“No, because she can give you a different perspective on some of these issues than I can. I think you can trust her, if nothing else to be straight with you.” He hesitated, thinking of the disbelief in Carly’s translucent eyes, the war going on in them between being touched by Sam’s trust in her, and conviction that his trust was completely unfounded. His chest cramped: What on earth had happened to make her so completely blind to her own goodness?
And why did Sam feel compelled to be the one to strip the veil from her soul?
Pushing the disturbing thought off to one side where it wouldn’t get him in any more trouble than he was apparently already in, he focused again on his daughter. “Because she’s not Mama,” he said quietly.
After a long moment, Libby nodded, her lips curved slightly in a smile of understanding.
Chapter 9
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Blair said to Libby as they both sat in the dirt, their backs braced against the outside wall of the barn, holding bottles for two of the not-quite-weaned piglets. Blair’d come over to bring Libby the work she’d missed in class and practically begged to feed the baby pigs. A chore she was completely down with, apparently, as long as she didn’t think too hard about why she was feeding the pigs. “It means,” the redhead went on before Libby could respond, “your dad is seriously crushing on Carly.”
Libby adjusted her grasp on the bottle before the noisily nursing pig on the other end yanked it right out of her hands. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Blair stopped making baby talk with her piglet long enough to say, “You’re not okay with that? I mean, Carly’s so cool.”
“Yeah, but she’s not exactly a kid person, is she?”
Blair got her how-could-anybody-not-like-kids? look on her face, an affliction, Libby privately thought, due in large part to her being an only child. Then she shrugged and said, “Well, anyway, at least you still get to go to the dance with Sean.”
“Oh, yeah. With my dad chaperoning us the entire time. Can’t wait.” Except then the guilt she’d barely managed to keep at bay for weeks came and tapped her on the shoulder. “By the way…I’m really sorry about asking you to cover for me. Pretending we were at the movies together when I was really with Sean. I shouldn’t’ve done that.”
“S’okay,” Blair said, but Libby could tell she was real relieved. Except then her mouth puckered up, like she had a secret she was dying to tell.
“Okay, spill, before you pop or something.”
Blair shoved her hair behind her ear, not doing a real good job of acting nonchalant. “Kirk Hauser invited me.”
Libby nearly dropped the piglet, bottle and all. “You’re not serious.”
“Of course I’m serious! What? You don’t think somebody like Kirk would be interested in me?”
“No, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! It’s just…oh, my God—he is so freakin’ gorgeous!”
“I know!” Blair said on a squeal to rival the pig’s. “I couldn’t believe it, either. Of course, I’m in the same boat as you, since he’s only fifteen so he doesn’t have his license yet. So Jenna and Dad are taking us.”
Libby groaned in commiseration. Although, in a way—not that she’d let on, goodness knows—it was kind of fun, having so many grown-ups come to the dance, too. It used to be only for the high school kids until somebody suggested they make it a community thing. So now everybody in the county, practically, came. There was this local band who could play all sorts of stuff, both rock and country, and with all the women attending, there was always more food than you could shake a stick at. Which meant all the boys, even the ones who didn’t have dates, showed up, too.
Although, Libby thought with a little tingle, that was not something she needed to concern herself with this year, since she had her own date, thank you.
The pigs were done with dinner, so the two girls got up, dusting off their bottoms. Libby had to admit that, for a city girl, Blair was pretty cool about helping out around the farm, that she never seemed to mind about the dirt, or that you couldn’t spend any time at all with pigs without smelling like one afterward. Now that they were on their feet, her friend had to look down at Libby slightly, being a good four or five inches taller than her. “How’s Sean feel about the double-dating business, anyway?”
Libby tossed the empty bottles into a plastic bucket to wash out later, deciding to give Blair the PG version of his comments. “He’s says he guesses it’s better than nothing. And that it’s not like my dad’s gonna be glued to our sides all night or anything.”
