Folded Promises

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

AVEN COMPTON

I stood with my finger over the doorbell, calculating the likelihood of Raina actually murdering me versus making me wish I were dead. The mental math wasn’t looking good. I knocked instead, softer than I should have, like somehow it would make my unannounced arrival less offensive.

The porch light flicked on with alarming quickness.

Raina must’ve still been up, which was worse.

At least if I had woken her, she would be too groggy to gather her thoughts for a proper read.

I straightened my spine, sucked in my stomach, and tried to look less like a woman whose credit score was circling the drain.

Raina opened the door with a “Don’t play with me” look on her face. Her bonnet was secured around her edges, arms crossed like she was guarding the gates to success itself, and her eyes… Lord, those eyes narrowed into slits that could slice a person’s dignity clean in half.

“You cannot be serious right now,” Raina said, her voice low but sharp as a blade. She didn’t step aside to let me in. She just stood there taking inventory of my disheveled state.

I attempted a smile. “Surprise, surprise?”

Raina’s nostrils flared. “A surprise is receiving balloons on your birthday. This is a situation.” She gestured at my entire existence.

“Can I at least come in before you tell me off? My feet are killing me, and I think your neighbor across the street is recording this for his social media.”

She looked past me to the dark house across the way, then back at me with suspicion.

Raina sighed the kind of sigh that started somewhere around her ankles and worked its way up through generations of Black maternal disappointment.

She stepped aside just barely enough for me to squeeze through with my bags.

The house was quiet and smelled like the scented candles Raina had been using since I could remember. Some things never changed, even when everything else did.

“You want to tell me why you’re at my door at two in the morning looking like you escaped from Alcatraz? Why couldn’t you pick up a phone to let somebody know you were coming? I got kids sleeping upstairs, Aven, five of them,” Raina whispered harshly, closing the door behind me.

“Four… Junior is at Howard,” I corrected automatically.

“Don’t correct me about my own children. I still pay his phone bill, so he counts. What is all this? Are you moving in now? After a year of ‘living your best life’ and sending nothing but Facepage pictures from beaches we couldn’t pronounce?” She pointed at my bags.

I winced. The knot in my throat grew larger. “It’s temporary. Just until I—”

“Until you what? Find yourself again? Get back on your feet? Write the great American novel?”

Each question was like a tiny dart hitting exposed skin, and I blew out air.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I lost my phone charger,” I replied. I looked down at the dead cell phone in my hand.

“Grown women don’t show up at two in the morning with no plan, no job, and no charger.” She glanced at my hand.

“Can I borrow a charger?”

“Mmhmm.” Raina’s eyes traveled from my face down to my scuffed sneakers and back up again. “You look tired, Aven, skinny, and like you haven’t deep conditioned in a month of Sundays.”

That was Raina-speak for “I’m worried about you,” but I wasn’t ready for her concern. It would break me faster than her criticism.

“The flight was trash. We had layovers in Miami, Panama, and I’m pretty sure we circled hell waiting room before landing. They served us stale peanuts rationed from the first Bush administration,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

Raina wasn’t biting on my humor.

I shrugged. “I didn’t call because you would’ve talked me out of coming.”

“Damn right I would have. You can’t keep running every time something goes wrong, Aven. That’s not how adult life works.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from being disrespectful. “I’m not running. I’m… regrouping.”

“With what money? Because I know the check you cash for those little travel blog posts ain’t paying any real bills,” Raina commented, her eyes piercing through my bullshit.

The truth stung worse than my busted feet.

My mountain of debt loomed larger in my sister’s practical presence.

My credit cards were maxed out, and my student loans were in forbearance for the third time.

The advance for my memoir was spent on one last desperate trip to find anything worth writing about.

“I’ll figure it out,” I mumbled, suddenly feeling every bit the failure Raina thought I was.

She shook her head, then checked her watch. “I’ve got to be up in three hours to get the kids ready for school. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. You can sleep in Junior’s old room. Don’t wake the kids.” She turned and headed toward the stairs.

