Johnston - I Promise Read Online Free PDF Page A

“It’s already been signed, but I never signed it. Who did?”
    She dropped her eyes to the floor, tightened her grip on the knapsack, but said nothing.
    “Look, Billie Jo, we have to talk about this.”
    Her lips remained sealed.
    “It says here you were suspended for fighting with another girl. What kind of fight? About what?” He hadn’t known high school girls resorted to tearing hair. At least, they hadn’t in his day. On the other hand, he had seen enough violence by kids in his travels to convince him they could be brutal.
    “It also appears you only get a suspension after you’ve had three warnings. Why didn’t you say something to me if you were having trouble in school?”
    She shrugged, a small, vulnerable gesture that tore his heart out.
    He had blithely, naively, assumed Billie Jo had fit right in at her new school. It was considerably smaller than the school in Boston. She never talked much about activities at school, but she hadn’t complained, either. It was upsetting to realize how blind he had been. There were problems he hadn’t even suspected.
    “What happened to the warning notices?” he asked. “Did you sign them, too?”
    She sneaked a chagrined peek at him, looked down again, and nodded her chin slightly.
    “Is that a yes?” he demanded.
    “Yes!” she shot back. “I got into a fight with Eula Hutchins because she said you . . . she said . . . It doesn’t matter what she said. She won’t be saying it again.”
    Marsh wondered what Eula Hutchins had said about him. He could make a pretty good guess. It wasn’t a secret that as a kid he had been accused of rape. Even though he hadn’t been found guilty of any crime, there were plenty in Uvalde who believed he was. It was a lot of the reason he had never come back to his father’s house after he had left, even when things had been resolved with the law so he could.
    It was also why he had never brought Ginny here to meet his father before the old man died. There was too great a chance she would hear the rumors that persisted years after the charges against him had been dropped. He should have told Ginny the truth from the beginning, but he could never find the right moment to speak. The daughter of the American ambassador to West Germany, who had willingly consented to marry a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, might have balked at the notion of wedding an accused rapist with a drunk for a father.
    Those two secrets had sat between them their entire marriage. It meant he could never fully confide in Ginny, never let down his guard with her, because the truth might come out. In later years, when the marriage was failing, he wouldn’t have cared, but by then he had learned to keep everything to himself.
    Maybe he should have sat Billie Jo down the day they got to the North Ranch and told her the whole story. Maybe then this wouldn’t have happened. But old habits die hard. Being a journalist had taught him to be wary of spilling his guts. He had seen too much, knew too much that could hurt other people, told to him off the record.
    He opened his mouth to ask if Eula Hutchins had accused him of being a rapist and snapped it shut again. Things were bad enough between him and his daughter. He wasn’t sure she was old enough—worldly enough—to understand even if he explained what had really happened. There was always the chance her fight with Eula had been over something else entirely.
    Marsh shoved a frustrated hand through his sun-bleached chestnut hair and realized he needed a trim. Because he was always in some godforsaken place without amenities, he was used to getting along without a haircut and a shave. Which was a good thing, because there had been so much to do around the dilapidated ranch he hadn’t found time to get to Red White’s Barber Shop in town.
    “Where were you going this morning, if you’re suspended from school?” he asked.
    Billie Jo frowned at him, lipstick-red lips pursing. “To school, of