A Mother's Love (12 page)

Leila moaned and dropped her purse on the hall table. Falling in love, she was terribly afraid, was an adventure, and she was a woman who liked to know exactly what tomorrow held.

Yes,
she thought,
but can I imagine tomorrow
not
including Mark?

T
HESE NEW FEELINGS
for Mark made the approach of her mother's wedding much easier for Leila. She thought now she understood better, if not completely, how her mother could have cherished the memory of another man all those years despite being married to Leila's father. Mostly Leila was still troubled at how she could have fooled herself into seeing only what she wanted to see.

Leila and her mother shopped for dresses together. Her mother chose a beaded ivory suit, and Leila a simple cocktail-length dress in a shade of deep peach that set off her skin and hair. The day together was a lovely, simple celebration with no questions or reproach allowed. At the end of the day, Leila hugged her mother and said, “I'm going to miss you so much.”

Tears sparkling in her eyes, her mother held her tight. “I'll miss you, too. You'll visit often, won't you?”

“When I can. Maybe you should persuade Robert to retire up here. He could sail around the San Juan Islands.”

Her mother choked back a laugh. “That's an enticement. I'll try.”

But they both knew she'd likely fail. His kids and his newborn grandchild were both in the San Diego area. Jon did have kids, but didn't live in the Seattle area. And Leila, who did, could offer no grandchild to add into the equation.

Leila spent as much time as she could with Mark. He had a couple of grueling weeks after a little girl disappeared one night from her bedroom and was found two days later in a Dumpster in an alley behind some downtown businesses. He looked sick when Leila spoke to him briefly at work after the body was found. She knew how frantically the entire force had been looking for that little girl.

He shook his head when she asked how he was. “Children are the worst.”

They stood by the water cooler in the hall, so she could do no more than murmur, “Call me when you get a chance,” and drink in the sight of his eyes, hungry for her. Someone called his name; a muscle jerked in his cheek, and he nodded at her, then turned and went.

They talked on the phone and snatched a couple of quick lunches together, but not until an arrest was made did he have time for more. She offered to make dinner, and he came to her house, exhaustion deepening the lines on his face.

“God, it's good to see you.” Right inside her front door, he wrapped her in his arms and just held her, his cheek against the top of her head. She held him, too, and let him gather whatever comfort or reassurance he could from her. Finally, with a long sigh, he let her go, giving a twisted smile. “Hell of a job.”

She thought with shame about how she'd sometimes recoiled from the sight of the gun he carried and told herself that he couldn't, somehow, be decent and kind and reliable if he had chosen a job so redolent with violence and tragedy.

Mad at herself, she sounded almost belligerent. “You're the one who made the arrest. You just gave back to every parent in this town some sense of security. That
is
a hell of a job.”

“Ah.” His mouth softened. “Thank you.”

“Come sit down.”

He perched on a bar stool in her small kitchen and watched her cook. Because he seemed to want to talk about something besides work, Leila updated him on her life in the past two weeks, on the shopping expedition and the impending arrival of Jon and his family and all of Robert's family the next week.

“My mother missed her calling,” she said, peeling a carrot for the tossed salad. “She should have been a general. She has everybody's movements organized down to ten-minute increments.” She sliced the carrot, then reached for a tomato. “Did you get your invitation?”

“Yes, and I replied. Thank you. I'm looking forward to attending the wedding.”

They were finally sitting down, eating dinner in the alcove she called a dining room, when Mark said, “I've been meaning to ask you… I noticed a picture on your mother's mantel that had you and—I assumed—Jon and another boy in it.”

“I had another brother,” she said. “Cody. He drowned swimming in the Stillaguamish River when he was ten. I was seven, Jon not quite five.”

He looked at her in surprise, his eyes intent. “You never mention him.”

“I guess none of us do much. For one thing, it was an awful lot of years ago. When I think of him now, I tend to see his face in one of the photos, not really in my memory.” Her stomach clenched, and she had this awful feeling of apprehension, as if she didn't
want
to remember those days. But she hadn't forgotten any of it, she thought in perplexity, had she?

Appetite gone, she set down her fork. “It's funny how
much more vividly I remember the aftermath of his death than I do Cody. Which I suppose speaks to how selfish children are.”

“What kind of aftermath? Was there an investigation?”

She shook her head, then said, “Well, I suppose there was, but it was the usual tragedy. A friend's parents had taken a whole group of boys up to the river near Arlington. The boys were jumping off a rock into the water, and somehow no one noticed when Cody went under. They were doing cannonballs, I guess, and they think he hit his head. Finally one of the parents counted up the boys and noticed Cody was missing. They had to call out Search and Rescue, who found him half a mile downstream. It was awful but just an accident.

