The Man She Left Behind (15 page)

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Authors: Janice Carter

BOOK: The Man She Left Behind
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“SURE I CAN’T HELP?”
“Never the first time. It’s a house rule.”
Leigh reached up to put the clean wineglasses into the cupboard. When she turned around, Spencer was still hovering in the doorway leading to the deck. He wore crisp tan chinos and an emerald green polo shirt that enhanced his fair hair and deep tan. He looked like a model for some men’s magazine.
The thought surprised her. Spencer McKay’s good looks had always been a fact of life during Ocracoke schooldays. But they’d been less refined, almost...snarly. One could never be certain just how far he’d go to prove a point.
And now—she gave him a sidelong glance as she walked over to the sink for a glass of water—his attractiveness stemmed not just from his age, but from life experiences that had added character to his face. Gone was the “dare me” look in his eyes, replaced by...what? Leigh couldn’t tell and she didn’t want to be caught staring.
“You’re quiet,” he observed.
Only on the surface. Inside, things are bubbling away as usual.
Leigh shrugged. “I’m worried about Sam. He seemed so frail today and yet barely a week ago he was his old self.”
“You mean that night I ran into you on the highway?”
She laughed. “Yes. My welcome back to Ocracoke.”
“Talk about heart attacks! You practically gave me one. I hope you don’t make a habit of prowling around after dark.”
“Even if I did, this is hardly New York City.” Leigh put the empty glass on the counter. “Want to take your coffee out to the deck?”
“Sure. Jamie was certainly impressed by your dinner. He said it was ‘cool,’ which in his book means a five-star rating.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, though I’ve never heard Thai food called ‘cool’ before.”
Spence grinned. “I guess for a kid raised on burgers and fries, it was.”
“Milk?”
“Please. No sugar, though.”
Leigh took the carafe from the coffee machine and filled the mugs. When she handed Spencer’s to him, he clasped it, along with her hand. Reluctantly she lifted her eyes to his.
“I’m worried about Sam, too. But I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening thinking and talking about him. Besides, Jamie’s gone over to his place now, and that’ll make Sam happy. He adores the kid.”
She smiled. “Yeah. And Sam wouldn’t want us worrying about him, anyway.”
“You’re right, he wouldn’t,” Spence said. He pulled her by the hand out the screen door to the deck.
The sun was just lining up for its descent into the western end of Pamlico Sound, and the white plastic chairs on the deck glowed a faint rose. Spencer led her to a chair and took the one next to her. If Leigh had been sitting with anyone else, she knew contentment would be oozing out her pores. But she could feel Spencer’s eyes on her, sense them peering over his coffee mug watching her every move. Expectation hung in the air.
“Did I tell you that Evan had some interest in the house yesterday?” She made her voice sound breezy and animated, but didn’t look his way.
Spencer clinked his coffee mug down on the metal patio table. After a long pause he said, “No, you didn’t.”
The air around Leigh seemed to thicken. She drank more coffee, but it tasted bitter and she set her mug down next to Spence’s. When she pulled her hand away, Spencer grabbed it.
“Look.” His eyes glimmered with an emotion she didn’t care to translate. “I want you to see something. Come on. No, don’t ask any questions.”
He led her around to the front of the house to his pickup. She held back, looking at the house.
“It’ll be all right. We won’t be long.”
Leigh didn’t find her voice until the truck had reversed onto the highway. “Spencer, where are you taking me?”
He held an index finger to his lips. “Shh. Trust me, okay?”
She thought of the old Spencer and his impulsiveness.
Maybe he hasn’t changed that much, after all
. The truck zipped along the road toward the harbor—the Creek, as everyone called it. She guessed where they were heading as soon as the marina came into sight. Her hand clamped on the door handle.
“Spence...” she warned.
“Shh. Not a word. Promise.”
It wasn’t a request, but a command. Beads of sweat broke out on Leigh’s upper lip. She could feel her heart expanding in her chest. When the truck squealed to a halt at a line of parked cars across from the docks, the thudding in Leigh’s temples accelerated to a drumroll.
“Spencer! Please!” She clutched his forearm as he took the keys from the ignition. “Why are you doing this?”
He placed his hand on top of hers and pressed. “Because someone has to, Leigh, and it might as well be me.”
“This is ridiculous. For heaven’s sake! Stop playing amateur shrink! Take me back home now.”
That last word almost got to him. Not what it said, but how it was said. The shrill, almost frightened ring to it. Too late, he realized. He had to go through with this. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Come on, Leigh,” he whispered.
He jumped out of the truck and reappeared instantly at her side, pulling her out and down the boardwalk to the line of boats, bobbing in the early-evening breeze. They stopped in front of an old but well-maintained white-and-blue Chris-Craft. Spencer began untying the bow line.
“Go aboard,” he ordered, but Leigh stood shivering on the dock until he came up behind her and, cupping her elbows in his palms, helped her onto the boat. He untied the lines and got aboard himself, then started the engine and reversed out of the slip. When he had the boat headed out of the harbor, he looked back at Leigh and motioned for her to come up front.
She sat down gingerly in the worn leather seat next to his. It swiveled at her touch, and she reached out for the ledge beneath the windshield, steadying herself. She was afraid to ask where they were going. Knew, anyway. As sure as she recognized the dry mouth, racing heart and breathlessness of her panic attack, the landmarks of the Creek materialized before her as if they’d never been absent from her life. As if this evening was happening fifteen years ago. A night much like this, she realized. Balmy golden sunset and the water a deep smooth jade. Until later, when the wind picked up and whipped it into some unrecognizable beast....
