Carly (2 page)

“I know what the reason is,” Leigh snapped. “Some army recruiter who wanted to meet his quota got hold of her at career day
last year and filled her full of—”

“But Carly isn’t the kind of kid who’s swayed by salesmanship,” Nate interrupted, not liking Leigh’s spin. “Carly’s got a
good head on her shoulders.”

Leigh gave him her superior expression—raised eyebrows and pursed lips—that always grated on his nerves.

“Don’t give me that look,” Nate snapped. “Our daughter isn’t stupid. There must be more to this than we know—”

“Why do you always take her part?”

“Because you never do,” Carly declared from the kitchen doorway.

Hearing the hurt in his stepdaughter’s voice, Nate rose and opened his arms.

In an old T-shirt, cotton pajama pants, and barefoot, Carly hurried to him and hugged him hard. “I heard you come in, and
when I finished the chapter I was reading, I came out to hug you hello.”

Nate rubbed her slender back. “Thanks, sweetheart. I always count on your hello-hugs.”
Because I never get them from your mother anymore
.

“I wanted to discuss this with your stepfather first,” Leigh announced, “but we might as well get this out in the open.”

Carly stepped out of his embrace and faced her mother. “We might as well. I don’t know how you found out, but yes, I want
to enlist in the army.”

“You’re a minor and I won’t sign for you to enlist,” Leigh said, folding her arms.

“I expected that.” Carly raised her chin. “I’ll just work a grunt job until my birthday next year and then enlist.”

“Why are you doing this?” Leigh asked. “What can you be thinking?”

The microwave bell rang. Carly lifted out the warm plate of chicken and wild rice and set it on the table in front of Nate.
“Here, Dad.”

“That can wait.” Nate pushed the dish aside. The conflict had tied his stomach into double knots. “Come on, Carly.” Scraping
the wood floor, Nate pulled out the chair between his and Leigh’s and motioned her to be seated and then he sat down again.
“We three can talk this over rationally and figure out how to work this out.”

“‘Work this out’?” Leigh echoed. “She’s not going to enlist. I forbid it.”

Nate held up a hand to stop Carly from replying. “Leigh, Carly is a young woman now. Your days of forbidding her are over.
Deal with it.”

“She’s only seventeen.”

“You were only sixteen,” Nate countered, “when you defied your mother and went to Dr. King’s march in Washington.”

“That isn’t anything like this.” Leigh’s glance promised him open warfare. “That was just one day. This decision could change
her life forever.”

“From what you’ve told me, that day changed your life forever.” He wouldn’t let Leigh stonewall Carly. He’d seen her do it
one time too many. “And any decision Carly makes about how to start out as an adult will impact her life, whatever that decision
is.”

“Don’t you care about her?” Suddenly Leigh looked ready to cry.

“Nate loves me,” Carly said, folding her arms in front of her.

“And I suppose that means I don’t,” Leigh snapped, blinking away tears.

“Leigh—” Nate began.

“Sometimes I don’t love you.” Carly leaned forward, her chin jutting forward, challenging. “You’re always trying to keep everything
under your thumb. I always have to be your idea of the perfect daughter to prove that you were the perfect single mother.
I’m—”

“That’s not true,” Leigh objected. “I’ve never demanded that you get straight As or any of that kind of thing!”

“I don’t think that’s what Carly is talking about.” Nate braced himself for heavy going. Why didn’t Leigh use her good sense
when it came to Carly, when it came to him?

Leigh glared at him. “What could you possibly be talking about?”

“I’m talking about the truth.” Nate reached for Leigh’s hand but she withheld it. “I thought that after we married and you
told Carly about her father—”

“She didn’t tell me anything about my father,” Carly huffed.

“That’s not true.” Leigh slapped her palm on the tabletop. “I did tell you.”

“You told me that you dated my dad but that you broke up with him. Big deal,” Carly said with a sarcastic twist. “What did
that tell me?”

Leigh clamped her mouth shut and her eyes blazed at Nate.

He tried another tack. “I thought after we married, and you told Carly about her father, that you would begin to loosen up.
To be happy with me. To get closer to your daughter. But after a brief honeymoon period, you went right back to the grindstone.
You’re working your life and Michael’s childhood away.”

