Leigh

by Lyn Cote

  “Mop!” Chloe moved to her. “We’ll get you cleaned up. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to go to the hospital? I just don’t feel right about this midwife thing.”

  “Now don’t upset her,” Kitty said, shaking her finger. “The midwife will have a doctor on call in case of emergency, and the hospital’s only ten minutes away.” She came and took Leigh’s arm. “Nancy, you call the midwife. Chloe, you mop up that puddle. I’ll get Leigh changed into a clean summer nightie.”

  Leigh was relieved to be told what to do and so happy that her grandmother had come early. My baby is coming.The thought filled her with awe, fear, and relief. Her pregnancy was ending.

  *

  Within an hour, the midwife, a plump thirtyish mother of three, arrived. Eight and a half hours later, she told Leigh she could stop blowing and start pushing.

  Chloe watched as her granddaughter gave birth to her great-granddaughter. The years rolled back for Chloe as she remembered giving birth to Bette and Bette giving birth to Linda Leigh. Now another generation had been born. How can I be seventy-two years old and a great-grandmother?And then tears moistened her eyes as she wished Roarke could have been here. And Ted and Dane. This should have been Dane’s baby, Lord.

  But this little one wasn’t. And the wayward father didn’t even know about the sweet little girl. The midwife handed Chloe the naked, squalling baby. And Chloe took her to the nearby plastic basin in the kitchen sink and gave her great-granddaughter her first bath, just as Jerusha had bathed Bette and she and Jerusha had bathed Leigh. Kitty hung over Chloe’s shoulder, watching, cooing. Then the two of them carried the baby, clean and dressed in a pale-yellow newborn gown, over and laid the child in Leigh’s arms. “She’s beautiful,” Chloe said.

  “She’s outstanding,” Kitty said.

  “She’s here.” Nancy yawned.

  Leigh couldn’t believe that the ordeal was over. The Lamaze classes had prepared her, but going through childbirth had not been what she expected. Now she fully understood why they called labor, “labor.” She felt as if she’d been dragging stones large enough for a pyramid.

  All that fell away, though, when she looked down. Tears hovered close as she gazed at her precious little daughter. I’ll never make you feel unloved, my darling.

  The women around her, the ones she loved, cooed and patted the baby The midwife said in a crisp voice that a nurse would be coming in the morning to check on Leigh and the newborn, to call the hospital if anything came up. Then she left, waving good-bye.

  “What have you decided to name her?” Chloe asked.

  This was something Leigh had given a great deal of thought. “I’m going to name her Carlyle Leigh Sinclair.”

  “Carlyle? My mother’s family name?” Chloe asked.

  Leigh saw that her grandmother didn’t want to say she didn’t like the name.

  “Yes,” Leigh explained, “because even if my mother wants to deny she exists, she’s the next generation.”

  Chloe squeezed her granddaughter’s shoulder. “Don’t be bitter, honey. Bitterness is poison.”

  “I’m not bitter. I’ve put it into perspective,” Leigh said, though her mother’s cool treatment of her over the pregnancy still pained her. “Our family carries on in spite of all the changes, all the wars, all the political stuff like Watergate. Ivy Manor still stands, and I’ll stand, too.”

  “Of course, you will.” Kitty sat down on the edge of the bed. “And so will we.”

  As Leigh struggled against the sudden weariness that overtook her, a knock came at the door. “Who could that be at nearly 6:00 a.m.?” Kitty commented as she went to the door and opened it. “Dory!”

  Chloe and Leigh turned to see Leigh’s younger sister enter. She was wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt and carrying a duffle bag.

  “Oh, the baby!” Dory squealed, rushing forward. “You had the baby!”

  “Dory!” Leigh felt her heart lift, buoyant and refreshed.

  “Dory, what are you doing here at this time of the morning?” Chloe scolded. “Where’s your mother?”

  A policeman stepped inside. All together, the older women gasped. Leigh, disbelieving, tried to cover herself and her daughter. Dory ignored them all and bent to look at her niece.

