Carly (7 page)

“Dad, Mom, Great-Grandma Minnie, my brothers and sisters. Even my Grandma Lila, who is still marching for peace.” Lorelle
shrugged. “I think my dad made everyone write me.”

Tension clicked through Carly. Should she tell Lorelle about his letter? Could she? “I heard from everyone, too.” She gazed
down at her feet. The desire to tell someone who would understand clutched at her, squeezing her until she couldn’t bear the
tension. “And I mean
everyone
.”

“You sound strange,” Lorelle prompted. “What do you mean by ‘everyone’?”

She knew Lorelle from family occasions over their lifetimes and the summer weeks they’d spent together at Ivy Manor, whispering
to each other in the room with the trundle bed. They were friends, but this topic felt touchy. Still, she had to tell someone.
And Lorelle was the closest thing to family there and then. Carly drew in breath and said, “My father wrote me.”

“Nate? What did he say?”

“Not Nate. My . . .
birth
father.” Carly suddenly was breathing hard.

Lorelle sat up straighter and turned to fully face Carly. “No.”

Unable to speak, Carly nodded. Yes, Lorelle understood.

“Wow.” Lorelle stared at Carly, openmouthed.

Carly looked away, trying to hide all the emotion that was flowing up from inside her like some uncapped geyser.

“What did he say? Did he tell you who he is? Give you his address?”

Lorelle’s rapid questions made Carly feel a bit nauseated. She drew the letter out of her pocket. Her hand trembled sharply
as she said, “Here. Read it.” Her voice sounded thick and unnatural.

With wary eyes on Carly, Lorelle took the envelope as if it might explode. She slowly slid out the one crisp sheet of vellum.
After reading the brief note, she looked at Carly and then back down at the page. “Weird. Sounds like he’s been keeping track
of you.”

“I know.” Carly had memorized the brief note:

Dear Carly,

I have waited until you graduated from high school to write you. I am your father. I’m hoping that someday soon we will be
able to meet face-to-face. However, I will understand if you don’t want to. I am the guilty party and your mother had every
right to keep you from me. But don’t ever think that I didn’t care or want to see you, be a part of your life.

With love, T.L.K.

Masking her confusion, Carly rubbed one moist palm on her thigh and looked off into the distance. A heat mirage floated on
a far-removed post street. “It feels really strange,” she said. “He knows where I am, right down to my boot-camp address.
But I don’t know anything about him.” The old, restless curiosity curled inside her.

“Do you think your mother told him?”

“No.” Carly’s denial came swift and strong. “She hates him—or she must. Whenever my birth father has been mentioned or I’ve
asked about him, her face just freezes in anger.”

Lorelle gently touched her shoulder.

Carly took back the note and slipped it into her pocket.

“I overheard my mom and dad talking about your natural dad once.” Lorelle paused as if asking permission to go on.

Suddenly alert, Carly nodded encouragement.

“It wasn’t much. Just that it was a shame that Leigh had made such a . . . big . . .” Lorelle hazarded a glance at Carly.
“Mistake, but they were happy that your mom had married Nate. And they said something about your dad being involved in . .
.” Lorelle cast her another worried glance. “Your kidnapping.”

Jolted, Carly shoved her spine back against the step. Her pulse raced. “Can you remember exactly what they said?”

“Just that the man was trouble and he’d better stay away or my dad would do . . . something.” Lorelle’s voice dropped. “About
him.”

It couldn’t be true. Why would her birth dad . . . ? Carly’s face twisted with a frown. “Did they think my dad kidnapped me
or paid someone to?”

Lorelle shrugged. “I’ve told you all I heard. But if he had, don’t you think he would have come to where you were being held
and told you who he was?” Her friend’s voice trailed off, thin with uncertainty.

Carly breathed in and out, holding off tears. Thinking about it, trying to remember every detail of those two horrible days
always gushed fresh terror inside her. “I wouldn’t think that my father . . . any father would treat his child . . . like
the kidnappers did. They didn’t abuse me, but it was cold and scary.” Carly rubbed her eyes and her fingers trembled.

“Sorry I brought it up.”