“What I remember most,” she said slowly, gazing into the past with something like surprise, “is the way my mother cried. And kept crying. I'd never seen her cry before. She wasn't supposed to…to lose herself that way. She just…withdrew. It was Dad who somehow forged on. He cooked dinners and made our school lunches and braided my hair in the mornings when Mom couldn't even get out of bed. It went on and on. For months and years. She couldn't seem to feel anything but grief. I remember…” Leila had to pause to take a deep breath; her throat wanted to close. Here it was, the memory she hadn't wanted to have surface. “I came home from school, and she was standing in the kitchen. I was excited about something—doing well on a spelling test, I think—and I raced to her saying, ‘Mommy, guess what!' She turned and looked at me as if she didn't know who I was. I can still see her face, so remote. And she turned and walked out of the kitchen. I stood there, just…stunned. I think that happened a bunch of other times before I gave up.” With an
effort, Leila tried to smile at Mark. “I hadn't thought of that in years. It was a really awful period.”

“And that's when your dad became so important to you.”

She nodded. “He did everything for us. We'd have had no sense of security or love without him. I don't think I ever felt quite safe in Mom's love again.”

“How long until your mother remembered she had two more kids?”

“It was…I don't know…gradual. At first I could tell she was making an effort even though she didn't really care about anything I was telling her. It must have been a couple of years before she was mostly herself again. By then, well, we were used to depending on Dad, not her.”

“And she was left standing alone,” Mark said quietly.

“Yes, maybe…” The memories seemed to be crashing through some barrier. She was young and bewildered. Daddy kept saying Mommy was so sad about Cody. And she, Leila, was sad, too, but…didn't Mommy love
her
anymore? Although the memories cascaded in no particular order, she could see—no,
feel
—her young self fixing all her love on her Daddy, because
he
loved her, too. And later, when she thought she'd forgiven her mother, there was still an impenetrable wall that she had scarcely known was there but she depended on nonetheless.

“Oh,”
she whispered. “That's what all this is about, isn't it?”

“Pretty clearly.” Mark stood. “Come on.”

He drew her out into the living room, leaving their unfinished dinners. He pulled her down beside him on the sofa and cuddled her close at his side.

“You hadn't forgotten that you started leaning on your dad then?”

“No-o.” Leila grimaced, her cheek against Mark's solid chest. “Not exactly. But I was young enough that…I think it just got to be the way things
were,
you know? Dad was my rock. I was devastated when he died.”

“Because when you were your most vulnerable, he was all you had.”

“Yes.” So simple, this explanation. No wonder she'd resented her mother moving on quickly as though her father wasn't essential. Especially since it was her mother's fault anyway that her father had
become
so essential to Leila's sense of security. “I think,” she said, fumbling her way to understanding, “that I never ventured far from home because I needed to have my father close. I suppose I was crippled, in a way, by having my mother seem to cut off her love all in an instant. So I had to hold on tight to what security I had left.”

“Crippled?” Mark's arm tightened and he kissed the top of her head. “I wouldn't go that far. You've survived and prospered. But I guess we have this in common. When a parent lets you down, it, uh…”

“Puts cracks in your foundation. Isn't that how you put it that first time when you told me about your dad?” Yes, that was exactly what it felt like. And she'd been trying to make her foundation solid again by finding a man exactly like her father to be that bedrock.

Right now she felt shattered. This was all so…so
obvious!
How had it eluded her all these years? “I feel so
dumb,
” Leila said.

“Dumb?” Mark turned her in the circle of his arm so she couldn't help but look up at him. “You know better than that. You're just…putting together pieces of what you already knew. There's no revelation here. You loved your dad and
you trusted him for good reason. You looked for qualities in other men because of what you'd depended on in him. That's natural. Me, I've been looking for a woman who doesn't pretend, who would never choose to hide from the truth. I love my mother, but I need someone who isn't like her.”

Leila's eyes widened. Was Mark talking about her? Was that how he saw her? Oh, she wanted to
be
that woman, but right now she felt so muddled, so unmasked, so foolish, it was suddenly all too much.

“Mark…”

His mouth half turned up in a rueful smile. “I shouldn't have had that wine at dinner. It's knocking me on my butt.”

After the sudden burst of hope that Mark was saying he loved
her
—and the accompanying panic—Leila felt let down by his light tone. It was a struggle to match it. “Then isn't it lucky you're
on
your butt.”

