Carly

by Lyn Cote

  No one talked until the couple had disappeared inside Ivy Manor’s back door. Then Chloe let out a long sigh. “I’m feeling every one of my ninety years right now.”

  Carly decided to push against the unspoken rules once more. “Why won’t my mother tell me about my father?”

  All three women stared at her but said nothing.

  “Why?” Carly insisted. “And why won’t you tell me?”

  Kitty gave her an apologetic smile. “It’s Leigh’s story, her secrets—”

  “They’re my secrets, too,” Carly cut in.

  “We can’t tell you, my dear.” Chloe rubbed her temple as if in pain.

  “Yes, it’s important that Leigh do it,” Bette added.

  “Why?”

  “Carly, remember,” Kitty said, “unfortunately, the truth isn’t always what we want it to be.”

  Nate led his wife into Ivy Manor. He’d come to love this place. It was a haven of peace. His everyday world dragged his mind through murder and other forms of cruelty he had a hard time stomaching. More and more he fought becoming completely hardened to life, to people. He’d talked to his father and grandfather enough to know that a completely cynical cop was not what he wanted to be, nor what God wanted him to be. And visiting Ivy Manor washed away the filth he brought with him and gave him hope again. Even about the woman he loved.

  Leigh and Nate entered the quiet house with Michael fast asleep in his arms. Stacks of washed dishes covered the plain oak kitchen table. The housekeeper, Rose, would finish putting everything back in place the next day. They walked up the hardwood steps to the second floor and Nate laid their son on the antique trundle bed in Carly’s room. Then they walked back down, out the front door, and between the ivied pillars of the front porch.

  What am I going to do with this woman? He gazed at his wife of seven years. So beautiful. So proud. So ambitious. He said what he was thinking. “I thought I could balance you.”

  Leigh looked at him. “Is that why you married me?”

  “I married you because I fell in love with you. Because you needed me and I needed you. Because I loved you, loved Carly, and wanted to be her father.”

  “Then why didn’t you insist on adopting her?” Leigh sounded uncharacteristically petulant.

  “It was early days for us.” Even though the evening breeze was rising, he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled them up a turn. “I was feeling my way, getting to know you and Carly.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Leigh folded her hands under her arms.

  “Carly isn’t like you.” Nate tugged one of her hands free and clasped it. “You bubble up and explode. You declare what you want and expect the world to snap to attention. Carly is still waters, deep waters. I should have taken time to dig out what her opinion of being adopted was. But our marriage came only a couple of months—”

  “After I didn’t get to the dance studio on time, after Carly had been snatched,” Leigh snapped and then burst into tears.

  “What do you mean—the truth isn’t always what we want it to be?” Carly couldn’t keep the anger from her voice. She felt her pulse speeding up.

  “We mean,” Chloe said, “that you may have some unrealistic idea of who your father is or what he’s like.”

  “Do you know my father?” Carly demanded.

  “No, dear,” Bette replied, patting Carly’s arm, “none of us have ever met him or even seen him.”

  “But you know who he was—I mean is—right?”

  “I know his name,” Kitty confessed.

  “I know what kind of man he is,” Chloe added.

  “I know that he hurt your mother as much as a man can hurt a woman,” Bette said.

  “Your mother trusted him with her heart and body, and he proved himself to be unworthy of that trust,” Chloe said.

  “But I’m his daughter.” Carly heard her voice rising with her indignation. Why were they all protecting her mother? “That means that I’m like him. I have his genes. What about me is like him? Not like him? Don’t you see? I need to know.”

  “It was unkind of Carly to throw that up to you,” Nate said, cradling Leigh in his arms, stroking her hair, silk against his palm. “But . . .”

  “But what?” his wife asked tearfully.

  “But this conflict is bound to unearth the past, stir up muddy waters.”

  “Why? Why is she doing this?”

