Mitch used to believe that—that it was every man for himself. If he couldn’t help himself, he was out of luck.
He didn’t anymore. He’d sat up on dozens of lonely nights talking to his wife. He’d asked her for a lot of things, and somehow he’d always gotten what he’d needed after those one-sided conversations. And they hadn’t always felt like one-sided exchanges.
But this...he’d never seen his answer so clearly, so quickly.
“Mitch,” Leanne said again. “What is it?”
“You surprised me,” he said, unable to stop staring at her, then found himself telling her, “you know, in all these years, I’ve never seen that much of a resemblance between you and Kelly.”
“And you did just now?”
He nodded, wondering how he was ever going to convince her to go along with his plan.
“I can leave if you want to be alone. I can walk around the cemetery and come back in a few minutes.”
“No, it’s all right. I’ve been here awhile.” He had one nagging question for her before they got down to business. “What are you doing here now?”
“Ginny’s with the boys,” she said quickly. “So you don’t have to worry about them.”
“I don’t. Not when I leave them with you.” Mitch took a step closer, because he felt drawn to her in some way he didn’t understand. And he remembered coming home this afternoon, how scared he’d been, how the two of them had ended up clinging to each other, sharing their shock and their fear.
It had felt so natural to haul her into his arms that way, felt so much better to have someone beside him who was feeling the same thing he was. Even if it was stark terror, he wasn’t alone in it.
“Why did you come here?” he repeated, although he suspected he already knew.
Leanne shrugged and smiled a little. “You’ll think I’m crazy, because it was the oddest thing.”
“No,” he reassured her. “I won’t.”
“I’d been avoiding this place ever since I got back. And then this afternoon, this feeling came over me....” She shook her head and looked every bit as bewildered as he felt. “I just knew it was time, that it was okay to be here now, that I could handle it without falling apart. In fact, it felt like I had to be here now. And then out of the blue, Ginny showed up and offered to take the boys. So I came.”
And then Mitch knew with a certainty that this was one of those life-altering moments, that nothing would ever be the same again after today.
He was certain that he’d felt his wife’s presence for the last time, that she truly had done all she could. He had feared this day, had somehow known it was coming. But he didn’t feel the devastation he’d expected as she slipped away from him for the last time.
There was sadness, of course. But he knew it was time to let her go.
Life seemed to have tangled him up inside itself again, and there were things he had to do. He had two little boys to take care of. For the first time in a long time, Mitch felt he knew how to do that, knew that he hadn’t been given some impossible job.
He could do anything for his sons. He wondered what Leanne was willing to do for the sake of his boys.
“I know I shouldn’t ask you this,” Leanne began. “You’re the last person I want to ask, but I need to know.”
“You can ask me anything,” he said. After all, he was getting ready to ask a monumental favor of her.
“Even about Kelly’s death?”
“I can talk about it,” he said, realizing now that he could. “What do you want to know?”
“It sounds so silly, but...I want to know that it didn’t hurt her. That she wasn’t scared. Or alone.” Tears filled her eyes and she looked away. “I’m sorry, Mitch. They’re terrible questions, I know.”
“No, they’re not.”
“When Amy told me, I was so shocked I hardly said a word. And it was only later that I kept wondering what the end was like for her. It was so sudden, so unexpected....”
“No. She knew it was coming. I don’t know how she knew. But I believe she did, because of the things she said. The letter she wrote you, for one thing. The time she spent pestering me about making a will and naming a guardian for the boys. Those last few weeks of her pregnancy she spent hours putting together memory books for the boys. A family history, she called it. Photographs of the two of us, of you and Alex and Amy. Your parents. My parents. The houses where we lived. Everything. And she wrote pages and pages in her dairy, all things she imagined the boys would need to know someday, as if she knew she wouldn’t be around to tell them. She talked a lot about your mother, too. How she wished she’d had something like this. so she could remember her more clearly.”
“I didn’t know,” Leanne said.
“And I should have told you. Leanne, she was happy. So many times those last few weeks, she made a point of telling me. She was happier than she’d ever been. She thought she was the luckiest woman alive. And after the boys were born, she just sat in her room and held on to them. The nurses kidded her about not wanting to give them up for a moment.”
Mitch could see her so clearly, glowing with happiness and pride as she cradled a baby in each of her arms. “I camped out in a chair by her bed at the hospital, and we talked about so many things. When she was gone I was so angry, because, like you, I had so many things I wish I’d said to her. But she got to say all those things, and she was happy.”
He took a breath and told himself to go on, to finish it. “It happened on the second day, when we were waiting to see if she and the boys were ready to go home. The nurse came and took the boys so the pediatrician could check them. Kelly kissed them goodbye and then she pulled me over to the bed so I could sit beside her. And I held her in my arms and said I loved her. She told me it was the best day she’d ever had. Then she fell asleep in my arms. I held her for a long time, and then I sat down in that chair and held on to her hand. I fell asleep, too, and when I woke up, she was gone. Just like that.”