Carly looked into Lorelle’s pretty, brown, very concerned eyes, taking strength from her sympathetic reaction to the topic.
I’m not overreacting. And maybe my dad was the one who helped me get home
. “No, you did right. Someday, I will meet T.L.K.”

“No return address, right?”

Carly shook her head. “Yeah, evidently he can only handle one-way communication now. Or maybe he thinks my mom would do something
if she found out he had contacted me without her permission.” Did T.L.K. know how much Carly wanted to see him? Did he expect
her to be angry at him? Is that why he’d not included his name and address? Or was he still keeping his distance from her
because of her mother? “At least I know that Mom told him to stay away from me.”
He’d said he’d wanted to be with me
. Hope sprang to life—followed by the same old bitter disappointment.
How would I feel if I saw him for the first time?

Lorelle shrugged and looked down.

“Well, if it isn’t Ebony and Ivory,” said the sarcastic voice of Crazy Woman.

Carly looked up at Alex, who had her duffel over one shoulder. She had just run out of patience with Crazy Woman.
Get a life
.

“Come on, Carly.” Lorelle rose, obviously wanting to put distance between them and Alex. “Your stuff should be ready for the
dryer, and I can get mine started in your washers.”

Carly didn’t hesitate. She went inside. Pointedly ignoring Alex, she emptied her wet clothing from the two washers into a
large wheeled cart, and then Lorelle quickly stuffed the washers with her clothing. No dryer was free, so Lorelle and Carly
sat along the wall opposite the dryers, watching Carly’s cart and waiting to see someone’s clothes spin to a stop behind the
large, round glass doors. They didn’t dare leave; they’d been warned that people might steal uniforms to replace those they
hadn’t laundered. Alex hovered in the doorway with her bag of laundry.

Lorelle leaned over and whispered in Carly’s ear, “Everyone’s trying to figure out why she’s on your case.”

Carly cocked her head. “How come you have the time to gossip?”

“Because you’re one of the main topics of conversation in our company. I, on the other hand, keep a low profile.”

Carly leaned closer to Lorelle. “I can’t help it if Crazy Woman picked me as her target.”

“Did she really spit in your food?”

Carly nodded.

“Gross.”

“Are you two talking about me?” Alex demanded, suddenly appearing in front of them with arms crossed.

“What we’re doing is none of your business,” Lorelle snapped.

Carly rose, her back against the wall. “What is your problem? Stay away from me.”

“You gonna make me, rich witch?” Alex raised her fist.

“Are you out of your mind?” Lorelle jumped up. “Starting a fight in the laundry? Get away from us.”

The others in the large room had stopped speaking and stared at the trio. Carly held her temper. She wasn’t going to let Crazy
Woman provoke her. “I would like to know,” Carly said in the calmest voice she was able to manage, “what you have against
me. You’ve been on my case since day one. What is it with you?”

Alex stared at her. “You’re the kind of witch who makes me sick. With your Calvin Klein jeans and T-shirt, your Nikes, and
those diamond earrings. What are you doing here? You know you don’t belong here.”

Carly tried to take this in. “You’re mad at me about my clothes? Are you out of your mind?”

“You didn’t have to enlist in this frigging army like I did, just to get away.” Suddenly Alex’s eyes filled with tears. “You
could have gone anywhere, done anything.”

Carly recognized on one level that Alex was acting out the total exhaustion they all felt; the recruits carried it around
like a huge load on their backs and their emotions. But Alex hadn’t been exhausted when she’d chosen Carly as her target in
the reception hall. “You are wacko.”

“You don’t belong here,” Alex said, wiping her tears away with her fingers. “Rich people have all the money, and they get
all the breaks.”

Carly watched with horror as the young woman began sobbing right in front of her. Obviously boot camp had drained Crazy Woman,
and she was coming undone. Carly didn’t want to be there watching it.

Across the room, one dryer stopped. Carly steered her cart around Alex and headed for it.

“Don’t you walk away from me!” Alex shouted.

“You don’t like me. We all get that,” Carly called over her shoulder. “But I have laundry to do, and I’m
not
fighting with you.” Carly met another soldier, a stranger, at the dryer who quickly unloaded her clothes and headed for a
folding table like a woman running from a storm.

“I’ve had it with your too-good-for-the-rest-of-us attitude!” Alex yelled. She charged Carly from behind.

