The Man She Left Behind (3 page)

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Authors: Janice Carter

BOOK: The Man She Left Behind
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Leigh felt the corners of her mouth lift in a tense smile.
“Well, enough gossip,” Trish declared. “See you in a few days, I hope. Oh—” she paused in the kitchen door “—how can I get hold of you? There’s no phone.”
“I brought my cell phone with me so I wouldn’t need to worry about the telephone hookup. Wait, I’ll get my business card.” She rushed into the other room and returned with a small white embossed card, which she handed to Trish.
“Ah. Leigh Randall, Investment Banker.” Trish beamed. “Don’t that sound high-and-mighty!” Then she burst into a hearty laugh, poked Leigh in the ribs and bustled out the back door.
 
LEIGH FIGURED that Trish’s extra-strong brew was responsible for her three-hour cleaning bee that morning, but she had a tiny suspicion it had more to do with avoidance.
I don’t need a shrink to spell it out for me or help me deal with it Just steer me to a mop and bucket.
If she could’t go to the office to bury herself in work, she’d find plenty to do at the manor. And save herself the cost of a professional cleaner at the same time.
By midafternoon she’d eaten enough doughnuts to resist temptation for the next five years and knew she could no longer put off going into the village. She spent some time preparing herself for the trip, trying on several combinations of the skirts and tops she’d brought. In the end she settled for a peasant-style cotton print she’d purchased in a frivolous moment last summer.
She pulled back her hair on one side with a tortoiseshell comb and, satisfied with her appearance, left by the front door. She started to lock up, but caught herself
Not on Ocracoke.
She stepped into the brilliance of a sunny early-June day. The balmy ocean breeze seemed to carry the scents of faraway countries. Although the village was a short walk, Leigh decided to drive. She rationalized that she’d need the car for all the groceries, but knew the real reason was that it enabled her to make an easy and quick getaway.
She made a bet with herself on how many minutes would elapse before she ran into old friends or acquaintances, settling on fifteen minutes. But she lost her bet, underestimating the capacity for verbal catching-up the locals had. Every place she went into—the bank to withdraw money, the post office to set up a box number and the gas station to refill for a trip to Hatteras next day—became an endurance test of attempting to attach names to faces she hadn’t seen in years.
By the time she loaded groceries into her car, her head was buzzing with tidbits of information and her jaw was aching from repeating her refrain of why she was back and, no, she wouldn’t be staying. She was soaked with perspiration, and the impractical plastic shoes she’d bought in New York made her feet throb. And she still hadn’t bumped into a single former classmate, not to mention the one person she’d dressed for—Spencer McKay.
She turned on the air conditioner full blast and headed north for Windswept Manor, the last house on the highway before the ferry dock to Hatteras. When she saw a small convenience store just outside the village proper, Leigh impulsively pulled in. The one thing she’d forgotten to buy was a bottle of wine, and she had a feeling the long evening ahead would demand one. She parked next to a beat-up red pickup and went inside.
The cashier directed her to the rear of the store, where the wine selection was stacked on an upper shelf. It contained some surprisingly good choices. While she was debating between a chardonnay and a Chablis, Leigh became aware of the rumble of male voices in an adjacent aisle. Some disagreement about hot dogs or hamburgers. She reached for the chardonnay just as one of the voices rose above the other. She froze. Even after fifteen years, she’d know that voice anywhere. She let go of the bottle and headed for the front of the store.
“Find what you wanted?” the cashier asked..
“No. I changed my mind,” she said, pushing open the door and stumbling out into the blinding sunlight. Her hand was on her car door when someone spoke from behind.
“Leigh?”
She swung around into the sun and couldn’t see his face. But his voice—the one she’d heard in the store—hadn’t changed much over the years. Still deep, still commanding.
Raising a. hand to her forehead, Leigh looked up at the man standing mere feet away. Her mouth was dry and black spots bobbed across her line of vision.
“Hello, Spencer.”
He shifted to her right under the roof overhang of the store so that she could look away from the sun. His eyes were the same china blue, and the sun-bleached hair was a touch thinner now, but the years had been good to Spencer. Once lean and lanky, he’d filled out in all the right places. Broad shoulders with pectoral muscles that strained against the pale blue T-shirt. His jeans were snug, the way he always used to wear them, and belted across a flat stomach. Yes, Spencer McKay looked better than ever.
