Free Promises to Keep by Char Chaffin

the way she needed to relate to her own flesh and blood.
    He was still so young, despite his outward maturity. He’d barely begun to tap into his formidable potential. Somehow, before it was too late, she had to reach him, get him to understand what he was tossing aside if he continued to pursue this madness of a “future” with a Turner. She had to make him see.
    Perhaps a bit of reverse psychology . . . She spread her hands in appeal. “I am sorry, Travis. It’s difficult for me to look at you and not see the baby boy I rocked to sleep. You have grown into a splendid young man, right before my eyes, and I have refused to notice.”
    He frowned at her. “Mother, if you’ve refused to see I’ve grown up, then it’s your own problem. I stopped being a child two years ago, when I started prep school. And whether or not you can accept it, I’m old enough to marry without your permission.” He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms.
    She almost smiled at that defiant and naïve statement and pose. It seemed she might have more of an upper hand, after all. But she had to play it with care, for Travis was highly intuitive. Just like his father.
    “Travis, I never tried to keep you a child. But it’s my job as a parent to guide you in the right direction. You are a Quincy. By birthright you are the only heir, a title which carries great responsibility.” She paused and considered her next words. If she could appeal to her son as one adult to another, which he seemed to crave, she might actually get somewhere with him.
    She took his silence as a good sign. “I expected your teenage years to be trying for both of us. Your small rebellions, the way you wanted individuality. I’m not so far removed from my own adolescence that I don’t recall how important that individuality is. But you are not a teenager any longer. You are on the threshold of embracing your Quincy duties.”
    “I’m also on the threshold of becoming engaged to Annie Turner. Whether you like it or not, she’s a part of my future. I’m marrying her as soon as she turns eighteen. If I wanted to marry her tomorrow, I have a feeling her folks would agree to it. They like me.”
    The touch of smugness she heard snapped her deliberate calm. Exasperated, she retorted, “Of course they like you. For God’s sake, Travis, you are going to be worth millions of dollars! I’m sure they’d like nothing better than to get their grubby hands on you. The fact that you currently moon over their daughter probably thrills them to death. Are you blind or stupid—or both?”
    Travis’s jaw tightened. “You know nothing of their family, Mother. You never once tried to understand why I feel the way I do about Annie. You never once tried to get to know her. Hell, you’ve never even said a civil word to her. All you’ve said, over and over again, is how trashy the family is. How inferior they are. I guess money talks with you and everything else walks, huh?”
    He surged to his feet. “I’m not going to listen to any more. You hang onto your bigotry. You hold your hatred close and see if it’s a good substitute for the respect you think I owe you. Someday Annie and I will start a family together. You’ll have grandchildren, but they’ll never know you.”
    He strode to the door and flung it open just as Ruth scrambled off the sofa and shouted after him. “Don’t you walk away from me, Travis! We are not finished discussing. We have not resolved this situation.”
    Travis turned from the open study door, his face like stone, his eyes glittering chips of ice. “This ‘situation’ as you refer to it, is a person with a name. It’s Annie Turner. Get used to hearing it around Quincy Hall, because I’m going over to her house right now and getting down on one knee. I’ll be engaged to her so fast it’ll make your head spin. That’s a promise, not a threat.” He strode toward the coat closet.
    As he shrugged into his jacket, Ruth came up behind him,