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You Promised to Come Home

By Thomas P. Lancaster

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Rutherford, New Jersey
1938

Samuel Beacon sat on the immaculate, mahogany chair that he had moved away from the dining room table and placed a few feet from the large, prominent window of his family’s apartment. Rain poured from the night sky, but light was still coming from across the river in Manhattan, so he stared desperately off into the distance hoping to catch a glimpse of what he felt was so elusive.
While Samuel was searching, his seventeen year old daughter, Mary, had awoken and strolled out from her bedroom. Although she had done her best to avoid thinking about her father, she was struggling. She knew something was wrong and she wanted to help him. He was her hero. The stock market collapse of 1929 had dealt a lethal blow to her father’s business, but she was certain he would find a way to salvage enough for the family of three to survive.
She stood in the hall and studied her father, who sat looking out through the window with his back to her. The floorboards creaked as she walked into the dining room and towards him, but he never moved. Even when she placed her right hand on his shoulder, his body remained unyielding.
“You alright, Daddy?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Samuel said in a tired, distant voice. “I think so, baby girl.” Even after a decade of elbowing his way through business deal after business deal and trying desperately to become more American, his voice still held a strong, Irish accent.
“The rain is really coming down,” Mary said.
“Seen bigger rains back home in Ireland,” he said.
“Is Mama asleep?” Mary’s worried face was hidden in the darkness, but a faint glimmer of light from the distant skyline managed to reach her face.
“Your Mama worried herself to sleep.” Samuel kept his eyes fixated off into the night. “I’m sorry I broke both of your hearts.”
Mary hugged her father. “Nonsense, Daddy. She’s just tired that’s all. Why don’t you go to sleep too?”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Do you have work tomorrow?” Mary asked.
“Work?” Samuel chuckled. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
Mary’s anxiety grew as her father’s doom seeped into the air. “Why are you sitting here staring at the rain?”
“I’m looking for something,” he said.
“For what?” she asked nervously.
He waited a moment as he mulled his response. “I’m hoping if I look hard enough, I might see God working.”
Mary looked confused. “What do you mean?”
Samuel sat up and shifted slightly in his chair, but he never turned from the window. “Man has created all of the world’s problems, not God. The rain can wash away all man has done to distance himself from God. I’m just hoping this rain washes enough away for me to see a little trace of Him.”

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