“Yeah, but I'd better bestir myself to get home before I collapse.” Even so, he didn't move. Much the way they'd done when he'd first come in the door, they leaned against each other with no need for words. Finally he gave a jaw-cracking yawn, then stretched, by necessity removing his arm from around her. “Okay, that does it. Home. I plan to sleep for twelve hours.”

She laughed and walked him to the door, where they kissed almost tentatively, as if shyly eyeing each other sidelong. After he was gone Leila closed her eyes and pictured his face, the last look he'd given her. The kiss had been tender, she realized. He'd seen what she needed and was trying to give it to her.

And that, she was bemused to realize, was something her beloved father, so often oblivious to other people's emotional states, would never have been able to do. What her
father had done instead was go on the way he always had, never faltering. Then, her needs had been simpler, and he could meet them with mere steadiness. Love had been brushing the knots from her hair, hanging her latest drawing or triumphant spelling test on the refrigerator, listening to her chatter, smiling with obvious pleasure at the sight of her.

Somehow her needs had become so much more complex she hardly understood them. So how was it that Mark seemed to? And he did, didn't he? Tonight he'd led her, step by reluctant step. And then, rueful and tender, he had left her alone, assuming that's what she wanted.

Only, she
didn't
want him to go. She wanted him here, holding her while she wept for everything lost when Cody died.

Curled on the sofa, Leila kept crying, thinking about her childhood home sold, her mother remarried and moving away. And all the while her chest swelled until it hurt with her need for Mark, so different from anything she'd ever dreamed of feeling, so much more all-consuming.

So much scarier.

“T
HIS WAS SO NICE
. Thanks, Mom.” Replete, Leila sipped coffee, looked around the dining room and thought,
This evening was my goodbye to this house.
She suspected her mother had planned it so.

There were only two days until the wedding. A Sold sign stood out front, and her mother had done much of her packing. She'd given Leila a few favorite pieces of furniture and a set of china.

Somehow, in the midst of everything, Leila's mother had found time for just the two of them. Jon and his family would be coming into town tomorrow and planned to stay with Leila, squeezing into her small house. Robert's daughter and her husband and baby had arrived two days ago and were staying here with Leila's mother and Robert, his son and daughter-in-law at a hotel. Tonight Robert had taken his entire family out to dinner, giving Leila and her mother this time alone. Leila, at least, was intensely grateful. She liked his family, but…well, this was a goodbye to more than the house. The day after tomorrow was the wedding and then Robert was sweeping her mother off to Kauai for a honeymoon and finally home to San Diego. Her mother wouldn't be just hers in quite the same sense ever again.

So much change.
Leila was astonished to realize she felt…accepting rather than hollow and panicky, as she had six weeks ago. It was as if her bout of tears had been a storm that left her, in the aftermath, aware of the stillness inside her. Serene.

Her mother said, “When I first told you I was getting married again, you didn't want to give me your blessing. I hope, now that you know Robert better…” She hesitated.

“Oh, Mom!”
How graceless can I be!
Leila hurried around the table and hugged her. “Of course I like him! And, yes, I approve wholeheartedly.”

Joanne Foster sniffed. “Thank you.”

They hugged again and Leila went back to her seat.

“It was the shock,” Leila explained. “And…I know you don't like to talk about Cody, but…”

“
I
don't like to talk about Cody?” Her mother sounded surprised. “Is that what you thought? It was your father who didn't, not me. I would have given anything, all these years, to keep him as part of the family with…with words and memories.”

Stunned, Leila said, “Dad?”

Her mother gave her a peculiar look. “What were you going to say, before? About Cody?”

“Um…” She gave her head a shake to clear it. “Well, that I've realized how much I came to depend on Dad back then. Since I couldn't imagine replacing him…”

“I wasn't supposed to, either.”

Leila bit her lip. “Something like that.”

“I wasn't a very good mother back then.” Joanne's expression became pensive, her gaze regretful. “Losing a child may be the most terrible thing that can happen to a person. And your father…wasn't much help.”

“Not much help?” Leila couldn't help gaping. “He was all that kept us going!”

Her mother's mouth pinched. “There are things I've never said to you about your father. You loved him dearly, which is as it should be. But I find that I can't just leave things the way they've been. I want you to understand. I think I deserve to defend myself.”

“I wasn't criticizing….”

