Final Assignment: A Promise Falls Novella (9 page)

Marla had never been to Austin, did not know anyone at Marchelli Roofing, and had never, in her life, hired a contractor of any kind to do anything.

“Pretty good, huh?” she’d said. “It’s kind of like writing a really, really short story.”

I didn’t have the energy to get into it with her at the time.

I took the bypass to get from one side of town to the other, passing under the shadow of the Promise Falls water tower, a ten-story structure that looked like an alien mother ship on stilts.

When I got to Marla’s, I pulled into the driveway beside her faded red, rusting, mid-nineties Mustang. I opened the rear hatch of my Mazda 3 and grabbed two reusable grocery bags Mom had filled with frozen dinners. I felt a little embarrassed doing it, wondering whether Marla would be insulted that her aunt seemed to believe she was too helpless to make her own meals, but what the hell. If it made Mom happy …

Heading up the walk, I noticed weeds and grass coming up between the cracks in the stone.

I mounted the three steps to the door, switched all the bags to my left hand, and, as I rapped on it with my fist, noticed a smudge on the door frame.

The whole house needed painting or, failing that, a good power-washing, so the smudge, which was at shoulder height and looked like a handprint, wasn’t that out of place. But something about it caught my eye.

It looked like smeared blood. As if someone had swatted the world’s biggest mosquito there.

I touched it tentatively with my index finger and found it dry.

When Marla didn’t answer the door after ten seconds, I knocked again. Five seconds after that, I tried turning the knob.

Unlocked.

I swung it wide enough to step inside and called out, “Marla? It’s Cousin David!”

Nothing.

“Marla? Aunt Arlene wanted me to drop off a few things. Homemade chili, some other stuff. Where are you?”

I stepped into the L-shaped main room. The front half of the house was a cramped living room with a weathered couch, a couple of faded easy chairs, a flat-screen TV, and a coffee table supporting an open laptop in sleep mode that Marla had probably been using to say some nice things about a plumber in Poughkeepsie. The back part of the house, to the right, was the kitchen. Off to the left was a short hallway with a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom.

As I closed the door behind me, I noticed a fold-up baby stroller tucked behind it, in the closed position.

“What the hell?” I said under my breath.

I thought I heard something. Down the hall. A kind of … mewing? A gurgling sound?

A baby. It sounded like a baby. You might think, seeing a stroller by the door, that wouldn’t be all that shocking.

But here, at this time, you’d be wrong.

“Marla?”

I set the bags down on the floor and moved across the room. Started down the hall.

At the first door I stopped and peeked inside. This was probably supposed to be a bedroom, but Marla had turned it into a landfill site—disused furniture, empty cardboard boxes, rolls of carpet, old magazines, outdated stereo components. Marla appeared to be an aspiring hoarder.

I moved on to the next door, which was closed. I turned the knob and pushed. “Marla, you in here? You 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.”

No Time for Goodbye

Too Close to Home

Fear the Worst

Never Look Away

The Accident

Trust Your Eyes

Never Saw it Coming

A Tap on the Window

No Safe House

Broken Promise (September 2015)

An Orion eBook

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Books
This eBook first published in 2015 by Orion Books

Copyright © Linwood Barclay 2015

The moral right of Linwood Barclay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781409163831

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