Carly's Gift (3 page)

Carly folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself. “What stopped you?”

“I met Victoria.”

“Your wife.”

“It took five months for that to happen.” He'd been her rebellion, she his entrance into a world that would otherwise have been closed to him. Her parents had been less than enthusiastic at the prospect of having a Yank for a son-in-law, especially one who made his living writing books. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship, unhampered by a romantic notion of love, fueled by a mutually satisfying sex life.

“But you're here now—”

He kept his back to her. “The choice was taken out of my hands. My father's last request was that he be buried next to my mother.”

“That explains why you came to Baxter, not why you came to see me.”

“The few hours my father was lucid enough to talk, he wanted to spend remembering. When he fell asleep and I was alone again, it was my own ghosts that came out to haunt me. I guess you could call my coming here today an exorcism.”

His pain had become hers and, added to her own, the weight became almost unbearable. “What can I say to convince you? What words do you need to hear?”

“I don't know,” he admitted, again facing her. He held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “I thought I knew you so well, Carly. No, damn it, I
did
know you. We spent—”

She couldn't take any more. “Stop it, David. You're only making this harder.”

“What I'm asking for isn't that complicated, Carly—just tell me the truth. When you do, I promise you'll never see me again.”

“You changed when you moved to New York. Every time I visited you it felt like the wall between us was getting higher and harder to climb until finally I couldn't get over it at all. You stopped calling and when you did, it was always about your problems, your disappointments, your failures. There was never time for me or what I was going through.” She was counting on his forgetting the love that had also been expressed, the hope and the loneliness. “Every time we set a date to get married, you broke it. You even forgot I was coming to visit you that last time and didn't come back to your apartment until I had to leave for the train. I just couldn't take it anymore.” It was all true but the last part. Her love for him, her determination to see them through the hard times, had never faltered.

“I didn't
forget
you were coming,” he insisted, resurrecting an old argument. “You never told me. For God's sake, Carly, you must have seen how surprised I was when you showed up the same weekend of your father's funeral. If I couldn't get time off to come home for the services, what in God's name made you think I could get it off to be with you if you came to see me? It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now.”

“I shouldn't have brought it up.”

“Was what we had back then really that bad?” he asked.

“Why can't—” The rest died on Carly's lips as she froze at the sound of the front door opening.

“Mom?” a voice called out.

Panic gripped Carly.

“Are you upstairs?”

“It's Andrea—she can't see you here.” Carly's gaze flew to the doorway. Too late.

Two

“What's going on?”
Andrea demanded, her mother's alarm infecting her.

Carly was the one constant in Andrea's life. At times her mother's predictability reached the point of boredom. She was always home when Andrea called, always ready to pick her and her brothers up from school to take them to whatever lessons they had that day or to drive them to the mall on a Saturday. She was the peacemaker of the family, willing to go to any lengths to end an argument or keep one from beginning.

“Nothing,” Carly answered. “You startled me, that's all.” She came toward Andrea, taking her into her arms for a quick hug and kiss. “What are you doing home this time of day? How did you get here? Are you sick?”

“I forgot the permission slip for the field trip and today's the deadline,” she said, looking past her mother to the stranger. “I tried calling to have you bring it to me, but you didn't answer the phone so I talked Victor into giving me a ride.” She sent an accusatory glance in Carly's direction. “Where were you?”

“I had some things I had to do and forgot my cell.” Carly went to the refrigerator, pulled the folded permission slip from under a magnet on the door and handed it to Andrea.

Andrea's ponytail fell over her shoulder when she leaned in close and took the paper from her mother. “Who's he?” she whispered.

Carly hesitated a fraction too long before answering, triggering a tingling sensation at the back of Andrea's neck. She had the same kind of feeling she did whenever she walked into a room and the conversation between her mother and father stopped. Even though they always denied it, Andrea knew that they'd been talking about her. Her father hardly ever talked to her directly anymore. Instead he used her mother to tell her things—like when he thought her clothes were too tight or she wasn't doing things around the house the way he wanted them done.

Several awkward seconds passed in silence before Carly turned to David. “David, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Andrea.” She turned back to Andrea. “Andrea, this is David Montgomery.”

Hearing his name, a dozen bits and pieces of information came together and she was able to relax. “I know who you are,” she said, brightening. “You're the writer who used to live here. Mrs. Rogers talked about you in English the other day. She said you were in her class a long time ago.”

Mrs. Rogers had said a lot more, even calling Andrea over after the bell and, with a silly grin, asking to be remembered to Mr. Montgomery when he visited her parents. Andrea must have looked as confused as she felt because when she didn't answer right away, Mrs. Rogers started mumbling an apology, saying how she'd just assumed Mr. Montgomery would be seeing Andrea's mom and dad considering how close the three of them had once been. Until then, Andrea hadn't even known her mother and father knew anybody famous.