Her mother ignored her as if she hadn't spoken. “Your father was able to keep us going because he refused to let himself mourn. Cody was gone. I still believe your dad was as devastated as I was that first day or two. But I don't think he could deal with that kind of pain. So he just…deleted Cody. ‘There's no point in talking about it,' he'd say.
It!
As though our son…” Seemingly struggling, she broke off, closing her eyes. After a moment, she took a deep breath, opened her eyes again and continued, bitterness and pain entangled in her voice. “In his view, everything was supposed to go on the way it always had. I came to realize he wasn't very comfortable with expressing deep emotions of any kind. Maybe even with feeling them! With you and Jon so young, I was left to grieve alone. So somehow I became the dysfunctional one, and your dad looked strong. I could see it happening, but I suppose I was so sad I couldn't make myself combat it. I was grateful for what he was doing, in one way, but angry, too. If I'd had him to lean on, I might have done better myself. Instead I felt so terribly alone.”

Leila stared in shock at her mother. Scenes from the past ran before her eyes, playing the way she remembered them but now with her entirely adult perspective. It was true that she'd never seen her father cry or even, after the first days, seem
bothered.
He had been her rock—but he had also quite
readily reduced the importance of their mother to Jon and Leila. He'd acted from the beginning as though his wife were…mentally ill, perhaps. To be lived around and hidden from view.

And it was certainly true that he had never been comfortable with emotion. Wrenched from her memory banks were a couple more scenes from later years, times when Leila had wanted so much to cry on his shoulder and he'd…eased away, fleeing from her in his discomfiture.

“Your dad was a good, kind man, Leila. I don't mean to make him sound hateful. I loved him, and our marriage survived those years. But I want you to understand why I never felt quite the same about him again.”

Leila's own voice came out rather strange to her ears. “I do know he left the hard part of parenting to you.”

Her mother's eyes were filled now with compassion. “He wasn't very good at saying no, if that's what you mean.”

It was more than that, Leila suddenly knew. Jon had tried to talk to her about this when they first spoke on the phone about Mom's plan to get married.
He
had seen more than Leila had, even though he was younger. Because Dad hadn't just left it to Mom to say no. He'd actually undermined her, slipping the kids something their mother had said they couldn't have, indulging them when Mom had tried to be firm. He'd done it subtly, but he'd made her the bad guy.

No, Leila thought, he hadn't meant to do that. He'd just enjoyed pleasing them. When they were happy, everything went smoothly. She doubted he'd thought through what he was doing or the damage he was doing to Jon and Leila's relationship with their mother. He
had
been a nice man, a loving father, but he'd also been utterly lacking in the
ability—or the willingness—to analyze the effects of his own behavior.

He'd been all surface and no depth.

Leila simply sat there, her mouth open, and grappled with this new point of view. How could she not have realized?

“Sweetie?” her mother said with some urgency. “Are you all right?”

Leila found words at last. “Why did you let me go on being so unjust?”

“Your father needed to be loved in an uncritical way. I…couldn't give him that. And you…you needed to love him wholeheartedly, needed to know he was always there for you. How would any of us have been any better off if I'd insisted you see him for what he was?”

“
You
would have been better off.”

A sad, wry smile curved her mother's mouth. “The damage was done. I thought it was up to me to mend my relationship with you. And…I hope I've done that.”

Once again Leila was crying. This time she catapulted from her chair and rushed to her mother, who had her arms out. “Of course you have! I love you, Mom!”

She burrowed like a small child into her mother's embrace and felt those arms holding her as safely and lovingly as she'd ever dreamed they would.

“I love you, too, Leila,” her mother whispered through her own tears. “I never stopped. Not for a minute.”

 

I
T HAD TO BE A MEASURE
of what she'd come to feel for Mark that the minute she left her mother's house Leila wanted only to go to him. She was frightened every time she let herself realize how much he'd come to fill her world.

Sitting in her car outside her mother's house, she dialed
Mark's number before she could have second—or third or fourth—thoughts.

He answered his phone on the second ring, and the minute she told him about the talk with her mother he said he was on his way to her place. “You don't sound as if you should be driving.”

“You must be getting tired of all my dramas,” she said woefully.

“No. I'd be offended if you
didn't
call me when you're upset about something.”

At home, waiting for him to arrive, it occurred to Leila that just six weeks ago she'd had herself convinced that Detective Mark Duncan was as shallow and self-centered as Gary Phillips. If he was really too sexy, she'd believed he couldn't be steady and trustworthy. The truth was, he'd made her feel things that scared her, and she'd been quite sure that what she needed was a man who made her feel secure instead. Not tremulous with anticipation, not painfully vulnerable, but most of all safe.