I stood in the entryway like I was sixteen again, being lectured for missing curfew instead of thirty-three with a master’s degree and a published article in a magazine that went defunct two months after paying me.

“Raina,” I called out softly before she could disappear upstairs.

She paused, one hand on the banister, not turning around.

“Thank you,” I added, meaning it more than she knew.

Her shoulders fell with another heavy sigh. “You’re family, Aven. You’re always welcome here, but you need to figure out what you’re running from and what you’re running to. Because I can’t keep watching you run in circles.” She looked back at me, her expression softened.

As I dragged my suitcases up the stairs, I wondered if I’d ever stop being a cautionary tale, the one family whispered about at cookouts, the free spirit who’d flown too close to the sun and crashed back to earth with nothing but Facepage memories and an empty bank account to show for it.

Raina led me up another flight of stairs to the attic without saying another word. Each step was like climbing the mountain of my own failures, my suitcase bumping against every stair like a countdown to rock bottom.

Raina opened the door to reveal Junior’s old room, a time capsule of teenage boy ambition frozen in place while its former occupant was off becoming somebody at Howard.

I stood in the doorway, wondering how I’d ended up back here, in this house, in this town.

Six months ago, I’d been so sure I was on the verge of something real.

“Bathroom’s still down the hall,” Raina said, flicking on a light, illuminating how small the space was. “I put fresh sheets on the bed last week when Junior went back to school. There are towels in the closet.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

Everything about the room screamed “potential fulfilled,” from a poster of J. Cole staring philosophically from one corner to Kendrick from another to the bookshelf holding trophies and abandoned comic books. Junior had gotten out and was making good. Meanwhile, I’d gotten out and crawled back.

“Don’t turn the AC below seventy-four, and don’t use all the hot water in the morning,” Raina added, her hand lingering on the doorframe.

“I know the rules,” I said, dropping my suitcase by the twin bed that looked comically small for an adult woman.

Raina yawned. “You need anything else tonight?” she asked before leaving me alone with my thoughts.

What I needed couldn’t be found in this house. The room was stifling despite the ancient ceiling fan turning overhead, pushing hot air around rather than cooling anything. I glanced at the window, but years of attic dust had sealed it shut more effectively than any lock.

Even the budget hostel in Cusco, with its cold showers and communal bathroom, had felt more like progress than this. At least there I’d been a traveler with purpose, not a prodigal daughter with nothing to show for her journey.

I changed into an oversized t-shirt to sleep in. Washed my face using the water bottle in my bag because I wasn’t ready to face anyone in the hallway bathroom.

I tried to get comfortable on a mattress determined to fold me in half. Between the heat, the lumpy mattress, and the parade of regrets marching through my brain, sleep didn’t come. I knew I was in for a long night.

I opened my laptop, knowing I should’ve left it in my bag.

I should’ve pretended it didn’t exist until morning, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I scrolled through my emails, knowing exactly which one I was looking for.

I’d read it at least ten times since receiving it last week, each time hoping the words might somehow rearrange themselves into something less devastating.

Dear Ms. Compton,

Thank you for submitting Finding My Way: A Black Woman’s Journey for our consideration.

We appreciate the opportunity to read about your global experiences and the personal reflections you’ve shared. While your travels are rich and diverse, the current draft reads more like a travel log than a transformative journey, and we hoped you would give the readers a reason to care—

I couldn’t finish reading. Give the readers a reason to care.

I closed my eyes, but the words were tattooed on my eyelids.

Her words dismissed not only my writing but my entire experience.

A year of hostels, street food, and immersing myself in cultures reshaped how I saw the world.

All of it reduced to a privileged woman’s vacation diary.

The truth was I’d left home convinced I had something important to say.

While my college friends secured corporate jobs, bought houses, and started families, I chased the promise of a voice that mattered.

Now I was thirty-three with nothing but Facepage memories and a manuscript that read like a self-indulgent travel blog.

No urgency. No voice. No reason for readers to care.

I set my laptop aside and stared up at the ceiling, where plastic glow-in-the-dark stars formed constellations Junior had arranged years ago. They were dim now, barely holding onto their luminescence, much like my dreams.