The hesitancy in his smile quickly disappeared. “For a second in there I thought I was dreaming. Just caught a glimpse of your back as you were leaving, but I’d have recognized it anywhere.”
The urge to ask if that was meant as a compliment died as quickly as it had reared its mischievous head. She didn’t want to engage in any talk that seemed personal. Before she could reply, a teenage boy came out of the store. He didn’t look very happy.
Spencer turned to him. “Make a choice?” he asked.
“Hot dogs,” the boy mumbled. He glanced curiously at Leigh.
Spencer shifted his gaze back to Leigh. “I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thanks.” Leigh’s voice cracked. She cleared her throat and backed toward her car. “Nice to see you again,” she lied, reaching for the door handle again.
Spencer’s eyes narrowed.
He always could read my mind.
“Will you be here long?” he asked, moving toward her.
She opened the car door. “Only long enough to pack up and arrange for the sale of my parents’ house.”
His right arm shot out as if he intended to grab her. Leigh quickly climbed into the car.
“I didn’t introduce you,” Spencer said, gesturing to the boy just behind him. “This is Jamie, my son.”
Leigh looked from Spencer to Jamie. Images of Jen flashed before her. Same coloring and build. His eyes were green, too, and right now filled with impatience. Not the disdain she’d seen in Jen’s when they’d last met.
“Nice to meet you,” Leigh said. She closed the car door, turned on the engine under Spencer’s watchful gaze and shifted into reverse. As she pulled out of the lot, she gave a brief wave with her right hand and didn’t stop shaking until she pulled into the drive of Windswept Manor.
CHAPTER TWO
T
HE SUNSET PROMISED a beautiful morning, but Leigh scarcely noticed. After a quick supper of sandwich and salad, during which she regretted enormously not purchasing the chardonnay, she closed the front door and walked down the drive to the main road, crossing it to the grassy verge that led to the ocean. Low tide had been two hours ago, and the Atlantic was slowly reclaiming the sandy beach.
Translucent corpses of jellyfish swirled about in the foamy waves, and bits of debris, both natural and man-made, bobbed back out to sea. Flotsam and jetsam, Leigh thought. Like pieces of people’s lives. As children she and Jen had concocted wild stories about the tide treasure they’d found. Sometimes their play had spun on long after sundown, and they’d hidden from her parents’ calls in the long grasses.
Leigh stopped at the water’s edge and looked back toward the road. She could almost see their two heads, one dark and the other blond, peering through the sea grass. It had always been Jen who’d pulled Leigh down, covering her mouth with a grimy hand and whispering, “Five more minutes! Come on! Five minutes!” And of course Leigh had always capitulated. So much easier than enduring Jen’s sulking the next day.
A wave swept over Leigh’s thonged feet. She moved farther up onto the beach and walked north, away from the village.
Strange, I haven’t thought of those games in years.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her rolled-up cotton jeans and doubled her strides.
Right. Do what you’ve always done. Walk away from memories.
The voice in her head kept pace, dogging her efforts to enjoy the sunset.
“Well, ain’t you gonna say hello?”
Leigh stopped inches away from collision with a gap-toothed old man grinning up at her from his gnomelike height. She took a step back and flung out her arms.
“Grandpa Sam!”
“That’s better, that’s better.” He stretched his neck and planted a kiss on Leigh’s cheek. “When I saw you charging along the beach, I thought a pack of crabs was chasin’ you. But I guess you’re still travelin’ on city time and haven’t started walkin’ around with your head up, ’stead o’ down.”
Leigh smiled. “That’s about it. How are you? You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Ah, picked up a dozen more wrinkles or so. You look different. Very...”
“Sophisticated?”
His grin matched her own. “I was gonna say grown-up, but of course you’re grown-up now. Haven’t seen you since the day you came back for your daddy’s funeral. When was that? Ten, twelve years ago?”
“Ten. A long time.”
“Maybe for you. For me it’s like a week.” He paused. “I’m just going back home for a cup of tea. Care to join me?”
“I’d love to, Sam.” Leigh fell in step with the old man, veering on a diagonal away from the water and toward the highway. Sam Logan’s cottage was perched on stilts just off the road half a mile ahead.
“The sea hasn’t taken you away yet,” she observed.
“Not yet, though heaven help me, there’ve been a few close calls.”
Leigh grinned. The locals had been predicting Sam’s place would be swept away every time one of the frequent storms hit the Outer Banks. But his cottage, considered a shack by many, had survived its precarious location for more than thirty years. Leigh figured the barn-board structure would simply collapse long before any rogue wave carried it off.