“Don’t bring that up now.” Leigh leaned toward him. “Carly isn’t going to tell me that my successful career is what has caused
her to entertain this ridiculous idea.”

Nate wouldn’t be deflected. “I urged you to tell Carly everything about her father and your relationship with him.”

“You know why I didn’t.” Leigh wouldn’t meet either Carly’s or Nate’s eyes.

“Why?” Carly gripped the edge of the table.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Leigh said in a haunting, forlorn tone.

Carly couldn’t believe her mother could say those words with a straight face. “Not hurt me?” Carly felt her throat closing
up. “What is he? An axe murderer? Don’t you realize that not knowing . . . ?” Carly looked away, hiding the onrush of tears.
“Who is my father? Why can’t I know about him?” She couldn’t go on.

“Nate is your father. He’s the father who’s raised you,” Leigh insisted, sounding crushed yet defensive.

“He’s not really my father,” Carly blurted out. “You wouldn’t let him adopt me.” Admitting this shook her, but it felt good
to let those long-suppressed words out.

“What do you mean?” Leigh swung around to face her. “I had a stepfather. He never adopted me, but I never felt he needed to.”

“That’s you. It’s not me.” Then Carly wouldn’t look at either of them, fearing she’d gone too far. She hadn’t meant to put
Nate on the spot. Maybe he hadn’t really wanted to adopt her. He might have just been being polite.

Nate gently took her hand. “Sweetheart, you are my daughter. And if you’d just let me know that it bothered you that I didn’t
adopt you, I would have. You know that, right?”

Carly blinked away tears. How could she tell him that when she was ten and had overheard them discussing this, she couldn’t
make herself say it? The yearning to belong to a father had been too deep, too crucial to be put into naked words.

As he had many times in her childhood, Nate tugged her and she slid willingly onto his lap. “You’re my daughter, Carly. I
still want to adopt you.” He kissed her hair. “I love you. Never doubt that.”

As always, Nate sensed just what she needed. Grateful for his arms around her, Carly buried her face in the crook between
his neck and shoulder, frightened by the force of her reaction to this long-awaited declaration. Her feelings at the moment
were too intense to face alone. As he stroked her hair, she grappled with them, with her lack of control. The lid had been
yanked off her deep well of concealed emotions. Pain, loss, uncertainty, rejection whirled inside her, dark and thorny, tearing
at her confidence, her peace.

She still couldn’t speak, so in reply to his offer of adoption, she finally nodded against him.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said quietly, touching Carly’s back. “I didn’t know it mattered that much to you. Why didn’t you say
anything?”

Carly lifted her head and faced her mother. “How could I tell you what was in my heart when you would never tell me the truth
about myself? Who is my father? What is his name? Why did you break up with him? And—” Carly made herself ask the bedrock,
most dangerous question. “Didn’t he ever want to see me, talk to me?”

“I didn’t want him to talk to you.” Her mother stiffened. “Evidently you’ve made up some romantic image of him in your mind.
By not letting him near you, I was protecting you.”

“What was wrong with my father?” Carly held out both palms, pleading.

Leigh turned her head and looked away out the small window. She shook her head.

Instant, blazing anger consumed Carly. “What’s so wrong with my father? What did he do that was so bad that I couldn’t even
meet him, know his name?” The molten lava of bitterness against her mother for keeping the truth from her overflowed its channel,
spilling out into searing words. “How bad could he be? You liked him well enough to sleep with him.”

Leigh slapped Carly’s face. And then she stalked from the room.

Too shocked, too incensed for words, Carly clung to Nate, who rubbed her back and murmured soothingly to her.

Ivy Manor, May 1990

Tall oaks and maples shaded the summerhouse behind Carly’s great-grandmother’s ancestral home in the early evening. Being
there gave her confidence. At Ivy Manor she was completely loved. Chloe didn’t dole out acceptance based on performance the
way Leigh did.

In her pale blue graduation dress, Carly sat in the white wicker rocker with the wide curved arms and pushed a bare toe against
the floor. She closed her eyes and listened to the chatter of voices around her. The three older generations—the eldest, her
frail, silver-haired great-grandmother Chloe and great-great-aunt Kitty, next her grandmother Bette, and then her mother Leigh—sat
in a casual circle on venerable lawn furniture. Only Aunt Dory, her mother’s younger sister, was missing. And Carly—the fourth
generation—was getting ready to explode the quiet tranquility.

