The Man She Left Behind (19 page)

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Authors: Janice Carter

BOOK: The Man She Left Behind
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“What? Can he do that?”
“I don’t know. My lawyer says only if I’m not considered a fit parent or something. I guess Jen’s hubby—Rob’s his name—figures if he adopts Jamie, they’ll be one big happy family once the baby comes.”
“That’s crazy!”
“That’s what I think. I mean, couldn’t he and Jen figure out that’s why Jamie was giving them such a hard time? ‘Cause he was so damn unhappy with them?”
Leigh held the phone away from her ear. His anger had raised his voice a few decibels.
“Anyway, as I said, I’ll be pleading my case before a judge this afternoon and then, I guess eventually, he’ll want to talk to Jamie.”
“The poor kid.” Leigh sighed.
“Yeah, as if he doesn’t have enough to sort out. Look, don’t breathe a word of this. I hope to get back to Ocracoke later tonight. Would you mind...”
“I’ll be happy to keep an eye on him.”
“Well, he doesn’t really need a sitter, but since he’s locked out and probably has no money...”
“I have lots of food.”
Spence laughed, but she could hear the relief in his voice.
“Probably not enough for a growing teenager.” There was a brief silence and then, his voice deeper and lower, Spence said, “I owe you big time for this, Leigh.”
“Dam right,” she said. “Wasn’t that going to be dinner?”
“Ah, yes. Was it tonight?”
It was Leigh’s turn to laugh. “Forget it, Spence. I think you have enough on your mind right now. Besides, who knows when you’ll get back? Another time. Seriously.”
“You...you’re being good about this, Leigh.”
That’s me, all right. Good old Randall.
“See you later, then?”
“Yeah. Thanks again.”
Leigh plunked the phone down on the table. She realized she hadn’t even mentioned her own news. Well, there’d be plenty of time for talk when he got back later tonight. Then she muttered a curse. Who wanted to talk, anyway?
 