  Nate was heartened by Leigh’s diffident tone. If nothing else, Carly’s rebellion had shaken her mother out of her own righteous vision of things. “She is trying to find her feet as an adult. I know you think that Carly’s done this just to insult you. But I don’t see her doing that. Carly is very much self-directed. I think this may have something to do with . . .” He struggled with the words circling in his mind. “Somehow this is tied up with her kidnapping and her birth father.”

  Leigh pulled away from him. “So this is all my fault. And I deserve it.”

  “Stop that.” He jerked her back to him, holding her against him. Her heart beat against his chest. “You’re important. But right now the spotlight is on our daughter. This is all about her. She needs to . . . I think she’s trying to face the future and be strong.”

  He shrugged. “I see it all the time with new cops right out of the academy. They all want to become cops for different reasons and for the same reason. They all are facing life and want to take a strong stand.” He shook his head. “That’s as clear as I can make it. Maybe that’s why I understand what’s pushing Carly. I felt it once myself.”

  “Yes, we see that you need to know your father’s identity even if you never choose to meet him,” Bette said. “We love you, Carly, and we’d like to help you.”

  “But you won’t.” Carly turned her face away from them. How could they hold back the information that meant so much to her?

  Bette stood up. “We can’t. All of us have learned through hard experience not to meddle, not to interfere. I tried to, and I nearly lost your mother, nearly lost my relationship with her, with you. I’m . . . I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing, crossing some line that could break our family apart. Our family is strong and fragile at the same time.” She shook her head and began pacing.

  “Someday I’ll find my father.” Carly rose, confronting her grandmother. “Someday I’ll know everything.”

  “And your mother will be the one to tell you,” Chloe spoke up. “I have confidence that she will. She’s going through something now.” Chloe shook her head. “The past is still strangling her. But I have faith that she will make the right decisions when the time comes.”

  “I do, too,” Kitty agreed.

  Carly grimaced. “Well, I don’t. I’m her mistake. She’d be happier if I weren’t here, if I’d never been born.” The familiar desperate feeling rushed through her. She ran from the summerhouse down the lane toward the stream. Silent tears washed her face.

  Later, after everyone was in bed, Chloe shrugged into her cotton robe and slippers and crept down the hall to Nate and Leigh’s room. Bette and Kitty were both staying in the little cottage so Nate and Leigh could be near Michael and the children’s room. Chloe knocked.

  Nate opened the door. “Do you need something?” he asked with concern.

  “I need a few private words with my granddaughter.”

  He gazed at her a moment, then nodded. “I’ll go downstairs and get a glass of milk.” After squeezing Chloe’s shoulder, he walked around her and headed down the staircase.

  Chloe entered the spare bedroom, lit by the soft glow of the bedside lamp.

  Sitting on the edge of the colonial four-poster, Leigh was wearing a pale cotton nightgown. She didn’t look up.

  “I haven’t come to scold or argue,” Chloe reassured her as she sat down at the little empire-style desk in the corner. “I’ve come to make a suggestion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think you’ve overlooked someone who could help with this problem.”

  Leigh looked up. “You
mean Frank?”

  Chloe nodded. “Since he’s made a career in the military, he could give you advice and a different perspective on the army. And he’s known you since you were a teenager. He understands you.”

  Leigh buried her face into her hands. “Why can’t life ever be easy?”

  “It never is. We’re strong people, a strong family, or we wouldn’t still be here in this house that’s nearly three hundred years old. I can remember when Daddy had electricity installed.” Chloe glanced around. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Mother had a fit when the workmen had to open up walls. But candles and oil lamps no longer were sufficient, and we had to move with the times.”

  Leigh looked up. “And you think I’m acting like your mother? Trying to hold back progress?”

  “You are now the previous generation. A chilling thought, no doubt.” Chloe smiled. “But remember, I’m the oldest living generation, even more chilling. It gets very lonely when you outlive all your friends and relatives. I’m so fortunate that Kitty is here with me. But there isn’t a day that I don’t miss my Roarke.” Chloe paused.