The feeder checked, the girls let themselves out of the pen and started back toward the house. The sun was already low in the sky, a brisk wind laced with the scent of animal and earth—smells Libby wouldn’t feel complete without, she realized—pushing them along as they walked.
“I’m sorry I was acting so weird about Sean,” Blair now said, startling Libby.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. And it was only because I was jealous that you had this really cute guy falling all over you and I didn’t. I don’t blame you for being pissed with me, I was acting like a brat about it.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I’m not stupid, Lib, okay? But I am sorry. Really, really sorry.”
“S’okay,” Libby said, linking her arm with her friend’s, thinking there was a lot more to this growing up business than she’d ever dreamed.
She could have said “no.”
Carly tugged on a pair of pink tights that had been washed so many times they were now the color of an anemic oyster. Her muscles twitched in anxious anticipation, like a dog seeing his master get the leash. Then she grabbed the first leotard she came to, a royal-blue tank with a run at the neckline from where she’d scrunched it into a V-neck with a safety pin.
She should have said no. Only then Libby wouldn’t have been able to go to the dance, and she couldn’t do that to the girl.
For three days, in between helping her father prioritize repairs to the house and more cleaning and continued, pointless searches for teaching positions, she’d been plowing the same damn ground, looking for God-knew-what. Justification? An out? A reason to be actually happy that now the entire town—not to mention all the surrounding hamlets—would immediately peg Sam and her as an item?
The house shuddered with the force of her father’s taking a sledgehammer to the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. He usually disappeared after dinner, but apparently Ivy was attending a birth tonight, so here he was, merrily pulverizing eighty-year-old plaster and wooden laths. Carly dug out a loose, boatneck cotton pullover from an as-yet-unpacked bag, a pair of equally faded leg warmers—it would be cold as a witch’s booty in the barn—then searched through a collection of ballet slippers and pointe shoes for her favorite pair of old, battered Freeds. The shoes tucked in her hand, she skipped down the concave stairs, waiting for a break in the plaster dust to call out to her father than she was heading for the barn, she’d be back in an hour or so.
The large, benign building beckoned to her like a favorite aunt as she hurried across the hundred or so feet separating it from the house; the gleaming expanse of floor seemed to smile a welcome when she threw the switch, flooding the space with light. She’d come the first time after Sam’s impromptu invitation—although at that time, she hadn’t yet figured out why.
Now, however, she knew.
With an economy of motion fine-honed after so many years, she shucked off her down coat and running shoes and quickly twisted up her hair, clamping it place with a single large metal barrette. The satin ribbons strangling the folded shoes rippled free; she slipped them on, securely crossing them over her high insteps, around her ankles, neatly tucking the tied ends back on themselves. She didn’t need music—it pulsed through her blood, as integral to her makeup as that blood—simply the space to reclaim her soul. To reclaim as much of her world as she could, bum knee or no. Rec
laiming whatever semblance of control she could from circumstances over which she had very little.
Using one of the support beams as a makeshift barre, she put herself through a knee-friendly version of the series of warm-up exercises any ballet dancer could do in her sleep: demi-pliés, petit battements, grande battements, ronde de jambes. Blackened by the night, the trio of floor-to-ceiling windows acted as mirrors, enabling her to critically observe every position, every move, to correct a sagging port de bras, ensure that her arabesque looked as sure as it felt. Sweat began to trickle down her back, between her breasts, as the discipline of making her body obey her mental commands began to melt at least some of the anxiety she’d been carting around for the past several weeks. She would never dance professionally again, but something far deeper than audience approval drove her now. As it always had, she thought, moving away from the beam, contemplating what she wanted to do next.
She moved slowly, carefully, deliberately, as her limbs loosened, responded, reclaiming the satisfaction and joy she’d always felt in the dance studio.