JAMIE COULDN’T DO enough for her. After the biggest breakfast Leigh had ever cooked—much less witnessed anyone eat—they spent the rest of the morning cleaning the attic, then hauling out boxes of stuff Leigh couldn’t bring herself to toss in the garbage.
“I can see I’m definitely going to have to hire a big moving company to take this stuff to New York. Problem is...”
“No place to put it when you get there?”
“You said it!”
Jamie stood back to inspect the pile of cartons. “Too bad you can’t just leave everything here. You know, like sort of keep this as a summer home. Then all this stuff would be here for you when you came back for a holiday.”
The innocence of youth, she thought, looking at the eagerness in his face. “That would be nice,” she said and hating to dampen his optimism, added, “The problem is, really, I can’t keep up the place from New York. It’s just too much work and too much money.”
“I could do it! Seriously, Leigh, my dad wants me to get a job and I could do it.”
Leigh was touched by the zeal of his proposal. She smiled. “Jamie, that’s incredibly thoughtful of you, but I think it would be too much. Even for you. And then, you have school starting in September, right?”
He scowled. “I hate school. I’m so glad summer vacation’s started.”
Something in his voice advised her to swallow the platitude perched on the edge of her tongue. One of the few things she could recall hating in her adolescence was the way adults readily came up with phony advice that kids knew they’d never follow themselves.
“I have an idea,” she said, instead. “How about packing a lunch and hiking through the marshes to where the wild ponies are? I haven’t seen them in years. In fact, I haven’t even been to the other side of the island since I got back. Interested?” She saw the glimmer of excitement flare in his green eyes before she’d even finished.
“All right!”
“AND LEIGH POUND a place in the fence where we could slip through to get a closer look at them.”
Spence shot an amused glance at her.
Leigh?
But Jamie wasn’t slowing down for comments.
“We musta seen about ten mares and stallions and two foals. They were just wandering around, eating that wild grass. A couple of them pranced into the surf just to cool off. They were so...so...”
“Cool?” Spence asked.
“Nah. More than cool. Way more than cool. Awesome.”
Spencer set his cold beer on the patio table. “When I was a kid, they still roamed free. But then the highway was finished and too many of them were getting hit by cars and trucks. Plus, the number of tourists skyrocketed.”
Jamie nodded. “Yeah, that’s what Leigh said. It seems a shame to fence them in, but hey, 180 acres is still a lot of space to wander around. Anyway—” he slugged back the rest of his soda “—we had a great time. Didn’t we, Leigh?” He grinned across the table at her. She was sitting next to Spencer.
Leigh
again. Spencer was beginning to feel like the odd man out. But he didn’t mind the sensation. He certainly liked the enthusiasm he saw in Jamie’s face. It was the first genuine emotion—other than hot anger—he’d seen in his son for months. Everything else had been an apathetic indifference.
He crumpled up the empty wrapper on his plate. He’d returned just before the dinner hour, bringing burgers and fries with him, to find Jamie and Leigh relaxing after their all-afternoon hike around the salt marshes and woodlands fringing Pamlico Sound.
Leigh looked at him, their grins connecting at Jamie’s tale. It was the most she’d heard the boy speak. He’d been so quiet for most of the hike that at times she’d had to turn around to see if he was still following. But when she’d asked him if he wanted to return home, his vehement no spurred them on for another hour and a half until she was the one begging to come back another day.
“The ponies will still be here next week,” she’d said, to which he’d softly replied, “Yeah, but you might not be.” She’d turned away, feeling the sting of tears and decided that, next to Sam’s, that was the best homecoming remark she’d heard since her return to Ocracoke.
Now Jamie was standing up, thanking her for the great day and the sleepover and extending a polite hand, which Leigh firmly shook. Then he left, off to a movie in Hatteras with a friend; he’d be staying at his friend’s place that night, he told Spencer, making Leigh wonder where this friend had been last night. Then she bustled about, picking up the remains of dinner because she suddenly felt shy and awkward alone with Spencer.
But his hand shot out to clamp onto her forearm. “Sit down,” he said, softening his order with a heart-lurching “please” that made her go all wobbly in the legs. Must be the big hike today, she told herself, although she knew otherwise.
“You’ve made quite an impression on Jamie. I haven’t seen him like that for...I hate to say it, but for years. Since he was a little kid.”
“It’s only because I’m a neutral party. You know—unconnected with any family issues or...”
“Problems?”
He sounded bitter. “I didn’t mean that, Spencer. I’m just a novelty—something new and different in his life. If I were staying longer, that would change, too.”
Spencer forked a hand through his hair. “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I’m jealous. That’s the Jamie I’ve been searching for since he came to live with me.”
“He’s also a teenager. Even if you’d never lived apart, he probably wouldn’t be much different than he is now with you.”
Spencer waved a dismissive hand. “I know, I know. Gawd, I’ve been telling myself that for months. I guess the heat is on now with this adoption thing.”
“Are you feeling scared about it?”
“Damn scared. I’ve lost too many people in my life.” He stared ahead into the yard. “First my own mom, when I was about ten.”
“I never met her.”
“Nope. She’d put up with enough of my pa’s drinking and took off. Too bad she didn’t take me with her.” He cocked his head at Leigh and flashed a weak grin. “But then, I’d have never met you.”
There was a long silence that Leigh desperately wanted to fill, but words failed her. She pushed around some crumbs on the patio table and didn’t dare meet his eyes.
Finally he continued, “Then I lost you and a few years later my son.”
“And Jen,” she put in, almost out of perversity.
“Not Jen. I never had Jen. After the first few months of marriage, I couldn’t even pretend anymore. I... I wasn’t very nice to her. I feel bad about that. But—” he uttered a cynical laugh “—she paid me back in full. I reckon we’re even now.”
Despair swept over Leigh. “You can’t put the past back together,” she whispered, staring down at her lap.
“No. I wouldn’t want to, not now. Now I’m...hoping to make something new.” He reached out a hand to angle Leigh’s face his way. “All the way to Raleigh, and then Charlotte, all I could think about was you. What I’m trying to say...I’m not getting this out very well, but the way I used to feel for you—nothing’s changed. Not for me. And I need to know—how do
you
feel about all... about Sunday night?”
She hated herself for hesitating, but emotion churned through her sluggishly. “I...I don’t know, Spencer.” She paused at the disappointment in his face. He was expecting something more from her, but she wasn’t certain she knew what that something was. “So much is happening so quickly. It’s difficult to take it all in, much less make sense of it all.”
“I’ve loved you my whole life, Leigh. The other night when you were talking about the last time you saw me standing outside your dorm, waiting for you to come out—I wish you could have known how I felt, driving back to Ocracoke. I knew my life was over. That it wasn’t going to turn out the way I’d thought for those two years we were together.”
Heat rushed into Leigh’s face. She clenched her hands, shoving them into her lap under the table. Spencer stood up and pulled her out of the chair. He folded his arms around her and murmured huskily, “Let’s change the course of our lives. Right now.” He rubbed his cheek into her hair, inhaling salt spray and jasmine shampoo, and buried his face in the crook of her neck.
Leigh tugged on the back of his head, gently raising it to hers. She cupped his face in her hands, said, “I’ve tortured myself with this fantasy a thousand times,” and planted her mouth firmly on his.
 