  “You want to talk about Nate and me,” Leigh prompted. She wouldn’t make eye contact.

  Chloe walked over and sat down on the soft quilt beside Leigh. “Honey, good men who love us are rare. I’m afraid Nate’s right. You’ve been burying yourself in work, and it’s showing in Michael. I can see it.”

  “I don’t want to hear that.” Leigh turned her head away.

  “I don’t want to say it. But I also need to say that you should never have linked divorcing Nate and Carly. You should not have made it sound as if you were putting the blame on Carly if you divorced Nate.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Leigh swung back and turned her face into her grandmother’s shoulder. “Whatever problems Nate and I are having, Carly didn’t cause them.”

  “I know, dear. But you need to say that to your daughter and make it right.” Chloe rubbed Leigh’s tight back muscles through the thin cotton gown. “Call Frank. He can help.”

  “Don’t you think he might be prejudiced in favor of the military?” Lifting her head, Leigh gave a twisted smile.

  The next morning at Ivy Manor, Leigh sat beside the telephone in the den downstairs. She could hear Rose talking to Chloe in the dining room. No more delay. She forced herself to dial Frank and Cherise’s number in northern Virginia. Frank worked at the Pentagon now, so he’d moved back from Georgia about three years before. A young female voice answered, and Leigh asked for Frank.

  “Hello,” Frank’s rich, familiar voice came on the line.

  “Hi, Frank, it’s Leigh.”

  “Leigh! What a great surprise. We were really sorry that we couldn’t make Carly’s graduation party.”

  “I know. We felt sorry we couldn’t get to Lorelle’s party.” Frank’s second-born, his eldest daughter, had graduated that year, too.

  “What can I do for you, Leigh?”

  “I couldn’t have called just to talk?” she asked, delaying the conversation she did not want to have.

  “No, we’re both busy people and we’ve never had much time just for chatting. What’s up?”

  After what her grandmother had said the night before about Michael’s being neglected, Leigh didn’t like that response. But she drew in breath, readying herself. “I need to talk to you about Carly. She wants to enlist in the army.”

  There was a brief silence. “Your daughter, too? Did they plan this together?”

  Leigh wrinkled her forehead. “What do you mean?”

  “Lorelle intends to enlist as well.”

  “No.” Leigh was shocked. “Why wouldn’t she go to college first, then go in as an officer?”

  “Wants to make it on her own and wants to pay for college on her own.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the middle child thing. Cherise thinks Lorelle’s trying either to get our attention or stand out from her brother, James, who went dutifully off to college but doesn’t plan a military career. Or maybe it’s generational. We boomers, we’re the ‘Give peace a chance’ generation. Maybe our kids are reacting to that.”

  Leigh tried to juggle this unexpected development. Who would have thought? “This is really weird.”

  “I know. We’ve had a few lively discussions here with Lorelle. I bet you’re as thrilled as we are.”

  “Then you don’t think I’m wrong in refusing to give my consent.”

  “Give your consent?”

  “Remember, Carly is almost a year younger than your Lorelle, still a minor.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten. Your girl finished high school early.”

  “Yes, and I refuse to sign for her . . . but Nate says he will sign for her.”

  “Ah.” Frank sounded smug.

  Irritation prickled through her nerves. “Ah, what?”

  “Leigh, Carly’s enlisting in the army isn’t the end of the world. She’ll still have a lot of years left when her enlistment ends.”

  “I just don’t see Carly in the military,” Leigh declared, putting all her will into it.

  “Why?”

  Leigh paused, marshalling her reasons. “She’s so slight, you know. She’s not one of these strapping young women who could play football. She could get hurt.”

  “Recruits rarely get hurt beyond bumps and bruises, and the army takes in all kinds. If I remember correctly, Carly lettered in track all three years of high school. That means she’s probably in better shape than most recruits.”

