Spring Rain (46 page)

“Next time?” Clay made the mistake of defending himself. “Mom, I don’t think there’ll be a next time.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Clay Wharton.” Julia stared him down while Leigh tried not to laugh. Bill enjoyed the scene with unabashed glee. “You know exactly what I mean.”

Clay frowned. “Mom, I’m a bit past the yelling-at age.”

“Not in my book,” she said with a sniff. “Never in my book. Once a mom, always a mom.”

Clay looked at David who stood off to the side, a wise man staying out of the family squabble. “David, she’s all yours. Take her off my hands, will you? If I’m going to settle here in Seaside, I don’t want to have to watch my back for a mom attack.”

Julia’s face lit with delight. “You’re settling here?” She rushed to him and hugged him. “Oh, Clay, I’m so glad.”

He leaned over and kissed her soft cheek. When he straightened, he looked at Leigh, then at Bill. “My family’s here.”

Leigh closed her eyes as she lay on the couch, the wonder of that pronouncement still almost beyond her comprehension.

“Here, love.” Clay stood beside her with a glass of sweetened tea.

“Sit with me,” she said and moved over. He lowered himself, finding barely enough room on the edge of the cushions. He lifted her and sat her in his lap.

“This position is not conducive to correcting papers.” She leaned against his chest.

He tilted her chin and kissed her. “I promise not to interfere.”

They sat quietly for several minutes, just enjoying each other’s presence. And, if Leigh were honest, Bill’s absence.

“How’s the ankle?” Clay finally asked.

“If I don’t move it, it’s only a dull throb.”

“Are you sure you should go to school tomorrow? Chasing fourth graders doesn’t make for quick healing.”

“The school district gets upset if you take the day after a holiday off. You actually need a doctor’s excuse.”

“David’ll give you one.”

She looked at the bag of papers. “It’s tempting,” she admitted. She bent and pulled a stack of papers free. As she did, a FedEx envelope slid to the floor.

“I forgot all about that,” she said as Clay retrieved it and handed it to her. She stared at it.

“What’s wrong?” Clay looked at the envelope and saw the return address. “Your father?”

“Something about him. It was here when we got home from school on Friday a week ago. I stuck it in the tote bag and forgot it.” She grinned at him. “A few things got in the way of my concentration this week.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “I wonder what?”

“I love you,” she whispered.

He kissed her again. “I love you too. More than you’ll ever know.”

She sighed as she leaned against him. “I still can’t believe you’re here, right here in my apartment with your arms around me and me in your lap. I’m afraid I’ll blink and find it’s all a dream.”

“Shall we live right here in Seaside?” he asked.

She sat up and stared at him. “I heard you tell your mom you wanted to settle here, but how can you? The navy.”

“I resigned my commission before I came home. I’m a civilian, an unemployed civilian.”

“Really?” She frowned at him. And he hadn’t bothered to tell her? “Here I thought I’d caught me a sailor boy.”

“Want to throw me over now?”

She narrowed her eyes and looked thoughtful. Of course he was used to making all his decisions as an individual, not as part of a couple. And they hadn’t been a couple when he resigned. Still he should have told her.

He wrapped his arms tightly about her. “Don’t you dare throw me over, lady. I couldn’t stand it.”

Forget the anger, girl. He didn’t mean to upset you. It’s not worth ruining a golden moment.
Besides, there was a lifetime ahead in which to talk about the necessity of sharing important information.

“Then I won’t,” she said, returning his hug. “Though I do recommend you get un-unemployed sometime soon. Bill’s bound to notice you hanging around the house all day and have a few things to say.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” Clay grinned. “What a kid.”

“I’ve always blamed all his bad behavior on you, though now that you’re going to be here all the time, it won’t be so easy.” She sighed.

“Do you mind staying in Seaside?” Clay asked quite seriously.

“You mean because of my father?”

He nodded.

She shook her head. “Most of the time most of the people are wonderful. Johnny’s old news to them.”

