Carly

by Lyn Cote

  Copyright © 2006 by Lyn Cote

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  Hachette Book Group

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  The Warner Faith name and logo are registered trademarks of the Hachette Book Group.

  First eBook Edition: April 2006

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55906-5

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PRAISE FOR THE WOMEN OF IVY MANOR

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE WOMEN OF IVY MANOR

  PRAISE FOR THE WOMEN OF IVY MANOR

  CARLY

  “Carly is a high-quality story of chaotic experiences and strong characters . . . Lyn Cote has created her most memorable story yet.”

  —Irene Brand, award-winning author of Where Morning Dawns and The Hills Are Calling

  “Carly is a rich treat . . . as she goes through her own growth and faith journey during the turmoil of the 1990s. Lyn Cote never disappoints.”

  —Lenora Worth, author of Echoes of Danger and After the Storm

  “Lyn’s finale in the Ivy Manor series . . . takes you into the heart and mind of a young woman thrown into the uncertain world of the Gulf War . . . An engaging tale of finding the courage to be the person you have always known was hidden deep within you.”

  —Susan Meissner, author of Why the Sky Is Blue

  “Reading Carly is like discovering an interesting neighborhood with great places to shop. You can’t go home until you’ve seen what’s around every corner.”

  —Patt Marr, author of Man of Her Dreams

  “Carly is so real, so captivating, once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down! Carly is us . . . struggling to fit in, yet prove she’s strong enough to stand on her own. You’ll cheer, you’ll cry and you’ll be reminded that nothing is impossible when we place our trust in God.”

  —Valerie Whisenand, aka Valerie Hansen, author of Her Brother’s Keeper

  BETTE

  “A powerful story of love, secrets, betrayal, and passion during the tumultuous years of World War II. [Lyn’s] unique blend of storytelling and dynamic characters brings this era of history to life.”

  —DiAnn Mills, author of When the Lion Roars

  “Lyn Cote lured me into realistic, gripping, and sometimes heart-wrenching encounters with an era that has left an indelible mark on both history and human hearts. Bette is truly unforgettable.”

  —Kathy Herman, author of the Baxter series and A Shred of Evidence

  “Lyn Cote’s craftsmanship shines in Bette. Her beautiful plotting includes textured settings that jet you around the world into the lives of characters so real we think we know them. Add a heroine we can all admire, and once again the ladies of Ivy Manor grab hold of your heart and hang on.”

  —Lois Richer, author of Shadowed Secrets

  CHLOE

  “A romance of epic proportions, absorbing and satisfying, that never lets you forget how the Father takes you just as you are and that His love can bring you home from the farthest journey.”

  —Deborah Bedford, author of A Morning Like This and If I Had You

  “Lyn Cote hooked me from the very beginning, then expertly reeled me across the pages . . . Pages full of romance, suspense, heartbreak, forgiveness, acceptance, and, ultimately, a satisfying ending.”

  —Sylvia Bambola, author of Waters of Marah and Return to Appleton

  “Lyn Cote’s return to historical fiction is a delight! CHLOE is lyrically written, enhancing a plot that’s teeming with zigs and zags. Compelling characters take a journey toward happiness reached only by plumbing the depths of despair. This one’s a keeper!”

  —Lois Richer, author of Shadowed Secrets

  To my son and daughter, the brave new generation

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank the following veterans and soldier for their help in providing the facts that gave my book authenticity—thanks for your service, honesty, and candor:

  Former Army Ranger Chuck Holton

  Major Deloris Lynders USA (Retired)

  Staff Sergeant Laura Marston USAF (Retired)

  Master Sergeant Pamela Trader USAF (Retired)

  Captain Christine Valley USMC (Active Duty)

  And I heard the Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small, Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in Me thine all in all.

  ELVINA M. HALL (1820-1889)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Greenwich Village, May 1990

  Can we talk about something, Aunty?” Carly Sinclair said, her dry throat making her sound hoarse. In worn, acid-washed blue jeans, she knelt on her aunt Kitty’s kitchen floor and started scrubbing close to the baseboard. She’d tied her long black hair in a low ponytail so it wouldn’t get into the bucket or drag on the floor. Her heart throbbed as she scrubbed. She glanced over her shoulder at her aunt.

  In blue sweats, Kitty, who was really her great-great-aunt, shuffled slowly over to the table and eased down across from Carly, stifling a groan.

  “Is your arthritis bothering you today?” Carly asked, pausing. Petite, silver-haired Kitty had always been a special person in her life. Carly had planned to use this conversation to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with her mother. But maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Kitty was really old—nearly ninety-three. What if my plan really upsets her? What if she has a stroke or something?

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about? My arthritis?” Kitty grinned, her eyes crinkling up as they always did. “And can’t I persuade you not to scrub my floor on your hands and knees?”

  Carly shook her head. “You know you don’t like the way Sylvia just swishes the mop around. Everything gets stuck in the corners.” Two years before, Carly had been shocked to find Kitty on her knees trying to clean the corners herself. Carly had helped Kitty up and then taken over the job.

  “Sylvia does her best,” Kitty repeated for the thousandth time. “This getting old is for the birds. Just look at these hideous orthopedic shoes I’m forced to wear.”