She really had been a coward, she thought in wonder. Had she ever in her life, after Cody's death shook her foundation, taken a real chance?

Maybe with Gary. He was her first venture into deeper waters. But because he'd been a jerk, she'd retreated back into her shell, turtlelike.

What she still didn't know was whether she was brave enough to trust…Mark? Herself?

Getting hurt was part of living, she did know that. She
knew
what loss did to people.

Yes, and so did Mark. He'd never married, either. Was that why? Was she making big assumptions about what he felt for her?

The doorbell rang. Her heart somersaulted a couple of times as she fumbled with the dead bolt.

With one stride Mark crossed the threshold, his gaze searching. He must have changed clothes after work, because he wore jeans that hugged his hips and thighs, a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and grass-stained athletic shoes. He looked less forbidding than he did in his usual workplace black clothes but no less imposing, not with his breadth of shoulders and sheer presence.

Despite her confusion, Leila stepped right into his arms. It felt remarkably easy. But instead of laying her head on his chest for comfort, she rose on tiptoe and passionately kissed him. Forever might scare her, but this was something she could grab for.

His grip shifted, and he kissed her right back, first in surprise, then with increasing urgency.

He was the one to groan and loosen his hold on her. Mouth against her ear as he nuzzled her, he said hoarsely, “If you want to talk… This might not be…”

“No.” She tipped her head to give him access to her neck. “Later, maybe.” Her voice was throaty, ragged. She could hardly think.

“Your brother? He's not here yet?”

She shook her head. “Tomorrow.”

“Thank God,” Mark muttered and found her mouth again. This time his kiss devoured; one hand squeezed her butt, the other crowded between them to rub her breast. He dragged his mouth away from hers long enough to say, “If you want me to stop…”

“No. Except…” Sanity chilled her briefly. “Oh, no. I'm not on the pill. Do you have…”

His laugh was closer to a groan. “Are you kidding? After
the time I kissed you in the kitchen, I went out and bought a whole damn box of condoms. I stuck a couple in my wallet. In case.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “I'm glad.”

“What changed your mind?” He made a ragged sound. “Never mind. Don't tell me now. Later.”

And then he was kissing her again and somehow at the same time steering her across the living room and down the short hall. They crashed into walls a couple of times. Framed pictures rattled. She pulled him into her bedroom, and Mark laughed exultantly and lifted her onto the bed.

Leila had one fleeting thought of her previous sexual experiences, so carefully planned, so polite, so painfully awkward and, for her, so disappointing, and then quit being able to think about anything but
now.

She wriggled her feet and kicked off her shoes as Mark pulled down her slacks. He unzipped his jeans as he shed his shirt. He stroked her inner thigh and struggled with the buttons of her blouse all at the same time. All she wanted was for him to be naked, to
see
him. No, to touch him.

Underwear and jeans gone, he let her explore him with curious hands, his gaze on her face hot and intent. Muscles jumped in his body, and finally he groaned and said, “I'm on the thin edge here, sweetheart.” He had to get off the bed and find his jeans, swearing as he dropped first his wallet and then both condom packets. By the time he ripped one open, she was giggling, and he gave her a look that was half-amused and half-grim. “I'm suffering here, and you're laughing at me.”

Another giggle popped out. “You still have your socks on.”

“Crap.” He ripped one off and sent it flying, then forgot
the second one when she took the condom from him and began inexpertly unrolling it onto him. Another groan, and he took over.

He bent his head and kissed her breast. He stroked between her legs until any thought of laughter had long fled. Then, only then, did he nudge her thighs open and press himself against her.

It was as if she'd never done this before. Every sensation was new, as was this astonishing hunger she had to see his face, to know what he felt, to drink in his every shudder and ragged breath and hoarse murmur about how beautiful she was. Slowly, carefully, he thrust deep. She was spasming before he even withdrew the first time. With a guttural sound, he rode out her orgasm and then let himself go, following her.

His weight sagged onto her and he nuzzled her neck, the roughness of his jaw rasping her ear. “I'm glad I came prepared with a second condom,” he murmured.

Something rather like the effervescence of wedding champagne bubbled in Leila's veins. Wickedly she said, “But what a shame there's only one more.”

His shoulders shook with a laugh, and he rose up on his elbows, his grin delighted. “Oh, but now that we've, uh, taken the edge off, so to speak, we can make that second one last.” He nipped at her lower lip. “And last.” His voice was fading, becoming a growl. “And last.”