Tombe, pas de bourree, glissade, glissade…
She’d climbed up into the loft yesterday, could see it had already been altered into a living space, maybe for a sleeping area, that what had probably been a tack room downstairs had been roughed out for a small kitchen and bath…
Double pirouette, landing in fourth position…
A pair of faces, bug-eyed and eerily pale against a frame of blackness, peered through the window directly in front of her. Carly shrieked and jumped back, her hand landing on her pounding chest.
Then the faces grinned.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake…” She tromped over to the door cut out of the same wall as the windows, the old barn door having been walled in, and yanked it open. “You two nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, her annoyance already losing steam at the sight of Sam’s two oldest boys, both still grinning—and giggling—to beat the band.
“Don’t think I ever saw anybody jump that high,” said Mike, the oldest and the spitting image of his father with his flaxen hair and long, thin face.
Matt, dark like his sister, and already built like a four-by-four at eleven, giggled in agreement. “Last time I heard somebody holler like that was when Blair tried to milk Josephine and got hit in the head with a tail full of cow poop.”
“Yeah, that’d do it,” Carly said, then stood aside to let the pair in before they trampled her in the process, both boys already being taller than she by a couple of inches. They were almost identically attired in jeans and navy-blue hoodies, capped off by four of the dirtiest, biggest, off-brand sneakers she’d ever seen. Anybody in the market for a young, strapping farm lad need look no further: she could only imagine what these two would be like in a few years.
“So, like, what were you doing?” Mike asked, the strong overhead light nearly bleaching out his short blond hair as he scanned the empty room, seemingly baffled by what anybody could find to do in here.
“Dancing.”
“Why?”
This from Matt, curiosity brimming in dark eyes.
“Because it makes me feel good. Haven’t you guys ever danced?”
Words were inadequate to describe their horrified expressions.
“Dancing’s for sissies,” Mike pronounced with get-her raised eyebrows at his brother.
“Oh, yeah? So tell me something.” Thoroughly enjoying herself, Carly took a step closer, her arms folded across her middle. “Can you lift a hundred pounds over your head? And then walk fifty feet with it like that?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Can you spin on one foot eight times and not get dizzy? And without falling on your keyster?”
The boys glanced at each other, their brows knit, then back at her, clearly figuring something was up. Then, defeated, both shook their heads.
“You ever go to any of the Indian powwows? See the men dance?” They both nodded. “You think there’s anything sissy about that?”
“Actually that kinda looks like fun,” Matt said, and Mike punched him, and he glowered at his brother and said, “Well, it does, sheesh.”
Carly laughed, then said, “Go back to my house and tell my dad I said to get my CD player and the case that should be right beside it. I want to show you something.”
When the boys hadn’t returned from their bike ride by eight-thirty—Sam never could fully relax when they went riding after dark—he went hunting. A very dusty, but cheerful, Lane had said they were over in the barn with Carly. Wondering What on earth…? he drove on over there, pulling up alongside the wall with all the windows. Considering the pounding salsa beat emanating from the building, he doubted they heard the truck, let alone that they noticed him.
He sat there, one hand still gripping the steering wheel, unable to do anything save gawk at the goings-on inside. Once the shock began to wear off, however, a chuckle rumbled up through his chest as he thought of the Maurice Sendak book Jeannie used to read to the kids when they were little, Where the Wild Things Are, where Max says, “Let the wild rumpus start!”
Arms flailed, feet stamped, butts wiggled—Sam nearly choked—and there was Carly, flailing and stamping and wiggling right along with them, albeit with a little more grace and dignity than his sons.
His sports-obsessed, car-obsessed, I-can-too-belch-louder-than-you sons.
He finally got out of the truck, silently pushing open the door to the barn. The throbbing beat nearly knocked him over, but now he could hear the laughter, too, the boys’ as well as the woman’s. She was wearing one of her God-awful outfits, some flour-sack of a top, what looked like triple-thick knee highs, bunched around her calves. But her long, trim thighs were sheathed in some dishwater-colored fabric that showed every muscle, and her face was flushed with both exertion and pleasure, haloed by a froth of…well, not exactly curls, but whatever they were, the overhead lights glinted off of them in a very interesting way.