MUCH LATER, deep in the still of night and after they’d roused themselves to make love again—but more slowly this time, luxuriating in the sense of time without end—Leigh told him about the visit from Janet Bradley.
Spencer was lying spooned against her, his cheek resting on her bare shoulder. He rolled her toward him. Her face was pale in the spill of moonlight from the open window. “You really think she’s your mother?” he asked.
Leigh sighed. “I don’t know, Spence. She knows things I can’t explain otherwise.”
“Like?”
“First the blanket. And she knew stuff about my dad’s family—how they settled here in the early 1800s. She knew that my mom’s parents were from the mainland...”
“Couldn’t she have found that out by questioning some of the locals?”
“I suppose. I can’t explain it. Her story about the adoption just rang so true.”
“Maybe she has a good imagination.”
“But what would be the point in making it up? What does she have to gain by pretending? It’s not as if I’m an heiress or something.”
“You’ve got this house.”
“She wasn’t even interested in the house.”
“Why now? How did she explain linking up with you now?”
“She said the article revived all her lost hope. That’s exactly how she put it.
Lost hope.
Said she gave up after she didn’t get a response to her letter.”
“What letter?”
“The letter she sent just before I turned fifteen. The one I found in Mom’s bedroom. Didn’t I tell you about it?”
“No.”
When she’d finished, Leigh said, “If Mary Ann hadn’t written that article about me, Janet would never have shown up.”
“You’re right. Still, it does seem damn coincidental. And you’ve really got no proof.”
“Just the proof of what my heart tells me, Spence. If you could have seen the expression on her face when I pulled out that blanket...”
Spencer nuzzled the nape of her neck. “Mmm.” He gave a low growl. “I’d like to see the expression on your face when I start doing this....” He nibbled a dainty track along the base of her neck, then angled toward her breast.
Leigh’s laughter bounced around the room and then ebbed into the breathless whispers of lovemaking.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“W
AKE UP!”
Leigh groaned and rolled onto her back. One eyelid fluttered open. She saw Spence’s face hovering over her and begged, in a voice that cracked, “Please! I can’t take any more.”
He grinned. “Neither can I. I’m not nineteen again.”
“Thank goodness.”
The grin shifted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Leigh threw a pillow at him. “’Cause we’d be here all day, silly, and I’ve got things to do.”
He straightened, zipped up his jeans and bent to retrieve his shirt from the floor. “I’ll say you do,” he said, gesturing with his head to the doorway.
Leigh pushed herself up on her elbows. “What do you mean?”
Spencer inserted one tanned arm into his shirt and then the other. Leigh watched the last of the golden hairs at the V of his neck disappear as he buttoned. She sighed. The night was really over.
“I think your friend is here knocking on the front door. I peeked out through the bedroom window.”
“My friend?” Leigh ran a thick tongue along her dry lips.
Spencer returned to the edge of the bed. “Sure you’re okay? What is it? Can’t be a hangover, not from two beers.”
She pushed herself up to sit cross-legged. The sheet fell away and Spencer murmured, “You have beautiful breasts.”
Leigh smiled encouragement, arching her back slightly.
“Here,” he said, throwing her blouse at her. “Put this on or we’ll be leaving Janet what’s-her-name standing pounding at the door all morning.”
“Oh, no! What’s she doing here now?” Leigh wailed. “She was supposed to phone today.” Leigh slipped into the blouse and began to button it.
Spence was fumbling with a pair of socks. “Maybe she couldn’t wait to see you. If we’re lucky, she’s bringing breakfast.”
Leigh got out of bed and tiptoed to the door. “I don’t think she’s the breakfast-bringing type.”
Spencer was staring at her again.
“What?” She looked at him from the bedroom door, hands on her hips and a knowing smile on her face.
“Hmm?” Then he grumbled, “Hell of a way to wake up. So who’s getting the door?”
“I will. She doesn’t know you.” Leigh reached for the robe swinging from the back of the door and tied it around her. “I’ll stall her at the front door so you can sneak down into the kitchen and get coffee started.”
Spencer shook his head. “I don’t believe it. You’re not seventeen.”
“And aren’t you damn lucky I’m not,” she countered, swaying out of the room.
 