David grinned and ran his hand across his chin. “Does she still whip her glasses on every time she needs to actually see something?”

Andrea nodded, as much in agreement as in pleasure over having established a connection with him. She'd never talked to anyone even remotely famous before, unless she counted that time she'd seen Chris Evans in a restaurant in Canton and asked him for his autograph. “Did she wear those three-inch spike heels back in your time?”

Chuckling, David added, “And she always had her hair dyed the most awful-looking blond.”

“Only it's shorter now,” Carly joined in as she gave Andrea a gentle, insistent nudge toward the door. Pointedly, she said, “Enough visiting—you can't afford to miss biology again.”

“Are you going to be here for dinner?” Andrea asked David, sidestepping her mother's efforts. She could hardly wait to tell Susan and Judy she had a real live celebrity in her house. Alex Pettyfer or Timothy Olyphant would have been a lot better, but David Montgomery wasn't bad.

Instead of answering directly, David gave Carly a questioning look. Flustered, she stammered, “Mr. Montgomery is only going to be here a couple of days, and there are a lot of people he wants to see.”

“He has to eat somewhere, doesn't he?” Andrea insisted, sending her mother a pleading look. She was unwilling to let go of what would probably be her one chance in life to hold something over Janice Wilburn whose first cousin was in a band that had opened for Taylor Swift when she was on tour. “You could ask him to dinner.”

Carly shook her head. “I don't think—”

“I'd love to,” David answered.

“
Fan
-tastic. I can't wait to tell everyone.” She gave Carly a kiss on her cheek and headed for the door. “Gotta go. I promised Victor I'd make it fast.”

Carly waited until she was sure Andrea was gone before she turned to David, her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. “Why did you do that? I told you Ethan asked me not to see you.”

“And do you always do everything he says?” he asked. “Even when it isn't what you want?”

“This is his house. He has a right to—”

“
His
house?”

She ignored the dig and went on. “You can't come here tonight.”

“How are you going to explain my absence to Andrea?”

“I'll tell her you forgot you'd promised to have dinner with someone else.”

“She might buy that, but Ethan never will. If I don't show up tonight, he's going to think we're trying to hide something.”

The important thing had been to keep Ethan from finding out David had been there at all.

The thought terrified her. With David there, Ethan was sure to drink more than his usual cocktail before dinner, wine with dinner, and Courvoisier after. She'd heard the argument a hundred times—alcohol was a minor and innocent way of coping with the problems he faced every day at work, something she could never understand, living the stress-free life of a housewife. Besides which, her paranoia about drinking had nothing to do with him. It was her father's alcoholism that had prejudiced her. So what if there was that rare occasion—once or twice a year—when he said or did something he might later regret because he'd had a few too many? It didn't happen that often and besides, he made up for it in other ways. Had he ever forgotten a birthday or an anniversary? Wasn't he there for every one of the boys' basketball games? And hadn't he been in the stands for close to half of Andrea's swim meets, even though she rarely won and the boys played on championship teams?

Enough.
She mentally shook herself. If there was hell to pay later, she'd pay it. She went to the closet to get David's coat. Handing it to him, she said, “We eat at seven.”

“Seven it is.” He met her gaze with a determined look. “I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but I came here for something that I've waited too long to leave without.”

She shook her head sadly. “You're not the David Montgomery I used to know.”

He took the time to put on his coat before answering her. “Who are you trying to convince—me or you?”

Fear crawled up her spine. If she was that transparent to him, he was even more dangerous than she'd first thought.

Three

Carly reached for
the oven door to check on dinner. Behind her, she heard a soft clink as Ethan added another ice cube to his drink. It was only his second, he'd been quick to point out when she'd given him a questioning look earlier. She hadn't bothered mentioning how full the glasses had been, knowing it would only lead to an argument.

From the moment Ethan had arrived home that night and she'd told him that David was coming to dinner, the tension had been unbearable between them, making it impossible to communicate on any but the most fundamental level. Even her choice of pot roast for the meal had brought comment. Ethan had been quick to point out that her seeming lack of imagination could only mean she'd spent the entire afternoon thinking about what to cook.

Experience had taught her that when he was like this nothing she could say or do would change or modify his feeling. In the morning she would begin the repair work. It was little enough considering what he had done for her. Still, there were times when she grew weary of applying bandages to wounds that never healed.

From the time Ethan and David had been in preschool together, Ethan had perceived himself to be in David's shadow, losing every foot race by a pump of the arm, every spelling bee by a word, and the girl they both loved by a heartbeat. For a few short months after she and Ethan were married, he'd allowed himself to believe he'd finally won, but the victory—like the battles—was mostly in his mind. Still, she'd never stopped trying to give him what he needed even when she realized his hunger was insatiable.