could be ready, because I wasn’t ready that time. Parish told me… he said he would stay with me as long as he possibly could. Until God dragged him away by the heels, kicking and screaming the whole time.”
    Jesus fucking Christ. Crick pushed himself up on the rock and reached a tentative hand to Deacon’s thigh. He was not prepared for Deacon’s death grip on that hand, but he did scoot up closer so they were touching shoulders. Deacon tilted his head a little—Crick had finally reached that four inches taller than his hero—and Crick sighed as his shoulder took up a little bit of that weight.
    “The bastard didn’t drag him off, Crick… he took him by surprise.
    You know that’s the only reason Parish would leave us, right?” Crick nodded and wiped his wet cheek on Deacon’s sun-streaked brown hair. “Yeah, Deacon. He got ambushed. Wasn’t fucking fair.”
    “No,” Deacon’s voice finally cracked. “Wasn’t fucking fair at all.” Deacon wiped his face on his shoulder, and Crick held up a hand to brush the tears off his cheek. Deacon captured Crick’s palm and held it to his face with a shaking hand, rubbing against it like a skittered colt. “Oh God, Crick… you’re the only family I’ve got left. You’re like the only person on the planet, tethering me to its crust… and you’re going to have to leave me too.”
    Deacon broke completely then, and Crick held him, weeping over