Free Final Assignment: A Promise Falls Novella by Linwood Barclay Page A

all sorted out.”
    Mom poured some coffee into a mug and handed it to me with a smile. “Thanks, Mom.” I leaned in and gave her a small kiss on her weathered cheek as Dad went back to stabbing at the tablet.
    “I wanted to ask,” she said to me, “what you might have on for this morning.”
    “Why? What’s up?”
    “I mean, if you have some job interviews lined up, I don’t want to interfere with that at all or—”
    “Mom, just tell me what it is you want.”
    “I don’t want to impose,” she said. “It’s only if you have time.”
    “For God’s sake, Mom, just spit it out.”
    “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” Dad said.
    “I’d do it myself, but if you were going out, I have some things I wanted to drop off for Marla.”
    Marla Pickens. My cousin. Younger than me by a decade. Daughter of Mom’s sister, Agnes.
    “Sure, I can do that.”
    “I made up a chili, and I had so much left over, I froze some of it, and I know she really likes my chili, so I froze a few single servings in some Glad containers. And I picked her up a few other things. Some Stouffer’s frozen dinners. They won’t be as good as homemade, but still. I don’t think that girl is eating. It’s not for me to comment, but I don’t think Agnes is looking in on her often enough. And the thing is, I think it would be good for her to see you. Instead of us old people always dropping by. She’s always liked you.”
    “Sure.”
    “Ever since this business with the baby, she just hasn’t been right.”
    “I know,” I said. “I’ll do it.” I opened the refrigerator. “You got any bottles of water I can put with Ethan’s lunch?”
    Dad uttered an indignant “Ha!” I knew where this was going. I should have known better than to have asked. “Biggest scam in the world, bottled water. What comes out of the tap is good enough for anybody. This town’s water is fine, and I should know. Only suckers pay for it. Next thing you know, they’ll find a way to make you pay for air. Remember when you didn’t have to pay for TV? You just had an antenna, watched for nothing. Now you have to pay for cable. That’s the way to make money. Find a way to make people pay for something they’re getting now for nothing.”
    Mom, oblivious to my father’s rant, said, “I think Marla’s spending too much time alone, that she needs to get out, do things to take her mind off what happened, to—”
    “I said I’d do it, Mom.”
    “I was just saying,” she said, the first hint of an edge entering her voice, “that it would be good if we all made an effort where she’s concerned.”
    Dad, not taking his eyes off the screen, said, “It’s been ten months, Arlene. She’s gotta move on.”
    Mom sighed. “Of course, Don, like that’s something you just get over. Walk it off, that’s your solution to everything.”
    “She’s gone a bit crackers, if you ask me.” He looked up. “Is there more coffee?”
    “I just said I made a fresh pot. Now who’s the one who isn’t listening?” Then, like an afterthought, she said to me, “When you get there, remember to just identify yourself. She always finds that helpful.”
    “I know, Mom.”
    “You seemed to get your cereal down okay,” I said to Ethan once we were in the car. Ethan was running behind—dawdling deliberately, I figured, hoping I’d believe he really was sick—so I offered to drop him off at school instead of making him walk.
    “I guess,” he said.
    “There something going on?”
    He looked out his window at the passing street scene. “Nope.”
    “Everything okay with your teacher?”
    “Yup.”
    “Everything okay with your friends?”
    “I don’t have any friends,” he said, still not looking my way.
    I didn’t have a ready answer for that. “I know it takes time, moving to a new school. But aren’t there some of the kids still around that you knew before we went to Boston?”
    “Most of them are in a different class,” Ethan said. Then, with a