  The officer stopped short, obviously embarrassed at having walked into such an intimate scene. Backing up a pace, he stood by the door and cleared his throat. “Dory, is this your sister?” He gestured at Leigh, who was still shocked to see a stranger standing in front of her birthing bed.

  Dory nodded, cooing over the baby.

  Leigh finally found her voice. “She’s my sister,” she replied faintly.

  “She’s my granddaughter,” Chloe said.

  “She’s my great-niece,” Kitty crowed. “And this, Dory, is your little niece, Carly.”

  “Cool,” Dory crowed. “She’s so cool.”

  Leigh continued to stare at the policeman—the handsome, auburn-haired policeman. Her hand absently smoothed her hair and pulled the bed sheets closer to her chest. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Dory?”

  The policeman nodded, looking as if he were drawing up his professionalism for this occasion. Leigh could see, though, how his eyes softened as he looked at her and the new infant in her arms. “We picked up your sister at the train station. We routinely pick up a lot of runaways there.”

  Carly suddenly whimpered, and the policeman, along with everyone else in the room, smiled. Leigh felt his kind eyes move over her and her child, and suddenly she didn’t mind his attention. He looked like he liked babies.

  “I told them I wasn’t running away,” Dory declared suddenly, raising up and giving her grandmother a wary eye. “I was just coming to see my sister. But they wouldn’t believe me so they drove me here.”

  Leigh knew her mother would never have let Dory travel alone to New York City, especially not to see her sister and her sister’s illegitimate child. So she was sure that Dory had, in a sense, run away. Well, that was their mother’s fault, one she’d never learned to stop. But this policeman didn’t need to know all the details.

  “Thank you, officer. We didn’t realize Dory was coming this early, or one of us would have met her at the station. But as you can see, even coming early, she missed the grand entrance of our newest family member.”

  “Bummer,” Dory said.

  The policeman looked at each of the women in turn, obviously uneasy, but unwilling to pursue it further. Finally, he smiled. “Well, I’ll be going then. Congratulations.” He nodded to Leigh and walked out the door.

  As the rest of the women descended upon Dory demanding explanations, Leigh stared at the closed door and thought about the man who’d suddenly been thrust into her life, however briefly. She thought of his eyes, the softness that had come over them as he looked at her and Carly. She couldn’t help herself from the unexpected, wistful thought, Why couldn’t I have fallen for someone nice like that?

  Six weeks later, in early autumn, Leigh headed down the street toward the subway station. Back into her pre-pregnancy skirt size, she was almost feeling normal again, and she was starting to go in for half days this week. She hoped to be full-time again at the magazine by the time Carly was two months old.

  “Leigh.” Without warning, a familiar, but upsetting voice summoned her from behind. She turned and there he was. Trent Kinnard. The shock was overwhelming, especially her physical reaction. Images from their one night together flooded her consciousness. She nearly reached for him, but then she turned to run.

  Before she could take a step, he caught her wrist. “We need to talk. Let’s go somewhere for coffee.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” She pulled from his loose grasp as if his hands were unclean. “We don’t have anything to discuss.”

  “Yes, we do.” He looked angry with her. “Do you think I don’t know that you just had my baby? I can count to nine, you know.”

  She stared at him, her heart pounding so hard it made her nauseated. “How
did you find me?”

  “When you dropped out of my life last fall, I hired a PI to find you. It wasn’t hard, and he’s sent me reports about you every week. When our baby—”

  “ My baby—just mine.I don’t want or need to have anything to do with you.” She swept him away with her hand.

  “Why? Leigh, I thought we had the start of something good—”

  “Good?” You have gall, all right. “I didn’t know you were married. I don’t do affairs with married men. You can’t imagine how I felt…” Her throat started to close up on her. “I’ve never been so insulted, so humiliated.”

  She paused to calm herself so she could breathe. All the things she’d wanted to scream at him over the lonely months since last November clamored to be unleashed. She suppressed them. She didn’t want him, couldn’t let him know how much he’d hurt her. “I don’t want anything to do with you.” She looked down at the broken sidewalk.

