Promises to Keep, Nan Rossiter [feel good fiction books .txt] 📗

had no problem with it—believing that everyone was created in God’s image and that the message of the New Testament was entirely about love and acceptance—he knew their father’s interpretation of the Bible was absolute and literal. He’d often heard his dad tell jokes that weren’t kind, and he knew he’d stopped going to church when the congregation decided to be open and affirming. There was no gray area in Jack Tennyson’s interpretation of the Bible . . . and there was no arguing about it. Gage was certain that, when Chase had finally found the courage to be open about the person God created him to be, their father had been more concerned about what people thought of him than about how his youngest son felt.

It must have been hard for Chase, Gage thought, but he could certainly relate. After he’d told their father he didn’t want to be tied down to the farm, his father had barely looked at him. And after their sweet Ayrshire cow Chestnut—with whom Gage had won so many blue ribbons—had died giving birth to a little stillborn calf, his dad hadn’t spoken to him for weeks. Later that fall, his mom had finally been able to convince him to let Gage apply to art school, but the tension between father and son had continued to grow.

The following summer, their fragile relationship was shattered when tragedy struck. After a heavy rain, Cale had been out in the field, helping their dad free a tractor that was stuck in the mud. He’d hooked one end of a rusty chain to the immobile tractor while Jack had hooked the other to the hitch of a second tractor, but just as Jack had begun to put tension on the old chain, it had snapped, sliced through the air like a whip, and struck Cale in the chest. Jack had looked back in horror as his son crumpled to the ground, and then scrambled to his side, shouting for help. He’d frantically administered CPR, but when he couldn’t revive him, he just cradled him in his arms and sobbed. Later, the doctor said there was only one tiny pink mark in the middle of Cale’s chest—the chain hadn’t even broken his skin, but it had instantly stopped his heart.

Jack had been despondent, blaming himself, but Gage, who was enduring his own staggering grief, fully believed—because his father wouldn’t even look at him—that he wished he’d been the son who had been helping him in the field . . . and he’d been the son who’d died. At least, then, the son his father loved most . . . the son who loved the farm most, would still be alive.

And then there was Chase. Damn! Gage thought. The manure must’ve really hit the fan! Yep, things definitely hadn’t turned out the way Jack Tennyson planned . . . and it served him right!

Gage reached into the back of the cabinet for a tumbler—one of two he’d taken as parting gifts from The Distillery. He poured two fingers, and then, because life was complicated, drizzled in a third. “Neat,” he said, smiling at Gus when he appeared at his side, hoping that his master would be having a cookie with his whiskey. Gage chuckled. “You’re silly,” he said softly, tousling the dog’s velvet ears. Then he reached into the ceramic canister full of dog treats and added, “Let’s go out on the porch where it’s cooler.”

Gage settled into one of the Adirondack chairs, and while Gus clumped to the floor at his feet—happily chomping on his midnight snack—he swirled the amber liquid, took a sip, and felt the heat trickle down his throat. He looked up at the stars, and the memory of the first time he’d had Jack Daniel’s—triggered by the warm sensation in his belly—suddenly came back to him, a memory he thought he’d pushed away for good. It was the summer he’d turned eighteen—the summer before Cale died.

It hadn’t taken long for heads to turn the summer River Jordan Raines had moved into the parsonage next to the church. She had corn-silk blond hair and eyes the color of jade—or the color of a John Deere tractor, as all the farm boys joked. Her long, tan legs were barely covered by her tattered denim cutoffs—so short Libby Tennyson wondered out loud, “Why bother?” Her full, perky breasts made all the country boys’ hearts skip a beat, but River had eyes for only one country boy—at least, in the beginning.

The youngest daughter of Pastor Tommy Raines—the new minister—and his wife Leigh, River was a preacher’s kid, and like every other “PK,” she got away with murder. Mischievous as a youngster, and seductive as a teen, River knew instinctively how to set the proverbial tender teenage trap, so when she first spied Gage, dripping with sweat as he tossed hay bales into wagons, the cogs in her mind started turning. Soon after, River saw him picking up supplies at the feedstore in town, and as she walked past him, she cast an alluring spell: “My, those feed bags look heavy,” she called, and poor Gage, a red-blooded teenage boy with raging hormones, took the bait—hook, line, and sinker. “She may be the daughter of a minister,” Libby warned her brooding artistic son, “but she is trouble!” Unfortunately, Gage barely heard his mom’s cautionary words—he was already head over heels.

“That boy is being led around by his testicles,” Jack observed one night when he saw the young couple walking through the dairy barn at the fair, hand in hand. And it was true: Gage’s testicles were fully involved—especially when River led him to a secluded spot overlooking the fair. River had pointed to the dark hillside from the top of the Ferris wheel. “Let’s go up there.”

Gage had nodded—they’d been seeing each other all summer, and he would have climbed Mount Everest if she’d asked him to. They got off the Ferris wheel, ditched their friends, and wandered through the food booths, the scent reminding him they hadn’t eaten, but oddly, he