The Promise Keeper

Celestine Valancourt stood in the bathroom of her penthouse apartment, her bare feet cold against the imported marble floor, staring at a little plastic stick that had just completely and utterly rearranged her entire universe. There were two little pink lines staring back at her. Two little lines that seemed to be glowing like neon signs, like a message from God, or maybe just from the Universe, or maybe just from the drugstore down the street where she had nervously purchased the test that morning, hiding it in her coat pocket like a teenager.

She was thirty five years old, married for three years to one of the most eligible bachelors in the city, and she was pretty sure this was the first time since her wedding day that she had felt something that wasn't heavy or just plain sad. This feeling was just pure. It was bright. It was like sunshine after a really really long and gray and miserable winter.

Her hand drifted down to her stomach, which still looked exactly the same as it always did, flat and unremarkable, but now she knew. Now there was something in there. A tiny little thing. A tiny little person. A tiny little secret that she got to carry around with her.

"Oh," she whispered to the empty bathroom, to the little life she couldn't see but could already feel in her bones. "Oh, honey. This changes everything. This really really really changes everything."

She thought about Kier. Her husband. The man she had promised to love for better or for worse, and boy had there been a whole lot of worse. But this, this tiny little peanut of a person, this was going to be the thing that finally cracked him open. She just knew it. A baby would soften him. A baby would make him see what really mattered in life. A baby would be the thing that brought out the goodness his father had always insisted was in there, buried somewhere deep down underneath all the layers of Thornwell pride and Thornwell money and Thornwell coldness.

This child will change him, she told herself. She has to believe that. Because if this doesn't change him, nothing will.

*

*

*

The truth was, she didn't fully understand what had gone wrong between them.

When they first met, Kier was different. Softer. He laughed at her jokes. He asked questions about her life. He looked at her like she was something precious.

But somewhere along the way, he changed.

Maybe it was turning thirty eight. A midlife thing, her mother would say. Men his age start looking at their lives and wondering if this is all there is. They get restless. They get scared. They push away the people closest to them because those people remind them of the promises they're failing to keep.

Maybe it was his father's death. Alistair was the only person Kier ever truly respected. When he died, something in Kier snapped. He buried himself in work. He stopped trying. He started treating Celestine like a piece of furniture.

Maybe it was the misunderstandings. She never told him who she really was. A Valancourt. One of the richest heiresses in Europe. She hid it because she wanted to be loved for herself and not her money. But now she wondered if he sensed something was off. If her secrecy made him feel like she was hiding something. If that resentment festered into cruelty.

She didn't know. She only knew that somewhere between their wedding day and now, the man she married had disappeared. And she had spent three years waiting for him to come back.

*

*

*

Kier's father, Alistair Thornwell. Just thinking about him made Celestine's eyes get a little bit watery, which was silly because it had been three years since he passed away, three years since she sat by his bedside in that big fancy hospital room that smelled like flowers. He was the only Thornwell who ever looked at her like she was a real person and not just some gold-digging nobody who had somehow tricked his son into marriage.

On his deathbed, he had reached for her hand with these papery thin fingers that were covered in bruises from all the needles, and he had squeezed with a strength that seemed impossible for a man who was literally hours away from leaving the earth forever.

"Celestine," he had whispered, his voice all raspy and broken. "My beautiful girl. I need you to promise me something. Something really really important."

She had leaned in close, her cheeks wet with tears she couldn't stop. "Anything, Mr. Thornwell. Anything at all."

"Alistair," he corrected her, like he always did. "How many times do I have to tell you? You're my daughter now. My real daughter, not like that cold fish Camille or my boy who I love but who I also know is... complicated. You're my daughter. So you call me Alistair, okay?"

She had nodded, not trusting her voice.

"Okay, so here's the thing," he continued, his breath coming out in these little huffs like it was hard work just to talk. "My son. My Kier. He's angry. He's so so so angry all the time and I know it. I know it's my fault. I worked too much, I wasn't there, I let his mother raise him and his mother... well, you know Vivienne. She's not exactly warm and fuzzy. So he's broken, my boy. He's got all these cracks and chips and missing pieces. But there's goodness in him. I swear to you on my mother's grave, there is goodness in there. It's just hiding, it's scared and it doesn't know how to come out."

Celestine had squeezed his hand back, wanting so badly to believe him. "Okay, Alistair."

"Promise me you'll forgive him," he said, his eyes getting all intense and serious. "Forgive him for the mean things he says and the way he forgets you and the way he puts business before everything. Forgive him until it reaches one thousand times. And if it gets to that number, if you've forgiven him one thousand different times for one thousand different things and he still hasn't changed, then you can let him go. You can walk away with my blessing, with my love, and with no guilt whatsoever. But you have to give him a chance. You have to give him nine hundred and ninety nine chances. Promise me, Celestine. Promise me you'll be the promise keeper."

She had promised. Of course she had promised. How could she not? A dying man asking for his last wish? So she had promised, and she had meant it with her whole entire heart, and for three years she had kept that promise even when it felt like her own heart was cracking into a million little pieces.

Nine hundred and ninety nine times. That was the number she had settled on, even though Alistair hadn't specified. She had done the math in her head a long time ago. Three hundred and sixty five days in a year, times three years, that was over a thousand days, but some days were good, some days were okay, some days Kier was almost the man she thought she married. So she had started counting the bad moments instead. The moments that needed forgiveness.

And now, with the pregnancy test in her hand, she allowed herself to hope.

This child will change him, she thought again. She has to believe that. Because if she stops believing, she has nothing left to herself to him.