Carly turned in time to meet the attack.

Alex went berserk. That was the only way to describe it. She pulled Carly’s clean clothes out of the cart and threw them on
the floor. She moved as if to stomp on them with her dusty combat boots. The final insult.

Carly went on autopilot. Without planning to, she assumed her fighting stance and launched herself at Alex.

L
orelle’s voice penetrated the roaring in Carly’s ears. “Carly, listen to me.
Stop it. Stop
.”

“Is she gonna kill her?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“No,” Lorelle snapped.

The word “kill” got through to Carly. She blinked, dissipating the red haze that surrounded her.

Then she realized that she was sitting astride Alex. She had Alex’s shirt collar twisted in her fist. Carly realized that
she’d just banged the girl’s head on the floor. Shocked, Carly released her grip and slid backward till her seat hit the hard
linoleum floor. Her breathing was a deep, frantic heaving.

Alex didn’t move. She lay still, faceup, as if stunned.

Lorelle was kneeling on the gray linoleum beside Carly. “Take it easy. Calm down. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

Carly felt sick. She rubbed her forehead. “What happened?”

Lorelle began stroking Carly’s back like a mother comforting a child. “You’d finally had enough of her. You started out with
that martial arts stuff you do but once you got her down . . . you went a little berserk.”

“Is she hurt?” Carly nodded toward her opponent, feeling a fluttery, panicky regret. “Did I . . . hurt her?”

One of the soldiers that ringed the trio in the center of the room knelt down at Alex’s side. “She’s breathing. Man, we thought
you were going to kill her.”

Carly hid her face in her hands. How had it come to this? A shiver shuddered through her. “I’ve never lost control like that
before.”

Feet pounded up the steps and into the laundry room. “What’s going on here?” a sharp feminine voice demanded.

Carly twisted around and saw that a DI, though not her platoon’s, had arrived.

A private Carly didn’t know also entered the door but hung back. It was obvious that she had run for help. Carly didn’t blame
her. If their places had been reversed, she would have done the same.

“What’s going on here?” the DI repeated.

“She was askin’ for it,” another private said.

The DI glared at the speaker.

“I heard you try to get away from her,” another private said, looking at Carly. “We all did.” Others murmured in agreement.

The DI swept the room with her gaze, taking in all the faces present. Then she stared at Carly and Alex. “Fighting on base
is strictly forbidden. You’re both on report. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, report to the company officer.” The DI left
without a backward glance.

Carly felt the tears that she’d held back for weeks well up inside. She could hold them back no longer. She began sobbing.

Lorelle helped her to her feet and led her back over to the avocado-green plastic chairs where they’d been sitting. She pulled
Carly close and Carly buried her face in Lorelle’s shoulder. The sobs wracked her body in heaving, pounding waves. Through
her tears, she glimpsed someone helping Alex to her feet. Alex looked dazed and wandered outside, leaving her laundry bag
on the floor where she’d dropped it.

Another soldier picked up Carly’s damp laundry from the floor, shoved it into the dryer, and fed it a quarter. Still casting
glances toward Carly and Lorelle, everyone moved back to what she had been doing before the fight. An unnatural quiet hung
over them all. Only the sound of the washing machines agitating and the dryers spinning accompanied Carly’s waning sobs.

After her clothing dried, Carly went through the calming motions of folding her dry clothes into the neat little piles their
DI had taught them. When she was done, she wordlessly hugged Lorelle and headed back to her barracks, her duffel on her shoulder.

She felt flattened—unable to get more upset over what had happened. Someone had told a sergeant about the fight, and she was
on report. So what? She didn’t have enough strength to care. She couldn’t change what had happened, didn’t want to change
what had happened. She defiantly told her conscience that Alex had deserved what she’d gotten.

Francie met her at the entrance of the barracks. “I heard there was trouble at the laundry.”

Carly closed, then opened her eyes, trying to clear her head, trying to shake the disorientation she was experiencing. Well,
this made it a certainty. If it had already gotten to Francie, everyone must be broadcasting it loud and clear.

“I’m bushed. I have to lie down.” Carly walked past her.

Francie squeezed her shoulder but didn’t try to stop her.