Free Final Assignment: A Promise Falls Novella by Linwood Barclay

moan.
    “Get up and dressed and we’ll see how you are then.” This had been becoming a pattern the last couple of weeks. Whatever ailment was troubling him, it certainly hadn’t been troubling him on weekends, when he could down four hot dogs in ten minutes, and had more energy than everyone else in this house combined. Ethan didn’t want to go to school, and so far I’d been unable to get him to tell me why.
    My parents, who believed sleeping in was staying in bed past five thirty—I’d heard them getting up as I’d stared at that dark ceiling—were already in the kitchen when I made my entrance. They’d have both had breakfast by this time, and Dad, on his fourth coffee by now, was sitting at the kitchen table, still trying to figure out how to read the news on an iPad tablet, which Mom had bought for him after the
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stopped showing up at their door every morning.
    He was stabbing at the device with his index finger hard enough to knock it off its stand.
    “For God’s sake, Don,” she said, “you’re not trying to poke its eye out. You just tap it lightly.”
    “I hate this thing,” he said. “Everything’s jumping around all over the place.”
    Seeing me, Mom adopted the excessively cheerful tone she always used when things were not going well. “Hello!” she said. “Sleep well?”
    “Fine,” I lied.
    “I just made a fresh pot,” she said. “Want a cup?”
    “I can manage.”
    “David, did I tell you about that girl at the checkout at the Walgreens? What was her name? It’ll come to me. Anyway, she’s cute as a button and she’s split up with her husband and—”
    “Mom, please.”
    She was always on the lookout, trying to find someone for me. It was
time
, she liked to say. Ethan needed a
mother
. I’d grieved long enough, she was forever reminding me.
    I wasn’t grieving.
    I’d had six dates in the last five years, with six different women. Slept with one. That was it. Losing Jan, and the circumstances around her death, had made me averse to commitment, and Mom should have understood that.
    “I’m just saying,” she persisted, “that I think she’d be pretty receptive if you were to ask her out. Whatever her name is. Next time we’re in there together, I’ll point her out.”
    Dad spoke up. “For God’s sake, Arlene, leave him alone. And come on. He’s got a kid and no job. That doesn’t exactly make him a great prospect.”
    “Good to have you in my corner, Dad,” I said.
    He made a face, went back to poking at his tablet. “I don’t know why the hell I can’t get an honest-to-God goddamn paper to my door. Surely there are still people who want to read an actual paper.”
    “They’re all old,” Mom told him.
    “Well, old people are entitled to the news,” he said.
    I opened the fridge, rooted around until I’d found the yogurt Ethan liked, and a jar of strawberry jam. I set them on the counter and brought down a box of cereal from the cupboard.
    “They can’t make money anymore,” Mom told him. “All the classifieds went to craigslist and Kijiji. Isn’t that right, David?”
    I said, “Mmm.” I poured some Cheerios into a bowl for Ethan, who I hoped would be down shortly. I’d wait till he showed before pouring on milk and topping it with a dollop of strawberry yogurt. I dropped two slices of white Wonder bread, the only kind my parents had ever bought, into the toaster.
    My mother said, “I just put on a fresh pot. Would you like a cup?”
    Dad’s head came up.
    I said, “You just asked me that.”
    Dad said, “No, she didn’t.”
    I looked at him. “Yes, she did, five seconds ago.”
    “Then”—with real bite in his voice—“maybe you should answer her the first time so she doesn’t have to ask you twice.”
    Before I could say anything, Mom laughed it off. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”
    “That’s not true,” Dad said. “I’m the one who lost his goddamn wallet. What a pain in the ass it was getting that