HE SAW THE WOMAN’S face fall in disappointment the instant he stepped into view from behind Leigh, and his hackles bristled with annoyance.
If she wanted Leigh to herself, she should have called as she’d promised.
But Spencer extended his right hand at Leigh’s introduction and released the woman’s damp one as soon as he politely could.
Leigh had been right, he noticed. There were no paper bags of coffee or doughnuts in sight, only a beat-up black leather Pullman standing on the veranda. Spencer frowned and decided to make himself scarce.
“I’ll put some coffee on,” he said, turning to Leigh and raising a quizzical eyebrow, which she ignored. By the time they joined him in the kitchen, he’d drunk his first cup.
Leigh seemed nervous. She was wringing her hands and gesturing to a chair at the same time. “Guess what?” she asked, her voice unusually loud.
Spencer set down his empty cup and stared at her.
Without awaiting a reply Leigh said, “Janet’s going to be able to stay with me for a few days. Maybe even a week.”
Spence looked at Janet, who gave a smile he found ingratiating.
Must have been some conversation in the hallway.
He simply nodded, not trusting his voice. Complications were springing up all over his plans suddenly, and he didn’t like it one damn bit.
He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Guess I’d better go pick up Jamie at his friend’s.” He looked meaningfully at Leigh, whose face had become unnaturally still. “See you later?” he asked, heading for the door.
“Wait! I’ll walk you out.” She shot after him, clutching his forearm just as he reached the front door. “Spencer! What’s gotten into you?”
“I think you’d better go slowly with this mother thing, Leigh. What do you know about that woman?”
“Please. Trust me. It’s just that she can’t afford to stay in the motel anymore. She was going to go back home—to Elizabeth City—and I don’t want her to leave so soon, Spence. Can’t you understand that? I want to get to know her more before she just walks out of my life.”
“Leigh, if she’s really your mother, she won’t be walking out of your life. Maybe she should go back home for a little while. Give you a chance to...”
“To what?”
He shrugged. “Do some checking. Find out if she’s really who she says she is.”
Leigh stepped back. “I want her to stay. I’d like her to get to know you and Jamie. And Sam, too, when he’s back. I can always check her out later. What’s the harm in having a houseguest for a few days?”
Spencer moved toward the door. “Just be careful, okay? She looks a bit odd to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. But she has a strange look in her eye.”
Leigh poked him in the shoulder. “And I used to think I was the fanciful one.”
He grinned, running the tip of his finger along her jaw. “As I said, be careful. I’ll call you later.” He pushed through the screen door and took the veranda steps in one leap.
 
JANET BRADLEY looked forlorn standing in the middle of the bedroom, her suitcase clutched in one hand.
“In here?” she asked.
“If you don’t mind...”
“I don’t mind at all. I feel honored you want me to have your parents’ room.”
Leigh smiled reassuringly. “I think that’s what they’d have wanted, too. Why don’t you get organized while I have a shower, and then we’ll take a spin around Ocracoke.”
“All right. But I hope I haven’t put you to any trouble, dear. With your boyfriend and all.”
Leigh stopped midway through the door. “Spencer and I are good friends.”
Janet’s shoulders lifted in a small shrug.
Leigh added, “I know this must be as overwhelming for you as it is for me...”
“Yes, indeed it is. And the thing is, Leigh, I’m really a very shy person. Back home I don’t get out much at all.” Then she startled Leigh by walking right up to her and lightly touching her cheek with one hand. “I’m so very happy now that I’ve found you.”
Leigh closed the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it for a moment.
I don’t really know her,
she thought, and wondered why on earth she’d asked a stranger into her home.
But she’s not a stranger and you’ll know plenty about her-in time.
 
LEIGH FIGURED they’d covered all twelve miles of Ocracoke Island by lunch, stopping twice—once for iced tea and once for a closer look at the lighthouse, which Janet found fascinating.
“It’s the oldest working lighthouse in North Carolina,” Leigh boasted. Seeing Ocracoke through a newcomer’s eyes revitalized her own sense of the past; the fact that Janet appeared to love the place was a bonus. Somehow it mattered that Janet like Ocracoke, although Leigh couldn’t have explained why.
When the car pulled into the drive of Windswept Manor, Janet said, “You must have had a wonderful childhood growing up here.”
“I did. It was and still is an idyllic place for children. We could basically roam as free as the wild ponies did at the time.”
“Then I did the right thing.”
Leigh glanced at Janet next to her on the seat. She was fiddling with the clasp of her handbag. She raised her gaze to Leigh’s, her eyes brimming with tears. “Giving you up, I mean. There’s no way in the world I could have given you a childhood like that in Elizabeth City.”
She’s my mother,
Leigh thought.
She
must
be.
 