Mitch swiped at the single tear rolling down his cheek.
“Why?”
“It was a blood clot. The doctor said sometimes a bit of the placenta can get into a woman’s blood stream, and from there into her heart or her lungs.... It’s rare. Incredibly rare. But it happens.”
“I’m sorry,” Leanne said. “I shouldn’t have made you go through that with me.”
“No, it’s okay. It helps to remind me that she was happy at the end, that she believed she had the best of everything. How many people can say that about their lives?” Mitch was finding it easier all the time to remember the good moments, to let go of the bad.
“You still talk to her, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“I heard your voice when I walked over here. That’s what you were doing?”
Mitch nodded. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No. I talk to her, too.”
Mitch was surprised at that, though he supposed he shouldn’t be. Leanne had loved Kelly, also.
“Does she answer you?” Leanne asked.
“Not in so many words. But she does answer.” Mitch waited for her to scoff, but she didn’t. “You don’t think that makes me a little crazy? That I believe Kelly listens to me and helps me?”
“I’d like to believe that she could still help us, that she exists somewhere and that she’s okay.” Leanne looked at him through eyes heavy with tears. “Mitch, do you believe she’s okay? Do you believe she’s happy where she is? Is that possible, when she can’t be with you and the boys?”
Mitch reached for Leanne’s hand and held it. “Kelly’s just fine. I know it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can still feel her presence sometimes, and I can tell that she’s just fine. If she’s worried about anything, it’s me and the boys. And you,” he added. “I’ll bet she worries about you, too. I know she wanted you to be happy.”
Leanne squeezed his hand tight. “Ginny told me that she spoke to Kelly a few months
before the boys were born. Kelly talked about how much she wanted to see our family come together again. For us to put the past behind and make peace with one another.”
“She did,” Mitch said. “We talked about it, too.”
Leanne looked utterly lost. “I don’t know how to do that, Mitch. I keep thinking, if only she were here, maybe she could show me, because I don’t know if I can do that on my own.”
“I’ll help you,” he offered.
“You will?” She was surprised.
Mitch nodded.
Leanne stood absolutely still and wondered just what she was seeing in those beautiful eyes of his, wondered why she felt so much better just because he was holding her hand.
Mitch was different in some way she couldn’t begin to explain. He seemed so calm, so sure of himself, whereas this afternoon he’d been as shaken up as she had been at the prospect of Rena’s trying to take the boys. And then Leanne thought she might have figured it out.
“You talked to the lawyer?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good news?”
“No guarantees,” Mitch hedged. “But I think I found. a way out, a way to keep the boys. And that’s the most important thing to me.”
“I know.”
“It’s important to you, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I don’t know if I can explain to you how much that means to me. But ever since you told me about the lawsuit, I’ve been reminded so clearly of how I felt when I lost Kelly and Alex and Amy. I couldn’t stand to see Rena do to you and the boys what she did to me and my family.”
“I won’t let her,” Mitch said. “But I need your help.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I’ll do anything I can.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Leanne, this is going to sound crazy. At least, it will at first. But hear me out, okay?”
She nodded, and then she started to get scared. Mitch looked so intense, and there was so very much at stake.
“My lawyer said there are no guarantees, that there never are in court. She said one of the biggest strikes against me is the fact that the boys have been bounced around so much from sitter to sitter.”
“But you’re going to find someone. I won’t leave until you do.”
“The second problem,” he continued, “is that there’s still a bias in this country against fathers having sole custody, especially of very young children. Lots of people still believe the little ones need a mother more than anything else.”
“You can’t let Rena be their mother,” she said.
“No, I can’t. But you can be their mother.”
“Me?” She didn’t understand any of this.
“You love the boys?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you said you’d do anything for them. You said that before you’d let me give them to Rena, you’d take them yourself.”
“I would,” she confirmed. “But...you’re not going to give them up, are you?”
“No. I was hoping we could share them for a while.”
Share? “As in joint custody?”
“No, as in a family. You, me and the boys. Temporarily, of course,” he added. “You understand that we’d have to be married.”
“Married?”
“It’s extreme, I know. But effective. My lawyer said this is the closest thing to a guarantee that she could give me, that in this case, she can’t imagine a judge taking two little boys away from their biological father and his wife.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she responded, dumbfounded. “You want me to be your wife? Until the custody issue is settled?”
“Probably a little longer than that. I wouldn’t want to get dragged right back into court when Rena found out this marriage wasn’t real. Maybe for a year? You’d have to be here in Chicago, and I don’t know what that would do to your career....”
“We don’t need to worry about my career right now.” She knew now that whatever satisfaction she’d gotten out of traipsing all over the world was long gone. She simply didn’t want to do it anymore. Instead, she was thinking about the boys, about how she would feel if they were hers and if Mitch truly was her husband.
She was thinking about stepping into her sister’s life and having everything her sister had ever had, everything her sister had lost.