Provoking some very interesting reactions in various parts of his anatomy.
“No, no,” Carly said, laughing, as Matt launched into a series of moves like he’d sat on a hornet’s nest. She planted her hands high on his hips and shoved to the right. “Like that…yeah, that’s it!” Although from Sam’s vantage point, it didn’t look all that different, to be honest. Then his gaze slid over to Mike, staring at his pale-headed reflection in the darkened window as he concentrated on getting his big old feet going in what Sam presumed was the “right” direction.
Any second now, somebody was bound to notice his presence. Until then, he was content to simply watch his sons act like goofballs and Carly having the time of her life. Her interaction with the boys was completely natural, her laughter the most infectious he’d ever heard. So he stood in the shadows, hands in pockets, absorbing one of those rare, brilliant moments that makes a body just glad to be alive. And for some dad-blamed reason he got to thinking about how, every time Jeannie got pregnant, they’d wonder how they were going to fit another kid into their lives, only to be amazed at how each one had seemed, from that first newborn cry, to have always been there.
And it hit him that maybe this wasn’t so much about wedging another person into his life, as it was about recognizing a gift when he saw it. Because if anybody already meshed with the absurdity that was Sam’s life, it was Carly.
Whether she knew it or not.
“Dad!” Matt cried, his voice still firmly in squeaky-kid mode. “When’d you come in?”
“A few minutes ago,” he said, his voice suddenly booming in the empty space when Carly turned off the CD player. “Looks to me like somebody was having a lot of fun.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” Sam could see his oldest son’s blush from here, poor kid. But damned if his skinny chin didn’t jut out. “Carly says dancing’s a good way to work out your frustrations.”
“Not to mention stomp out an anthill.”
That got a pair of slightly embarrassed smiles. “We’re not real good,” Matt said
, streaking a hand through his damp, dark hair.
“You are, too, good!” Carly said, and her vehemence cracked open his heart a little wider, letting in a few more possibilities. “Both of you.”
Sam chuckled. “More natural talent than you know what to do with, looks like.”
“Absolutely!” she said, her twinkling eyes hinting of warning, as well—Don’t mess with my kids. Oh, she’d deny it from now to Easter, but Sam was far too well acquainted with possessiveness when it came to his kids not recognize it in somebody else.
“You think maybe we could come back again sometime?” Mike asked.
“I suppose that’s up to Carly.”
“Of course you can.” She was pleased, Sam could tell. Real pleased. “Anytime. As long as you’ve got your homework and chores done. Because God knows—” she glanced over at him and all hell broke loose inside his head “—I do not want your father on my case.”
Sam beat his brain cells back into submission enough to get out, “But now it’s time to call it a night. Five-thirty’s still gonna happen the same time it always does. You can toss your bikes in the back of the truck and I’ll give you a ride.”
Grumbling, the kids grabbed their abandoned sweatshirts off the floor and trooped outside. Sam peeked back at Carly, half to see if he’d imagined that scorching connection earlier. Apparently he hadn’t.
“They didn’t bother you, did they?”
She laughed, a low, soft sound that seemed caught in the back of her throat. “Once they realized I wasn’t going to make them wear tutus, we got along just fine.”
“I hate to tell you this, but you’re really good with kids.”
Her smile faltered. “So you caught me having an off moment.”
“Bull. I’ve watched you with the others, too. You’re a natural—”
“Sam…”
“Dammit, Carly,” he said, sharp enough to get those brows shooting up. “Would you listen, for once? Nothing puts a kid off faster than a grown-up who tries too hard. But you don’t ‘try’ at all. You’re just yourself when you’re around them, so they feel like they can be themselves, too. Do you even have a clue how extraordinary that makes you?”
Swept Away Page 14