A Soldier's Promise. Cynthia Thomason

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      “We live in the booniest of the boondocks,” Carrie said. “No one ever comes out this far.”

      “Why don’t you offer Miss Sullivan some iced tea?” Mike said.

      “I r-really shouldn’t stay....” Brenna stammered.

      Carrie clasped her hands together. “Oh, please. Other than repair guys, you’re our first visitor. Can’t you come inside and talk for a while?” As an added incentive, she said, “We have air-conditioning.” She swept her arm around the porch, indicating the objects her great-grandmother had probably left behind. “You wouldn’t think so because of all this old stuff, but I swear we do.”

      Brenna recognized an old wooden butter churn, handmade baskets, a few primitive iron tools on the wall. “These things are interesting,” she said.

      “If you like all these old things, you’ll love the inside.” A hopeful look on her face, Carrie held the door open.

      “But your father...” Brenna said. “I’m sure he doesn’t want company after working all day.”

      “I suggested the tea, didn’t I?” Mike said. “Besides, after you have a look around, this place will have left a permanent impression on you.” He lowered his voice. “And that should be well worth the trouble of the minor car damage you’re taking home as a souvenir.”

      With no way to decline, Brenna preceded him inside and into one large room with a door and a hallway leading from it.

      The inside of the cabin was basically Spartan, with a few well-used furnishings that Brenna decided must have been favorites of Mrs. Langston. An antique oak sideboard stood against one wall. A matching washstand and primitive chair occupied another. Facing a rugged stone fireplace was an early-twentieth-century sofa with wood arms and cushions that had been flattened by years of sitting. Only a floppy-eared coonhound lying on the braided rug in front of the hearth would have made the scene a perfect blend of countrified necessity and simplicity. But there was no dog, just the three of them.

      Carrie called from the kitchen. “Dad, why are you home? Isn’t it early?”

      He glanced at Brenna before answering. “I came to check on things here. I got a call from an unidentified female at the shop, and when I went to answer, no one was there.”

      His glance mutated into a hard stare. Feeling her face flush, Brenna began concentrating on native animal prints on the walls.

      “It wasn’t me,” Carrie said.

      “I didn’t know that,” he answered. “I called here, but no one answered. I was worried.”

      Brenna remembered the earbud cords dangling from Carrie’s head. No wonder she didn’t hear the phone ring.

      “Sheesh, Dad, you don’t have to check up on me every minute,” Carrie said from the kitchen.

      “I’ll try to remember that,” he said, settling on the plaid sofa. “How’s that tea coming?”

      Carrie came into the living room with a tray holding three glasses. She set the tray on a scarred but clean pine coffee table and handed a tumbler to Brenna. Brenna sat on the other end of the sofa and smiled at the faded images of deer frolicking around the frosty outside of the glass.

      “It’s instant,” Carrie said, looking down at Brenna. “Dad said I should learn to make it from real tea bags, but I don’t see why.”

      Mike picked up a glass and took a sip. “I just thought you might like to do things the way your great-grandmother did.”

      Carrie gave him an incredulous look. “Why would I want to do that? Everything was such work back then.”

      He crossed and uncrossed his legs, cleared his throat, took another sip of tea and finally stood. “I’m going to change out of this uniform.”

      “Good idea, Dad,” Carrie said. “You have grease on your shirt.”

      “Goes with the job,” he said and headed toward the hallway off the living room. “I’ll just be in there. You ladies talk all you want.”

      A few seconds later, Brenna heard a door close. Carrie sat in the spot vacated by her father and leaned close. “Do you see how awful it is out here, Miss Sullivan?” she said, keeping her voice low.

      Brenna didn’t want to put herself in the middle of any family dispute. Besides, she truly didn’t find Carrie’s living conditions to be “awful.” Remote, yes, especially for a teen who was still more than a year away from getting her driver’s license.

      “I know it’s hard to believe,” Carrie said, “but my father really likes it out here. He keeps talking about nature and fresh air until I just want to scream. Spiders and mice are nature, too, you know.”

      Brenna smiled. “Your cabin is really only about three or four miles out of town,” she said. “I’ll bet some of the people in town have spiders, too.”

      “I suppose, but we might as well be a hundred miles away for all the times I get to go to the stores and do fun stuff.”

      “Your dad never takes you shopping?”

      “Oh, sure, to the grocery and the hardware store.” She grimaced. “I guess that’s his idea of fun. And any time I complain he just tells me that we have all we need.”

      Brenna doubted that statement. “Other than some specialty stores, gift shops and local antique dealers, we don’t have much. But there are malls in Libertyville, Athens and Augusta.”

      “Dad has taken me to those a couple of times,” Carrie admitted.

      Poor deprived child...

      “But this dumb town is nothing like California, where I used to live. Out there we had tons of cool places to go, outlets and twenty-four-screen movie theaters.”

      Brenna understood that moves required periods of adjustments. Some people needed a lot of time to get used to a new environment, whereas others just seemed to fit in almost instantly. Brenna had been like that when she moved to Mount Union. The people who lived here, the town itself, offered much of what she wanted, the closeness of a community along with the privacy she needed, and especially a job she appreciated for many reasons. The students came from good, mostly two-parent families and didn’t arrive at class with heartbreaking baggage every day. Brenna had had too much experience trying to deal with students’ sad home lives, and she appreciated Mount Union’s solid family values immediately.

      For four years now she had done an admirable job in the classroom while maintaining the independence and separation she expected in a town like Mount Union. Okay, maybe she’d never been voted teacher of the year like Diana, but no one had ever complained about the job she did. Now here she was sitting in a backwoods cabin listening to a morose, lonely girl complain about the place Brenna had come to love. And she didn’t know how she was going to handle it.

      So she took a stab at counseling even though she knew it wasn’t her strong suit. “You know, Carrie, maybe you should give Mount Union a chance. You’ve only been here a few months, right?”

      The girl slumped down in her seat. “Three long, miserable СКАЧАТЬ