Wildcat

Promises, Promises.

I met a colleague at an open house the other weekend, and he joked that the market was stressing him out and giving him gray hair.

“I don’t see any room on your head for any more gray,” I quipped, and he cackled.

Before my grandpa Johnny died in Asheville last August, he asked me why I wasn’t married yet.

I rattled off my

cent rap sheet, the engineer, the vice president, the surgeon, and he laughed:

“Your standards are high.”

He helped put them there.

Earlier that year, in April, I had been in court, battling for a restraining order against my ex Special Forces boyfriend.

My grandfather in Colorado was worried about me; he had my grandma call me up on FaceTime.

”Dee, open that drawer, show Peanut what’s in there,” he wheezed.

There was a touch-tone lamp with wolves on it; dreamcatchers above the bed. My grandmother slid the oak drawer of the bedside table and followed his instructions.

It was packed full of Wildcat ammunition, a Jennings pistol, and a promise.

”Don’t you think if he’d wanted to kill you, he would have?” Special Forces’ new girlfriend asked me via text a few months later.

A promise.

Here’s another:

”Not to sound too cocky, but you need to be with someone like me.”

And my promise back:

”I do need to be with someone like you. If you meet him, send him my way.”