  Carly half-smiled at her aunt’s touch of humor. “Well, I’ve got young knees.” Carly concentrated on swirling the scrub brush, ignoring the tension in her breast. “I’m sorry it’s been so long—”

  “What’s on your mind?” Kitty cut in.

  Carly took a deep breath and kept her head down. Now or never. “You know how Mom’s been after me to decide what college I want to go to.”

  “Yes.”

  That’s what Carly had always liked about her aunty. Kitty really listened. Unlike Carly’s mother, Kitty didn’t listen just long enough to start lecturing Carly. Nor did she just ignore what Carly said and go on as if she hadn’t spoken a word.

  Carly dropped the scrub brush in the bucket of warm wash water. She drew in a breath and began cautiously, “I don’t want to go to college.”

  Kitty didn’t answer right awa
y. Then she said, “So, you know what you don’t want to do. What do you want to do?”

  Carly steeled herself for whatever reaction she might get. She sat back on her heels and looked up, meeting her aunt’s eyes. “I’ve enlisted in the army.”

  Outside, just below the open rear kitchen window, Leigh Sinclair Gallagher, just arriving home from work, wondered if she’d heard her daughter right. It can’t be. She wouldn’t do anything that stupid.

  “You’ve enlisted in the army?” Kitty’s surprised voice floated out to Leigh.

  “Yes, I got the idea last year at career day at school. They had recruiters from the navy, the army, the air force, and the Marines. I thought the army looked like the service that got things done.”

  Leigh felt as if the ground were moving under her like the earth tremors she’d felt almost twenty years before when she’d lived in San Francisco with Kitty. The army got things done? Life magazine images of the Vietnam War shot through Leigh’s mind. She gripped the railing of the back steps.

  “But why not go into service after you have your college degree?” Kitty asked. “Then you’d go in as an officer.”

  Leigh couldn’t believe how calm her aunt sounded. Why wasn’t she telling Carly how stupid this was? How ridiculous?

  “I don’t want to go to college—yet. I mean, I don’t know what I want to do.”

  Leigh heard the clank of metal and the slosh of water and fumed. What was Carly doing? Was she scrubbing Kitty’s floor again? Why didn’t Kitty let Sylvia retire and get someone younger who could scrub the floor the way she wanted it? Leigh started up the steps, ready to interrupt.

  “But how do you know you want to join the army, then?” Kitty asked.

  “It’s just the only thing that’s appealed—”

  “Hey, Mommy!” Little Michael ran up behind Leigh. “Hey, you’re home early! Look what I did in kindergarten today!” Her auburn-haired son waved a watercolor at her. “Look! We painted today!”

  Leigh put on a bright smile and examined the mostly yellow painting while the two of them walked up the back steps, inside past Kitty’s door, and up to the second-floor flat where Leigh, Nate, Michael, and Carly lived.

  Leigh thought Michael’s appearance had stopped her, fortunately, from barging in on her daughter and her great-aunt. Carly was a difficult child and she could be amazingly stubborn at times. Leigh needed time to think about what to do, and she didn’t trust herself to go into Kitty’s first-floor flat. She knew she wasn’t a good enough actress to fool Kitty that she hadn’t heard exactly what Carly and she had been talking about.

  Michael chattered as she fixed him an after-school snack. Then she decided she needed to enlist her husband’s support. Carly loved Nate, and Leigh didn’t doubt that Nate could persuade Carly to drop this insane plan. Please come home, Nate. I need to talk to you. I need you tonight.

  That evening, Nate walked into the apartment in the nick of time to help Leigh get their little son in bed and say good night. Then he headed straight for Carly’s door to wish her a good night, too. But Leigh whispered to him not to and to follow her. Her expression was stormy, and he began to expect the start of another one of the endless circular arguments between his wife and himself. But he wasn’t participating tonight. He was too beat.

  “Okay.” Nate leaned against the kitchen doorjamb, looking around for leftovers. His stomach growled. “What’s put you in a foul mood?”

  “Maybe if you’d come home earlier, you’d know.” Leigh opened the refrigerator and then slipped a covered dish into the microwave above the stove.

  Nate just stared at her. How could she make that accusation with a straight face? “You know when I’m working a case, I don’t keep regular hours. When you have to work late, I don’t nag you about it.”

  Leigh gave him her look that said, “Oh, really?” He hated that look. When had they started acting out this endless domestic drama, comprised of sharp words and unpleasant glares?

  Then Leigh surprised him by holding her index finger to her closed lips and motioning him to join her at the table at the far side of the blue-and-white kitchen, farthest from the children’s bedrooms. “Let’s talk quietly. I don’t want Carly to overhear us.”

  Concerned, Nate moved forward. He picked up a box of wheat crackers on the counter and then sat down at the table. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a subdued tone. “Did something happen to her at school?”

  Leigh flicked away a few grains of salt from the oak tabletop. “You won’t believe this, but this afternoon I overheard her tell Kitty that she wants to go into the army.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” As he munched a salty cracker, he leaned back and let his tired legs stretch out under the table.

  “I wish I were. What are we going to do?”

  Listening to the whir of the microwave made him even hungrier. “She must have a reason—”

  “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.

  “Nat
e 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.”