  “I just don’t want her to do this,” Leigh said, feeling rising desperation.

  “Don’t you remember how my family had a fit when I went in for officer candidate school?”

  “But you went in the military as an officer.”

  “I know, but our daughters don’t want to go through college first. They want to do it their way. Just like we did.”

  “You’re not much help.” Leigh couldn’t argue. She remembered all too well the way both of them had pushed against their parents’ restraints.

  “Leigh, Carly sounds just like you at seventeen. She has her own agenda and will do it with or without your consent. I mean, she just has to wait until she turns eighteen, and then she won’t need your consent.”

  Leigh frowned and twisted the phone cord. “That has been pointed out to me. Repeatedly.”

  “Step back, Leigh. They have to grow up sometime. We want to protect them, but we can’t. Remember, I survived two tours in ’Nam and,” he teased, “you survived tear gas and rioting at the ’68 convention in Chicago. Your daughter is tough enough to make it through basic training.”

  “I wish you’d sided with me,” Leigh scolded. “It would have given me something to hang on to.”

  Frank chuckled. “Hey, there’s a good chance that our two girls will end up on the same post for boot camp. There are only a few posts where women companies go through basic training. They probably won’t end up in the same platoon, but at least they’d have someone on base that they know.”

  “I thought the army had gender-integrated basic now.”

  “No, we tried that from 1978 to 1982. And some people are talking about bringing it back. But we had too many people thinking that the female recruits were getting injured at a higher rate.”

  “That’s a reassuring thought.”

  “I didn’t say it was fact. It was just the prevailing idea. And it should reassure you if you’re worried about Carly’s safety.”

  “Frank, you’re not helping.” Leigh felt a little sick. Her daughter on an army base? In a platoon?

  “I’ll tell Lorelle so she and Carly can chat about it.”

  Leigh tried to hold on to her stand. “I don’t want this to happen.”

  “Leigh, I’ll tell you what I told Cherise: ‘Mom, it’s time to let go.’”

  CHAPTER THREE

  May 28, 1990

  In the large, crowded, but oddly silent reception hall at the army base, Carly fingered her
earlobes, touching the tiny diamond earrings that had been Kitty’s graduation gift. She’d worn them daily since receiving them. Now she stood in line, waiting to enter the amnesty room, trying to think what to do.

  She knew she wasn’t supposed to bring anything valuable on base—especially not jewelry. Now they’d been told that they must leave whatever they shouldn’t have brought onto base, and that they would never see what they left there again. Why didn’t I take them off?

  Carly almost raised her hand to ask if she couldn’t send the earrings home. She stopped herself. Nate, who had done two years in the army when the peacetime draft was still in effect, had told her to remember two things to survive basic training. First, she shouldn’t take anything said or done personally. Second, she should never call attention to herself. In an effort to follow number two, Carly had dressed in a plain navy blue T-shirt, jeans, and worn Nikes to arrive on base.

  So now, if she raised her hand, she’d be calling attention to herself, negating her effort to blend in. But she couldn’t bear to part with the earrings. Kitty was nearly ninety-three. How many more gifts would Carly receive from her?

  “Rich witch,” the female recruit closest behind her hissed into Carly’s ear. This slur was followed by a string of vulgar insults.

  Caught off guard, Carly merely glanced at the girl whose name was something like Alexa or Alex. Then the line moved forward.

  It all went down so fast that Carly didn’t realize what was happening until it was over. Alex-somebody, the name-caller, hooked a foot in front of Carly’s ankle. Carly felt herself losing balance—smoothly she turned and executed the response she’d learned in years of tae kwon do lessons. She used the other girl’s momentum to propel her down onto the floor. Then, breathing fast, Carly stood above, gaping down at her.

  Suddenly another woman’s nose touched Carly’s. “What in the heck do you think you’re doing?” Spit from the drill instructor’s mouth splashed Carly’s face.

  “She tripped me,” the girl on the floor accused.