She opened her eyes. Across from her, on the love seat with dark green cushions, her mother looked cool and beautiful as usual.
Leigh was wearing a stylish ivory linen suit. Nate sat beside her, his sport coat off and his tie loosened. All the other
guests, extended family and friends, had left.

Much earlier that day, in the last second before the guests had begun arriving, her mother had hissed that she forbade Carly
to bring up the subject of the army. Carly hadn’t bothered to reply. Today, she would bring it up and hoped for support from
her family. But whether she got support or not, she was going through with it. And they might as well all know that. She jittered
with nerves, but she’d never felt more sure of a decision.

“Well, Carly, all day people have asked you where you’re going to school this fall,” Chloe commented. She was wearing one
of her vintage designer dresses. “But you kept saying you didn’t know. What aren’t you telling us?”

Carly’s little half-brother Michael, in his rumpled dress shirt and slacks, slipped inside the summerhouse and climbed into
her lap. He laid his head against her breast. “Rock me,” he murmured in a drowsy voice.

Carly said, “Uh-huh.” She pushed her toe down again. The chair rocked back and forth. Michael made a sound of contentment.

“Maybe Carly doesn’t want to go to college right away,” Bette commented. In a fashionable purple sundress, Bette sat on a
white Adirondack chair next to the love seat. Her long silver and black hair was pulled into a stylish bun at the nape of
her neck.

“Why not?” Leigh snapped back, looking at Carly, daring her to bring up the currently forbidden topic. “Part of the reason
she finished high school in three years was so she could get on with her life.”

“Maybe she isn’t as driven as you are,” her stepfather said.

A tense silence swelled among them.

“This isn’t the time or place to discuss that,” Leigh said, her voice low as she gave Nate another warning glance.

He snorted. “It’s never the time or place to discuss it.”

“Nate,” Leigh warned him, sounding in earnest now.

Wildfire blazed through Carly. She hated it when her mother bossed Nate around.

“It’s a bad sign,” Chloe said in a mild tone without any reproof in it, “when a man and woman open up their disagreements
in front of others.”

“You couldn’t be more right,” Nate agreed. “But your granddaughter has become a dictator, and it’s nearly time for her overthrow.”

“Me, the dictator?” Leigh shot back. “You’re the one who’s giving the orders, not me.”

Michael burrowed more deeply into Carly’s arms. “Make them stop,” he whispered.

Carly stroked his thick auburn hair, so like his father’s, and pressed her hand over his exposed ear. She didn’t want him
to have to hear the coming explosion. She looked pointedly at her mother, a look that said, “Here goes.”

“Carly—” Leigh started.

Carly braced herself for her mother’s outrage and entered the fray. “I’m not going to college.”

Leigh sat up straighter and sent Carly a more urgent warning glance.

Carly lifted her chin as if to say, “I dare you, Mom.” Her stomach quivered in unpleasant anticipation of the tide of angry
words that were about to be unleashed. Carly hated turmoil.
Mother, I’ve always let you mow down my questions, but this is too important to me. You will not get your way
.

“You are going to college,” Leigh insisted, moving forward on her chair, her face flushed.

“No,” Carly said, proud of how cool her voice came out. She kept her hand over Michael’s ear and with the other, stroked his
springy hair. “I’ve made other plans.”

“What are those?” Chloe asked in a voice that bespoke only interest, but her gaze shifted back and forth between Carly and
Leigh.

Carly took a deep breath. She might as well jump headfirst into the deep end. “I’ve enlisted in the army.”

Leigh made a sound like a woman being strangled.

Carly watched her dispassionately, suddenly feeling removed from the scene. Nothing her mother said would deter her, touch
her.
Rant and rave all you want, Mom
.
But I’m going through with it.

“Never,” Leigh announced. “Never.”

“I’ve already filled out the papers. I report for boot camp in three days.”

Leigh surged to her feet. “You’re only seventeen—a minor—and I told you I won’t sign for you.”

Carly shrugged. “Then as I told you, I’ll just work some job till I’m eighteen next year. I’m not changing my mind.”

“I absolutely forbid it,” Leigh declared.

Kitty leaned forward and held out a restraining hand. “Foolish words, my dear. When did Bette’s forbidding you to do things
ever stop you?”