It seemed a terrible thing to want, a selfish thing to do.
But she wanted the boys. She wanted this life. And Mitch? Well, they certainly weren’t talking about a real marriage here. But still...to live with him for an entire year. To wake up in the same house, to see him half-naked as he wrestled with the boys on his rumpled bed every morning. To share a late supper with him or sit quietly on the sunporch with him in the mornings if they ever managed to get up before the boys. To watch the boys grow and change and to see them happy and secure in the home she and Mitch could provide.
These were dangerous dreams for a woman to have, particularly one who’d seen firsthand how very much Mitch McCarthy had loved his wife.
To him, Kelly would always be his wife. Leanne would be the woman who had agreed to help him for the sake of the boys.
She could get her heart broken all over again, this time even worse than before. The first time, when she’d lost her family, she hadn’t known how vulnerable she was, how dangerous a position she was in.
This time she knew. This time it might well kill her to give up the boys when this was over. Still, for herself, she wasn’t sure she could resist. And for the boys, she didn’t see how she could refuse.
“I don’t know what to say, Mitch.”
“Say you’ll think about it.”
“Can you do this?” she asked, glancing back at her sister’s grave. It seemed so odd to her that they were talking about becoming man and wife here at her sister’s grave. “I know how much you loved Kelly,” she added. How much he loved her still.
“I would do anything to make sure the boys stay with me, and I know Kelly would understand that.”
“You’re right. She would. But...oh, God, what would everyone else think? They’d be shocked.” And outraged, she suspected, remembering Alex’s face when he’d walked into the house this afternoon and found Leanne in Mitch’s arms. “If they ever thought there was anything between us...”
It was too odd even to think about. There could never be anything between her and Mitch. She was fooling herself imagining such a thing.
“I don’t know what we’ll tell them. Or what we can allow ourselves to tell them,” Mitch said. “I don’t know who’s on. Rena’s side and who’s on mine. And I don’t think we can afford to trust anyone here with the truth. At least not right away.”
“So we would try to convince everyone that this marriage is real?”
“I suppose we’d have to.”
“Oh, Mitch. We could never make anyone believe that.” It was ludicrous even to think that they could. “Everyone would feel we were dishonoring Kelly’s memory for even considering marrying each other.”
“It would make things more difficult for you with Amy and Alex. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Leanne shrugged helplessly, wondering if she’d ever really had a chance where her siblings were concerned. “I don’t know if we can let that play a great part in our decision. After all, it’s not as though I’m on the verge of a breakthrough with either one of them.”
“Still, I’d hate to add to the tension between you.”
She brushed off his concern. “Really, it’s not—”
Mitch turned to her, stopping only when they were practically nose to nose. “Don’t say it’s not important to you, because I know it is.”
She stepped back to give herself time to breathe. “It’s not my main concern right now. It can’t be. Alex and Amy and I have been living like this for years. We can go on this way for a while longer.” She searched her heart for her bottom line. “I want to help you. I made a promise to Kelly and to you that
I would do anything I could to help with the boys, and I meant it.”
Of course, she’d never thought helping with the boys would extend to anything like this.
“So,” he said, “you’ll do it? You’ll marry me?”
Leanne looked over at the headstone, with the pretty vines carved into it and her sister’s name in a fancy script. She ached for her sister right then and for Mitch and the boys.
There were so few things she could do for her sister now.
“Yes. I’ll do it,” she said, turning her face into the warm, springlike breeze that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Chapter 9
Still drowsy, her head aching, her lids heavy, Leanne awoke to the feeling that someone was watching her. Opening her eyes, she saw not one, but two someones. Two miniature someones grinning mischievously at her and giggling.
“Up,” Teddy said.
He was holding out his arms to her, and she rolled over to the side of the bed and lifted him up.
Timmy, who was more industrious, got a handhold on her covers, a foothold on the edge of the box springs and managed to hoist himself up.
“Up!” he said, delighted with his climbing ability.
Teddy, still warm and limp from sleep himself, crawled under the covers and huddled against her, while Timmy went to the headboard, hung on to it and started bouncing and babbling.
Looking at the clock, Leanne saw that it was after seven—amazingly late for the McCarthy household to be rising. “What’s the matter, guys?” she teased. “Getting lazy in your old age?”
“Wayzee?” Teddy said, grinning and giving Leanne a big, wet, sloppy kiss.
She laughed because he was so cute and she was so in love with him and his wild man of a brother. Giving Teddy a quick kiss, then pushing her hair back from her face, she glanced toward the doorway and found Mitch there, watching as the three of them eased into the day.
“Your alarm clock didn’t go off, either?” he asked, referring to the twins.
She managed a smile—barely. He was dressed, shaved, his hair smoothed down but still wet, and she was in her pajamas. They would have a lot of mornings like this if they were going to be married, and Leanne was looking forward to them, even if she was scared by all that lay ahead.
Wife, Mother...Lover? Page 12