He nodded. “Good. I was hoping to open my own business, a computer engineering company, and I thought I’d rent an office downtown.”

“That sounds wonderful, Clay.” She smiled at him. “Of course I think you can do anything you set your mind to, you know. I always have.”

He looked genuinely humbled by her confidence in him. “Leigh,” he breathed and kissed her again.

She rested against him, and her hands began to fidget with the FedEx envelope.

“Go on,” he said. “Open it. Get it over with.”

She took hold of the tab and pulled. She peered into the envelope and found a business letter addressed to her father. There was also a note written on lined paper.

With a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she studied the letter addressed to Johnny. The return address indicated the letter was from some lawyers. She blinked. “Look. It’s been opened already.” She checked the postmark. “He got it several months ago.”

She slid her fingers into the envelope and pulled out a sheet of heavy stationery with the logo of Barnes, Chrichton, and Zelinski, Attorneys at Law embossed in red and navy at the top of the sheet.

“Who’s Harriet Plummer Wilson?” Clay asked.

Leigh shook her head. “I don’t know, but my mother’s maiden name was Wilson. That’s why it’s my middle name.”

“Maybe I’m marrying an heiress,” Clay said with a smile and a roll of his imaginary mustache.

“You should be so lucky,” she retorted.

“I couldn’t be any luckier than I am,” he said with a look that made her want to cry.

Three days later, Leigh and Clay sat in the office of Alton Zelinski, Esquire, drinking cups of tea that he had made for them himself. Leigh found all the social pleasantries very nice, but her nerves were stretched with curiosity.

Finally, Mr. Zelinski leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “I understand that you never knew any of your mother’s family.”

“That’s correct,” Leigh said. “When she married my father, they basically disinherited her.”

“So you never met your Great-Aunt Harriet?”

“I didn’t even know I had such a relative.”

Mr. Zelinski smiled. “I liked Harriet. She was a lady who never bothered to stifle her opinions, but she was from an era when the men in the family laid down the rules and the women went along whether they agreed or not. When your grandfather, her brother, dictated that your mother be cut off, Harriet protested loudly but to no avail.”

“I remember my mother as a sad woman,” Leigh said. “My father wasn’t a very nice man, and she should have had the comfort of her family.”

“Don’t blame Harriet,” Mr. Zelinski said. “Many a time she sat in my office and cried over Candace.”

Leigh waved her hand. “I can’t blame a woman I never knew.”

“She was ninety-eight when she died, her mind still sharp as a tack.” Mr. Zelinski looked at her with the air of one about to spring a big surprise. “She made you her sole heir, Miss Spenser.”

“What?” Leigh looked in disbelief at Clay who grinned back.

“I
am
marrying an heiress.”

“To some extent, you are,” Mr. Zelinski agreed.

“What? Surely you aren’t serious,” Leigh said.

“Did you know that Harriet sent you money every month?” the lawyer asked.

“What?” It seemed to be the word coming out of her mouth most this afternoon. She shook her head.

“As long as your mother lived, the monthly checks for one thousand dollars went to her from Harriet’s trust fund.”

“Trust fund?” Leigh didn’t even know anyone with a trust fund.

“Your mother’s family is quite wealthy, Miss Spenser. That’s one reason why your mother’s marriage was such a tragedy to them.”

“A bigger tragedy to my mother,” Leigh said, thinking of the wounded look her mother wore so much of the time.

Mr. Zelinski nodded. “Candace was Harriet’s favorite niece, and the rift in the family caused by your mother’s ill-advised marriage hurt Harriet deeply. She had never married, and Candace was like her daughter. Years ago, Harriet came to our firm and asked us to set up a way for her to get money to Candace each month because she doubted your father could support you.”

Leigh nodded at the truth of that statement.

“When your mother died, Harriet came to us and asked that the amount be diminished to five hundred dollars a month. She said she didn’t want to support Johnny Spenser, just you, but the money should go through him because you were so little.”

“I never saw any of that money.”