  Trent moved closer. “Would it make any difference,” he said, urgent and low, “if I told you that now I know I’m in love with you? I’ve been miserable every day since you walked away. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She wanted to hit him. How dare he try that line on her? Didn’t the man know when to give up? “You should have realized that I wasn’t what you thought I was. You knew…” She refused to continue.

  “I knew that I was the first, and yes, now I see that should have caught my attention. But it didn’t at the time.” He paused as if trying to come up with words. “Please, can’t we work out something between us?”

  “No. You’re a married man. I’ll take my share of blame for what happened that night, but my defense is naivete. What’s yours?”

  He had the grace to hang his head, chagrined. “I can’t divorce—”

  “I’m not asking you to,” Leigh tossed at him. “I didn’t come looking for you,did I? And you don’t have to worry about a paternity suit. I want nothing from you.” Fearing she might burst into tears or start screaming, she whirled away. “Good-bye.”

  “Leigh!” He called her name once and then subsided.

  She ran from him to the subway steps. As she hurried down the stairs, her heart felt as if it would burst with the pain, the guilt. God, forgive me. Help me. Don’t let any of this hurt my sweet child.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  New York City, November 12, 1983

  Leigh didn’t like visiting police stations. Ever since Chicago in ’68, she’d despised the decaying institutional decor and the sweaty, musty smell, which could have been bottled as “Old Police Station” to men with very odd taste in cologne. But now she had pinned a bright and engaging smile on her face and not even the old dinosaur in uniform sitting across from her would wipe it from her face.

  She was here to get what she needed for a story, and she wouldn’t let anything stop her. “But Captain Dorsey,” she said, not betraying her frustration, “I’m not doing an expose on the NYPD. I just want some leads on the new trend of girls joining gangs or forming their own.”

  He snorted. “And I keep tellin’ ya. It isn’t new, and we don’t want you encouraging gang activity of any kind.”

  “I’m not encouraging it. I just want to write about it and try to stop it.”

  “You—” He pointed his ballpoint pen at her. “—write about it and it gets publicized, and you’ll end up making it even more popular.”

  She felt like hitting him in the head with a two-by-four. But it would probably take more than that to get through to this man. “Well,” she said, rising and holding out her hand, her false smile holding, “I won’t take up any more of your time then. Thank you for your help.” Or lack thereof.

  He stood and shook her hand with his large paw. “You be careful. A pretty woman like you shouldn’t be messin’ around with gangs. It could be very dangerous. You’re out of your league, lady.”

  Now in her mid-thirties, Leigh was inured to the compliment he paid her. For once, she wished a man wouldn’t feel he had to tell her how pretty he thought she was. To be honest, she had traded on her good looks to get information—but only when no other way was open to her. And today she’d dressed in a stylish black suit with a flared skirt and had left her hair down, knowing she would be trying to get what she needed from a man.

  After expressing her empty gratitude, she flashed a charming smile at him—who knew when she might need him or someone he knew to help her on another story—and then exited. As she walked down the narrow hallway back to the entrance, a broad-shouldered man brushed against her. She got a tantalizing whiff of his English Leather. She leaned away from him, unaccountably irritated.

  But then she felt him slip something into the outside pocket of her suit jacket. She gave him a startled look, and he gave her the slightest shake of the head as if to stop her from speaking. She gave him a nod and went on outside.

  A block away, she pulled out the business card he’d slipped into her pocket. It gave his name, his rank as a plain clothes detective, and contact information. She turned it over and in ink, he’d written: “Call me.”

  Ten-year-old Carly, in a plaid winter coat over her white ballet tights and pink Care Bear boots, was waiting for her. Leigh approached the poorly lit doorway of the dance studio where Carly went with friends after school for tap and ballet. Her expression broadcast that she was vexed with her mother again.

  “Don’t look so growly at me. I just proved I can get here on time,” Leigh said as she smoothed wisps of her daughter’s long black hair away from her pretty, oval face.

  Carly looked up, her gray eyes serious as always. “I was afraid you weren’t going to be, and I don’t like it when I’m the last one picked up.”