Leigh licked her lips, working them around the words ready to erupt from her mouth. “Spence?”
“It’s okay, Leigh. We’ll watch the sunset and then go back. Trust me.”
“It’s just that...I haven’t been...”
“On a boat for fifteen years.”
She nodded.
He reached out a hand and tilted her face toward him. “Then it’s about time,” he murmured, dropping his hand and turning his attention back to the steering wheel.
So she held on to the ledge with her fingertips, watching the water of Ocracoke Sound slice by the boat as it raced the setting sun for Portsmouth Island. Twenty minutes later the island appeared, backlit by the hot-pink sunset. Spencer slowed the boat, letting it coast toward an inlet, and then he cut the engine.
. Without a glance at Leigh he moved to the stern and cranked out the anchor. Then he sat down next to her and placed his arm around her shoulders.
“If we’re lucky, we might see the green glow,” he said.
Leigh felt the breath ease out of her in tiny spurts. She relaxed her grip on the edge of the bench. “Have you ever really seen it?” she asked.
His eyebrows raised in mock hurt. “What are you suggesting? That I’ve made up something that’s been well documented all over the world? The green glow of a sunset at sea?”
In spite of herself, Leigh smiled. “Doesn’t it only happen in the tropics? Or below the equator or something?”
“It happens wherever there are people who believe.”
A laugh burst out of her. His hand squeezed her shoulder. “That’s the Leigh I remember,” he said.
Is it? What exactly is the Leigh you remember?
The question swirled around her mind, but she clenched her lips, keeping it inside.
“So,” he went on, staring ahead at the outline of deserted Portsmouth Island. “Did you know that the government is resettling the place? Seems like there’s a movement afoot to revitalize the Outer Banks. Maybe rebuild or restore what’s there and let a few people come back.”
Leigh looked at the the curve of inlet. A mere twenty-minute ride from Ocracoke, Portsmouth had attracted not only fishermen and sailboats, but sometimes teenagers in search of adventure.
“Looks innocent enough, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” She turned to Spencer, realizing for the first time how very close he was.
He shrugged. “It’s just a pretty island with a few old buildings. How could it have had such an impact on your life?”
Leigh’s jaw dropped. Anger sizzled deep in her gut. She forced herself to wait, then said, “How can you possibly ask that question?” Her arm swung out in a crazed arc that included the island and the bay. “That place reeks of memories. I...I can almost hear the clanking chains of all the ghosts that haunt it.”
“And haunt you.”
Her mouth closed. She nodded dumbly. “And me,” she whispered. “There’s so much you don’t know. You weren’t there!” The exclamation pitched in accusation.
“I should have been.”
Leigh met his gaze head-on. “Yes. You should have been. I wanted you to be there. The day before the prom I asked Mary Ann Burnett to give you a note saying I’d wait for you at the lighthouse. I wanted to patch things up between us—to ask you to take me to the prom, after all.”
“I never got any note from Mary Ann,” he said, surprise in his face.
She sighed. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. If only—”
“You couldn’t have changed what happened either way, Leigh.”
“No, of course not. But...”
“What?”
“Maybe the other kids would have waited it out.”
“You didn’t make the storm happen and they didn’t want to wait it out. They made a decision. They chose not to listen to you.”
“I should have made them!”
“What could you have done?”
Leigh shook her head. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Take a deep breath, Leigh. Slowly.”
She took the tissue he held out. It reminded her of the red-and-black bandanna, and in a confused non sequitur, she murmured, “I have your bandanna at home. On my hall table.”
“Better?” he asked, ignoring the remark.
She nodded and blew her nose. “Yes. Thanks.” She looked across the water at the island. “I remember so many details.”
“Tell me.”
“I haven’t talked about it in years—not since the inquest. And then I went over it all so many times I thought I’d be sick.”
“It’s been fifteen years.”
“A long time.” Leigh sighed again. “I don’t know where or when plans about the midnight picnic all started. I can’t even recall whose idea it was to go to Portsmouth after the dance. At first, when people started saying how it was my idea and I was the only one to survive, I was outraged. I tried to fight the rumors for a while, but later I just gave up. There didn’t seem to be any point.”
“Or perhaps insisting on the truth didn’t fit in with your scenario.”
“What do you mean?”
“Taking the blame,” he explained.
“You make me sound pathetic.”
“Not pathetic,” he murmured, tracing the frown lines across her brow with his index finger. “Valiant, maybe even idealistic. Trying to make their deaths more noble, perhaps, by taking all the responsibility. I was at the inquest, too. I heard it all. You let them assume all kinds of things about that night. Why didn’t you set the record straight?”
“What
is
the truth, anyway?”
Spencer moved his finger down to the tip of her chin and turned her face to him. “You tell me,” he whispered.
And she did, beginning with the fierce argument she’d had with Spencer a week before the prom.
“Looking back,” she said, “I can see I wanted everything my way. Stop grinning at me like that or I’ll never finish! You didn’t seem to care that I was leaving Ocracoke at the end of the summer. Whenever I wanted to talk about our plans, you’d always walk away or shrug me off.”
“Because the thought of you leaving tore me apart.”
“But I was only going off to college. People do it all the time.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lovers do it all the time. Separation isn’t the end of things.”
“I had my own insecurities, Leigh. Believe me, the way I behaved was the complete opposite of what I was feeling. I figured you’d meet some smart rich guy in Chapel Hill and that’d be the end of it. Of us. Sure, I went along with what you said about coming home on weekends or visiting you in Chapel Hill, but I knew after a couple of months you’d meet—” he paused “—someone else. It was inevitable as far as I was concerned.”

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