As they drew nearer, Leigh saw that Sam’s cottage had weathered as well as he had. Everything looked exactly the way she remembered it, down to the red-and-white petunias planted in the whitewashed automobile tires that formed a daisy chain around the structure. She followed Sam up the stairs onto the tiny porch and sat down in one of the rickety green wicker chairs.
“Still the best view on the island,” Sam said, grinning.
“Still is,” Leigh agreed, taking the cue for her part of the running joke she hadn’t heard in years. The third part—
Always will be
—remained conspicuously unspoken. It had been Jen’s.
Sam finally pushed open the screen door and, pausing midway through, asked, “The usual?”
“Please,” Leigh whispered, recalling suddenly all the peaceful times she and Jen had spent on this porch. She watched Jen’s grandfather step inside to brew a pot of his homegrown-peppermint tea.
Joking aside, though, the place really did have the best view on Ocracoke. It was sheltered from the north wind by a string of cypress trees and angled in a way that gave you a panorama of the ocean, including Silver Lake Harbor to the southwest. Some islanders called Sam Logan’s place a hovel, but the cottage had a whimsical charm, pieced together as it was with odd-shaped boards and decorated with driftwood, shells and bunches of dried wildflowers. Leigh hadn’t yet ventured inside, but a glance told her Sam had probably not redecorated since her last visit.
The screen door swung open and Sam reappeared, tray in hand, one foot propped against the bottom of the door.
“Can I help?” Leigh jumped up, but Sam had already squeezed through onto the porch.
“Still haven’t got round to fixin’ the spring on that door,” he explained. He set the tray down on a varnished wooden crate in front of Leigh. “And who am I kidding, anyway? That door’ll be the same next time you visit, though I may not be here to brew the tea.”
Leigh’s hand was poised over the honey jar. It wasn’t like Sam to make that sort of gloomy remark. He’d always prided himself on being active—physically and mentally. “You’d better be,” she teased, “otherwise, who’ll keep Mrs. Waverly occupied?”
Sam cackled. “Too true, too true. I think tryin’ to run me off this bit of beach is the only thing that’s kept the old doll goin’ all these years.”
Leigh hid a smile. The “old doll” was only two or three years older than Sam. When Sam sat down beside her, she raised her mug of tea and said, “Cheers!”
He nodded, reaching for his own cup to clink against hers. “Good to see you again. It’s been far too long.” He patted her forearm with a hand splotched with sun and liver spots. “Why haven’t you been t’see me in all these years?” Emotion thickened the peculiar Cockneylike English accent many old-timers on Ocracoke still had.
Leigh averted her face. It was difficult to believe he had no inkling of the rift between her and Jen. His granddaughter had left a few months after Leigh’s own departure for university and, four months after that, had married Spencer McKay.
Perhaps Sam had attributed Leigh’s long absence from Ocracoke solely to the pursuit of an education and career, which was fine by her. He’d had his share of problems with Jen years ago. Leigh didn’t intend to burden him with yet another Jen story.
“Well, you know how it is,” she murmured. “So many things to do. You get caught up in it all.” She stopped then, feeling overwhelmed.
After a moment Sam replied, “That you do. And not just folks in the big city, either.” He gave a loud sigh. “But take a look at that view and tell me you’d want to be anywhere else.”
“For sure Sam, I wouldn’t. Nor
with
anyone else.”
He glanced away, but not before Leigh saw his eyes glisten. They sipped their tea in silence, watching the last of the sunset. Then Sam plunked his mug down on the wooden crate and cleared his throat.
“She doesn’t write to me very much anymore. Jen, I mean. Tried to persuade me to get a phone line, but as much as I wanted to hear her voice, I couldn’t bring myself to go that far.”
Leigh had to restrain a smile. Sam Logan was certainly an anachronism as far as technology went.
“Maybe you heard she’s living in Charlotte now?”
Leigh nodded stiffly. The conversation was making her uncomfortable.
“Well, she got married last summer. That’s why her boy is here—young Jamie. Jen’s starting a new family with her hubby, and I reckon Jamie thought he was in the way.”
“I didn’t know,” Leigh murmured.
Sam rocked on his chair a bit before continuing. “Anyhow, Jamie came here to live with his daddy, and it seems he’s not too happy about that, either.” Sam paused again. “I suppose Jen’s too busy to keep in touch. No one’s heard a whisper from her in the past coupla months. No doubt we’ll hear when the little one comes, but I can’t be sure...” His voice drifted away.