  Yes, lay the guilt trip on me. “I know, but today you weren’t. I really try to get here early, but sometimes things happen. You know what to do when I’m delayed, right?”

  “Yes, I’m supposed to wait inside the doorway until you come,” Carly recited as she walked alongside her mother toward the subway station. “But I don’t like being last. Everybody walks by me and asks me why I’m standing there.”

  Leigh only half listened to her daughter’s oft-expressed complaint. The business card in her pocket kept generating questions. Who was Nate Gallagher, beyond the fact that he was a plainclothes detective with a face that looked like it grinned a lot? Why did he want her to call him? Was it professional, or was he just using a unique pickup line? She hoped it wasn’t the latter. But if it were, she was experienced in keeping men at a distance. In fact, by now she had perfected rejecting unwelcome advances—or any advances really—to a fine art. She’d decided she was busy enough with work and Carly. Men took up too much of a woman’s time.

  Now, she leaned down, kissed her daughter’s head, and then took her gloved hand. “I won’t be late again. Promise.”

  “When’s Grandma Chloe coming?” Carly gave a little skip. “She’s still coming to my recital?” Carly always needed reassurance about family visits. It was as if she couldn’t trust that family really was coming.

  “I told you,” Leigh admonished her, hurrying against the cutting wind, “Grandma Chloe and Grandma Bette are coming the Friday night before your recital.”

  “Isn’t Aunt Dory coming, too?”

  “No, she can’t come, honey. She’s going to be in Africa with the Peace Corps by then.”

  “Mama, how come I don’t got any uncles?”

  Where had that question come from? “Because I only had a sister. And it’s ‘have,’ not ‘got.’”

  “Didn’t my daddy have any brothers?”

  Leigh stilled inside. Every once in a while, Carly brought up “her daddy.” Her little girl had figured out at the tender age of three that children were supposed to have a mommy and a daddy. And then she’d promptly demanded to know where her daddy was. Had he gotten lost somewhere?

  Leigh never knew how to answer these questions. She had never told Carly anything about her fa
ther except that he couldn’t live with them. She hadn’t wanted to lie to her own daughter, but neither could she tell her the nasty truth. So the forbidden topic remained wedged between her and her daughter. At these moments, guilt was a dull blade sawing, gouging her spirit.

  Now Leigh did what she always did—she ignored the question. I do my best for you, my sweet child. But all mychoices are second-best. I didn’t choose your father well I’m to blame.

  Carly glanced up at her, studied her, and then wordlessly accepted that Leigh once again was not going to answer her question. She changed topics. “And Aunt Kitty’s taking us all out to dinner afterward?”

  Leigh was happy to answer this one. “Yes, Aunt Kitty is taking all of us to her favorite French restaurant to celebrate the occasion.” Shivering, Leigh tugged Carly’s hand, and they both ran the last gloomy block to the subway. When Carly had been around a year old, Aunt Kitty—now in her early eighties just as Grandma Chloe was—had sold her townhouse in San Francisco and bought a two-apartment building near them. The much-loved older woman had become an indispensable part of Leigh and Carly’s everyday life.

  As they boarded the subway train, her daughter prattled on about her friend Katy and the dance recital. Swaying with the motion of the train, Leigh answered automatically while the focus of her mind remained on why the detective wanted her to call him.

  Later that evening, after supper at Kitty’s apartment and tucking Carly into bed back at home, Leigh dialed Nate Gallagher’s number. She tingled with anticipation while it rang and rang. No answer. Disappointed, Leigh put back the receiver and walked to the kitchen to boil water for a cup of herbal tea. Soon she took her warm mug of cinnamon-apple tea and stood by the window, watching the street below. Had her anticipation as she dialed been from the hope she’d get help with the article or because of her memory of his enticing masculinity?

  Below her window by the light of the streetlamps, a young couple was walking down the street holding hands. She sipped the hot tea, trying to deny the restlessness that sometimes stirred inside her. Another evening home alone. Would she ever meet someone she trusted enough to love, or would she end up like Kitty and live alone for most of her life?