Carly (14 page)

For the first time in months, Carly slipped out of uniform and pulled on comfortable worn jeans and, for Kitty, a New York
Mets T-shirt. Aunty was a Mets fan. Carly felt a catch in her throat. How could she meet Kitty with the crushing fear that
it might be the last time?

Stalling for time, for wisdom, Carly turned her back to the freestanding mirror and gazed around at the room. This room had
been Great-Grandma Chloe’s, then Grandma Bette’s, Leigh’s, and now hers. It was a room of priceless antiques that could easily
have been moved to the county museum. But Chloe insisted they were family pieces and they would be happier being used by the
family that had chosen and cherished them over the centuries than gathering dust in a museum.

All the women of Ivy Manor that had gone before, even the ones Carly knew only from family portraits, crowded around her.
Here she was never alone. Here, away from New York City where she’d been kidnapped, was the only place she had ever felt truly
wanted and truly safe. But she couldn’t hide in her room for the next four days. She had to break through her reluctance to
face the fact that she might lose Kitty.

Disheartened, she went to the door, and there, paused again. She pressed her hand against the solid plastered wall beside
the doorjamb as if drawing strength from the centuries of women who’d passed through this same door.

When Aunt Kitty and Great-Grandma Chloe were girls, Kitty slept in the trundle bed in this room. Grandma Bette and Aunt Gretel
shared this room. Her mother, Leigh, and Aunt Dory had, too. Would she be a mother someday, and would her daughter love this
room as she did? Carly drew up her strength, the strength that came from that house.
I am a woman of Ivy Manor
.

Taking a deep breath, she willed herself down the steps to the den. She pushed open the pocket doors and faced the maple-paneled
room, now dominated by an incongruous hospital bed. At first, Carly didn’t look directly at the occupant of that bed. Instead,
she scanned the others in the room. On one side, Bette, in gray slacks and a lighter gray blouse, was reading aloud with Minnie,
Lorelle’s great-grandmother, near her. Wearing a pale green dress, Chloe sat on the other side, holding Kitty’s hand. Where
was her mother?

“Carly,” Chloe said, her eyes widening. “Carly.” She rose and opened her arms.

Carly hurried into them. She hugged Chloe, feeling the fragility of her age. It frightened her. In contrast, her great-grandmother’s
arms tightened around her. “We’ve missed you so.” Then she released Carly to Bette’s arms.

Carly let herself rest her head on her grandmother’s reassuringly firm shoulder. “We’re so glad you could get leave,” Bette
murmured, kissing Carly’s forehead. Minnie, dressed fashionably as always, patted her shoulder.

Finally, Bette released Carly, and she turned to go to Kitty’s outstretched arms. Carly tried to hide her shock. But Kitty
looked too frail to still be breathing. Her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was sickly sallow.

“I look like the wreck of the
Hesperus
, don’t I?” Kitty teased in a thread of a voice. “No, don’t answer that,
please
.”

Carly leaned over and kissed the lined cheek and let Kitty kiss her back and then stroke her face.

“Seeing you is good medicine,” Kitty murmured. “I’m terribly sorry I missed your graduation from boot camp. I was so proud
of you—distinguished honor graduate. I still have the photos right here beside me.”

Carly sat down on the bed, thigh-to-thigh with her great-great-aunt. “You were missed, too, but I understood why you couldn’t
come.”

Kitty nodded and then stroked Carly’s face again. “They cut your hair.”

“I was lucky. I got a barber who liked long hair.” Carly turned her head and touched the tight braid at the back of her neck.
Her aunt’s body looked like bones in a sack under the thin cover. It shook Carly. “I like it like this. It’s off my neck and
easy to care for.” Then she burst into tears.

“Oh, my sweet, my precious girl,” Kitty crooned. And then Carly was alone with her aunt. Bette, Minnie, and Chloe left quietly,
closing the door behind them.

“I’m sorry,” Carly said, taking a tissue from the bedside table crowded with medicine bottles and other sickroom paraphernalia.
“I didn’t mean to cry.”

“I’ve cried a few times myself over the past few weeks. It’s hard to die. It’s hard to let go.”

Kitty’s calm words iced Carly’s insides. “Can’t they do anything for you?”