“I never thought you would,” Mr. Zelinski said. “I tried to change Harriet’s mind, to get her to find another avenue of getting funds to you if she wanted to do that. But she was stubborn. Then you turned eighteen, and Johnny went to jail. We began making out the checks to you instead of your father and sending them to the bank in Seaside as always. The money continued to accumulate and has been doing so for the last eleven years.”

“But no one told me,” Leigh said, thinking of all those years of poverty and struggle in Glassboro.

“We realize that now, though telling you wasn’t our responsibility,” Mr. Zelinski said hurriedly. “It was your father’s or your aunt’s.”

“So you’re telling us,” Clay said, “that Leigh has eleven years
worth of checks deposited in an account with her name on it.”

The lawyer nodded. “Five hundred dollars each month.”

“That’s sixty-six thousand dollars plus interest,” Clay computed.

Mr. Zelinski nodded.

Leigh was floored. “Sixty-six thousand dollars? I have sixty-six thousand dollars?”

Mr. Zelinski smiled at her amazement. “And there’s more.”

She felt dazed. “More?”

“Property.”

“Property?”

“I understand that your home stands in the middle of an undeveloped tract of land.”

Leigh nodded.

“Well, Harriet deeded the house to Candace when she married. Your grandfather almost had apoplexy, but she owned the house, a gift from her parents on her twenty-first birthday because she loved the shore marshes and shore birds so much. But she loved Candace more.”

Leigh clasped Clay’s hand. “I wish I had known her,” she whispered.

Mr. Zelinski smiled. “You would have liked her, and she would have loved you.”

She blinked back the tears that threatened. “I knew the house was mine. I have a copy of my father’s will.”

“More than the house is yours, Miss Spenser. You own the whole street that your home is on, both sides of it.”

“What?” That word again.

“It was part of Harriet’s gift from her parents. She did not pass that land on to your mother because she feared what your father would do with it. But she has left it all to you. Given property values at the shore, Miss Spenser, you are now a woman of considerable substance.”

Four Years Later

L
EIGH LAY BACK
on the couch. She didn’t have any choice. Clay wouldn’t let her do anything else, and two-year-old Candy kept saying, “Down, Mommy. Lie down,” as she pointed with her index finger. Just like she was Terror. It was all Leigh could do not to go, “Arf, arf.”

She supposed she should consider it a victory that she’d gotten out of the bedroom. She’d pleaded, begged, scrounged up a few strategic tears, and it had finally worked. Clay, who was taking time off from WCE, Wharton Computer Engineering, carried her downstairs, muttering the whole time about pregnant women and their unreasonable demands. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned against his chest, ignoring his grumps with the same skill she ignored the rampaging going on in her belly.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said and kissed his jaw. “I love you.”

He’d just grunted and put her on the couch. “It’s only because today’s our anniversary. Now stay put.”

She reached out an arm and gathered Candy close. “How’s Mommy’s girl?”

Candy grinned, her dark curls and dark eyes dancing. She was definitely her father’s child. She pointed to Leigh’s tummy. “Baby.”

“Baby is right. And he’s going to come visit us any minute. Give me a kiss, lovey.”

Candy complied, then kissed Leigh’s tummy. “Kiss baby.”

“Here, love.” Clay handed Leigh a glass of sweetened tea. He eyed her huge belly. “I’d ask you to move over and make room for me to sit with you, but I don’t think you can.”

“Sure I can,” she said as she lifted her head and shoulders. “You sit here, and I’ll just rest against you.”

“Sounds good to me.” Clay sat, and she leaned against him. He rubbed a hand gently over her aching back.

She loved his tender treatment. It made her feel beautiful even in this extreme situation when she was anything but. She knew she looked like an elephant. Her ankles were the size and shape of watermelons, and she had to go to the bathroom every five minutes. The pregnancy had been a difficult one, the last two weeks spent mostly on her back, and she knew she looked as exhausted and bored as she felt.

“I feel so grungy,” she said. “I haven’t had a shower in three days!”