“SAM’S COMING HOME in a couple of days,” Spence announced as soon as Leigh picked up the phone.
“How is he?”
A long pause. “Not great, but okay. The doctor said that at his age the best they can do is regulate his medication. Try to get him to rest and so on.”
“Then he’s not going to be able to stay by himself.”
A heavy sigh from Spence. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking and making plans all morning. ’Course, none of it will amount to much if the old guy refuses to cooperate.”
“You’ll have to make him.”
“Right. Easier said than done.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Thanks for asking, but not a heck of a lot. I’m hoping to persuade Jamie to stay with Sam for the summer—if he refuses to move in with me right away, that is. Once fall is here, I don’t think I’ll have any problem getting Sam to move. There’s no way he’s going to spend another winter in that place of his.”
“How about if I clean up for him? Before he returns.”
“That’d be great. I’m fully booked the next two days, so I was planning on giving that job to Jamie, too.”
“Well, I doubt he’d be much improvement over Sam as a housekeeper.”
Spence’s husky laugh made her smile. She wished he’d come to the house, rather than telephone. But then—she glanced at Janet rocking in the wicker chair on the front veranda—perhaps out of sight was also out of frustrating thought.
“So—” his voice trailed off momentarily “—is she still there?”
Leigh knew whom he meant. “Yeah.”
“For how long, do you think?”
“I don’t know for sure. At least until the end of the week.” Leigh thought she heard a muttered curse on the other end.
“And the end of your holiday?”
“I almost forgot. I called my boss, Reg, this morning, and he’s given me more time. In fact, almost as much time as I want.”
There was a sharp intake of air and then, “That’s terrific. That more than makes up for... for everything.”
When Leigh hung up moments later, she wondered what he’d really meant to say. Although she thought she knew.
 
BY THE TIME they’d finished dinner, Leigh had learned a lot about her birth mother. The bottle of wine they shared had loosened Janet up, and she’d told Leigh so much about her own childhood that Leigh’s head was whirling.
When Leigh took the tray of coffee out to the patio, Janet murmured, “I can’t tell you how happy I am. I feel a contentment I haven’t felt for years.”
Leigh patted her hand.
“Did you ever hear the story about how you were named?” Janet asked.
Leigh sat up in her chair. This was one childhood memory she hadn’t mentioned at all since Janet had walked into her house. “You tell me.”
The woman smiled. “Is this some kind of test?”
“Perhaps,” Leigh said, returning the smile.
“When I was a young girl, my all-time favorite movie was
Gone with the Wind.”
Leigh tensed. She was pretty sure she knew where Janet was heading.
“And my favorite star was Vivien Leigh, from the movie. When you were born, you were so beautiful with that black head of hair and eyes. I named you Leigh, after the actress.”
“And?” was all Leigh could manage.
A tiny smile flit across Janet’s face. “To make sure the Randalls knew that was the name I wanted you to have, I wrote it on a piece of paper and pinned it to your sleeper.”
The breath Leigh had been holding escaped. Ellen had often talked about the note with the name “Leigh” printed on it. This was the piece of the story she’d never had of course. The story Janet had just told was the whole puzzle put together. Overwhelmed, Leigh couldn’t speak for a long moment.
Finally she asked, “Did you also knit the baby outfit I came home in?”
In the splash of light from the kitchen, Janet’s face paled. “You still have it?”
“My mother kept it.”
“Ellen.”
“Yes,” Leigh affirmed. Then, out of loyalty repeated, “My mother.”
Janet stared down at her lap, then finally up at Leigh. “I hope someday... Well, it’s too early for that, I suppose.”
Darn right.
Tension fell between them, until Leigh felt herself relenting. Janet was only saying what was in her heart. “Would you like to see the outfit?” Leigh asked.
“Another time, dear. I’m feeling very tired. It’s been a long and full day. My back, you know. Flares up. An old injury from my nursing days.” Janet rose from the table. She began to pick up dishes to take into the kitchen.

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