“And what about Spencer?” Leigh asked. “How is he managing? I mean, with his son and all.”
Sam shrugged. “Havin’ a heck of a time as far as I can see.” He snorted. “That boy is a trial, sure enough. Got in with a wild bunch down in Charlotte and landed in all kinds of trouble. Jen couldn’t handle him, is what I think. So after all these years she ups and calls Spence to say his son is comin’ to live with him.”
“Couldn’t he have refused to take him?”
“Could’ve I guess, seein’ as how Jen had custody. But they made some kind of deal with the court in Charlotte. Jamie got off on probation if he agreed to move here to his daddy’s for a spell.”
“Probation?
What did he do?”
Sam hesitated. “Set fire to an empty building. He said it was an accident and I believe him.” Sam’s voice rose, almost challenging her to suggest otherwise. “None of it’s Spencer’s fault,” he asserted. “Other than a few holiday visits years ago, he’s barely seen the boy in eleven years. ‘Course Jenny was all too willin’ to take the money he sent every month. Girl always did know how to survive.”
It was the closest thing to a criticism Leigh had ever heard Sam utter about his only grandchild. Jen’s parents had been lost at sea when she was a toddler, and Sam had raised her until she left home to move in with Spencer. And of course everyone in the village had probably clucked knowingly, having blamed Sam for every irresponsible act of Jen’s over the years.
“Maybe everything will turn out okay for...everyone,” Leigh said for want of anything else to say.
Sam patted her on the hand. “You were always so for givin’ of others—especially Jen.”
Leigh flushed.
If only you knew.
“I think I’d better get back before it’s too dark to find my way.” She stood up to leave.
Sam got to his feet—a bit stiffly, Leigh noticed—and insisted she take a flashlight.
“No, no. I’ll be fine.”
But he was in and out of the cottage quickly enough for Leigh to wonder if he’d just been impersonating an old man the whole time. He thrust the flashlight into her hand.
“How long will you be stayin’, then?”
“Only long enough to sell the house.”
Disappointment swept across his face. “You’ll be sure to visit me again before you leave?”
“Absolutely, Sam.” Leigh stooped to hug him. They clung to each other for a few seconds until Sam broke away, swiping at his eyes.
“Hey,” she said, “why don’t you come to dinner tomorrow night?”
“I’d like that, Leigh. And I can get the light back from you then.”
Leigh set off along the beach, extinguishing the light once she’d cleared Sam’s place. She’d always loved to walk this route in the dark. On a clear night the stars seemed to bounce right out of the sky. In spite of the emotional meeting with Sam, Leigh felt calm and peaceful.
She reached the dip in the ridge of sand dunes where she’d bumped into Sam earlier and paused to remove her thongs. Going barefoot down the slope was easier. When she bent down, she heard a rustling sound from the tall sea oats to her right. She aimed the beam of the flashlight in that direction, but instead of trapping the glistening eyes of a village cat or possum, she caught the retreating form of a two-legged creature. A male, she decided, from the brief flash of T-shirt and jeans.
“Hello!” she called out, but the person disappeared beyond the beam’s range. Leigh frowned. Islanders would never ignore a greeting, especially on a dark beach. Perhaps he’d been a tourist out for a stroll, although his stride had been fast and determined.
Leigh continued, replacing her thongs when she got to the shoulder of the main road. Less than a quarter mile ahead, she could see the front porch light of Windswept Manor. The highway out here wasn’t lit, so Leigh walked down the center of it. Frogs chirped in the ditches on either side, and every now and then the shaft of light from the island lighthouse strobed across the sky. The stillness of the night had an expectant quality. Leigh could picture so vividly her mother and father rocking on the front porch, holding tall glasses of iced tea dripping with condensation while moths circled the lightbulb above the screen door, that she sucked in a sharp painful gulp of air.
When she was more than halfway to the house, the headlights of a vehicle rounded the curve from the village. Leigh moved over to the right shoulder as the headlights barreled toward her. The vehicle, which was impossible to identify in the dark, roared past, then came to a screeching halt yards down the road and was thrown into reverse.
She debated between jumping into the ditch or jogging ahead to her house. Surely only a madman or a drunk would drive like that along a dark road, and she wasn’t eager to meet up with either. But as the taillights neared, the blurred outline became a pickup truck and her anxiety changed to dread. Spence McKay.

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