“Well, they could start replacing all my body parts or hook me up and electrify me like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m ninety-three,
Carly, and it’s a miracle that I’m still alive. I nearly killed myself with bad liquor in the twenties.”

Carly looked at her.

“Yes, you’re a grown-up now, and I don’t have to act as if I’ve lived a perfect life. I was pretty wild when I was young.
I didn’t have your common sense and steady temperament. I nearly destroyed my liver when I drank some doctored wood alcohol
during Prohibition. And you know that I was never married to Thompson’s father. I haven’t lived the life of a saint.”

“You’ve been good to me.”

“That was easy. I loved you the moment I knew you were on the way. I probably wouldn’t have lived as long as I have if Leigh
hadn’t given me my second chance to be a true aunt and almost your second grandmother. Helping raise you has been the joy
of my life.” Kitty folded one of Carly’s hands in her thin, age-spotted hand.

The frailty of the hand made Carly speak. “I love you, Aunty.”

“I know, dearest. And now I’m going to ask you to do something for me.” Kitty raised her hand to stop Carly from speaking.
“This request is going to be very hard for you, the hardest thing you may be asked to do in this life.”

Carly stared at her aunt, fearing she would ask something Carly couldn’t do. “What is it, Aunty?”

“I want you to start forgiving your mother for not telling you who your father is and keeping the two of you apart.”

Flushed, Carly looked away. “No fair.”

“It may seem that way,” Kitty conceded. “But I’m going to give your mother the same treatment.”

“Where is she?” Carly faced Kitty again. “I thought she would be here by now.”

“I think my dying is frightening your mother even more than you, more than she can face. You see, I know about her first love.
Or should I say second love? The year before you were born, your mother suffered three terrible losses.”

Carly didn’t know what Kitty meant and didn’t want to ask for more to complicate everything now. “Is Mother coming, and Nate?”

“Yes. But Leigh does not want to face me. She does not want me to press her once again to tell you the truth. She knows that
it is very hard to refuse a dying request.”

Carly shook her head.
Don’t talk about dying, Aunty
.

Kitty touched her arm. “But the truth needs to come out, and if I have to die in order to make it happen, fine.”

“No,” Carly objected and gently gripped both of Kitty’s hands, now fragile as parchment.

“Yes, my death should have something good come of it.”

Carly bent her head to Kitty’s hands and wept.

Leigh and Nate arrived just before dawn. When she saw that Ivy Manor was lit up like morning already, Leigh knew she’d waited
too long. She hurried inside the back door, calling for her mother and grandmother. She found Minnie, Bette, Chloe, and Carly
in the den on the first floor. And Kitty was asleep, but they were all sitting around her. Then she realized that it only
looked as if Kitty were sleeping. She was not breathing. Leigh felt a moan trying to work its way up in her throat. She clamped
her lips together tightly and forced the moan back down.

“You delayed long enough, Mother,” Carly accused. “She left us about an hour ago. She’d been waiting for you.”

“Yes,” Minnie added, “she told us to tell you she couldn’t wait any longer.”

The words blasted inside Leigh. She sank to her knees beside the hospital bed, closing her hand over Kitty’s cool one. “I’m
so sorry, so sorry,” she whimpered.

Two days later, venerable St. John’s Episcopal Church was filled and overflowing as most of the county folk, dressed in their
best, gathered to say farewell to Kitty McCaslin. At the front of the packed church, Rose and her daughter were singing a
duet of the hymn Kitty had requested. “Thy strength indeed is small. Child of weakness, watch and pray; find in Me thine all
in all.”

In her dress uniform, Carly sat between her parents with little Michael on her lap, listening. She wrestled with grief and
anger as her fretful little brother squirmed. She was incensed at her mother for not coming in time. Had her mother really
delayed because she didn’t want to face Kitty’s dying plea?

“Sin had left a crimson stain,” Rose and her daughter harmonized, “He washed it white as snow.” They walked down the steps
and back to their seats.

The priest stepped to the high pulpit and began reading from Scripture. Beside Carly, Leigh gave a gasp or a sob. She’d not
stopped crying since she had collapsed next to Kitty’s bed upon arrival.

Carly tried to hold in her anger. She knew that Kitty wouldn’t want her to argue with her mother, especially in public at
her funeral. But her mother’s hypocritical tears made that difficult. She could have gotten there earlier. She should have.
How could tears change facts?

The funeral was over before Carly knew it. Everyone made the solemn trek to the family plot in the church cemetery. Thompson,
with his wife, stood at his mother’s graveside weeping without a sound. Massive two-hundred-year-old oaks and maples shaded
the mourners. The stubborn bronzed oak leaves, still clinging to branches, whispered condolences on the wind. As the pallbearers
lowered Kitty’s casket into the grave, Carly closed her gritty eyes. She hadn’t slept for nights now. Fear and nightmares
kept her awake.

Her father tugged her along as they walked to the car and then drove back to Ivy Manor. There, all the rooms on the first
floor were open and ready for the funeral luncheon. The ladies of the nearby Baptist church had insisted upon preparing and
serving the buffet in the dining room. Mourners milled in the den and the parlor, overflowing into the front hall out onto
the front porch, even out into the backyard and into the gazebo. Fortunately, the day was bright and temperate.

Carly encouraged her little brother to go outside and play with the other children who lived nearby. And then she tried as
well as she could to avoid her mother.

In the crush of people, Nate watched Minnie’s grandson in his dress uniform working his way through the crowd to reach him.
“Frank,” Nate said, offering his hand, “glad you could come.”

Frank shook his hand. “It’s really hard to see someone like Kitty McCaslin pass.”

“Did you know her well?” Nate asked, wondering why Frank had approached him alone. Their wives were close, but he and Frank
had only a nodding acquaintance. He’d assumed that Frank and Cherise had come because Minnie had come. But was there something
more?

“No, but Kitty McCaslin is an important symbol to me. She was one of the first women lawyers in New York City and one of the
first to represent black actors and actresses. She was a trailblazer in her own way.”

“She was quite a woman,” Nate agreed. “I’m glad Carly was able to get leave to be here with her . . . at the end.”

“Yes, the timing was right. I’m pretty sure that with what’s going on over in Saudi Arabia, the brass won’t be giving many
more leaves.”

Nate caught the change in Frank’s tone. This wasn’t just idle conversation.

“You’ve heard that the president is going to double the U.S. troop strength to over four hundred thousand in Saudi?” Frank
asked, looking into Nate’s eyes. “You know what that means, right?”

On the other side of the room, Cherise appeared beside Carly and touched her shoulder. She said a brief prayer for wisdom.
“Lorelle wished that she could have gotten away for the funeral,” Cherise said, “but Kitty was a friend of the family, not
close family.”

Carly nodded. “I talked to Lorelle. She seems to be enjoying her MOS.”

Carly’s attempt to sound normal touched Cherise. “Yes, my daughter the cop,” she replied wryly.

Cherise watched Leigh stand very close to her great-grandmother Chloe just feet away. “Losing your Aunt Kitty is going to
be very hard on your mom.”

“Yeah.” Carly’s tone was flat, unforgiving.

Cherise looked into Carly’s troubled, very beautiful gray eyes. Why tiptoe around? “We’ve all urged your mother to tell you
about your birth father, especially now that you’re an adult.”

Carly look surprised.

“I was really glad that you and Lorelle got to know each other as kids and that you were close to each other during basic
training. Your mother and I coordinated your vacations when you were kids, so you two would be close to each other. I have
never had a friend more honest, more faithful, more loving than your mother.”

“Then why didn’t she get here in time before Aunt Kitty died?” Carly snapped.

Nate didn’t mistake Frank’s meaning. “Surely that wouldn’t affect our girls.”

“The president has called up the reserves for the first time since Vietnam. In the first time in U.S. history, a president
has called nearly five hundred people out of retirement. Iraq has assembled another seventy thousand troops into Kuwait on
the Saudi border.”

“But we have allies joining us,” Nate objected.

Cherise decided to do what she could to help Carly understand Leigh. “Carly, have you ever heard about your mother’s engagement?”

“What engagement?”

“She was engaged to be married to a good friend of your Grandfather Ted in March of 1972. His name was Dane. He was killed
in the same explosion that killed your grandfather.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Carly’s lower lip drew down.

“Because you are mourning the loss of a very dear aunt. How would you feel if you were mourning the loss of Grandma Bette,
Nate, and the man you were to marry in a week’s time?”