Spring Rain Page 3

  “Not even a CD,” he’d overheard her tell one of her girlfriends. “A tape! Like everyone else!”

  He’d smiled to himself, relieved, though he hadn’t meant to be unkind. He’d just seen her as a friend who would never be anything more and gifted her accordingly. He hadn’t been terribly surprised when the youth pastor said she was no longer working with the high school kids and the choir director noted that she’d dropped out of choir. He hadn’t seen her at a basketball game since Christmas.

  “Lost your cheering section?” the guys teased him. He just grinned noncommittally though he was jumping up and down inside.

  But he had Terror to remember her by—Terror who had made the last few months of living in his no-pets-allowed rental house something of a challenge.

  “I didn’t buy him, Mr. Kelly,” he’d explained to his always grouchy landlord. “He was a gift. I can’t give him back.”

  “Gift, schmift. He’s not allowed.”

  “He’s little, Mr. Kelly. He’s not hurting anything.”

  “Yet. He’s not hurting anything yet. Just give him time. He has to go.”

  “Did a dog bite you as a boy, Mr. Kelly?” Clay kept his face as innocent and open as he could. “Because Terror will never bite you. I promise. He’s completely nonviolent.”

  The landlord looked at the little brown-and-white dog smiling at him and almost smiled back. Clay was sure he saw the man’s lips twitch before they settled into their customary scowl. “He’ll ruin my yard with his—” Mr. Kelly gave a delicate clearing of his throat—“biological needs.”

  Clay, a career navy officer used to the earthiness of navy men, bit his tongue to keep from smiling. After all, Mr. Kelly saw him every week at church and so was trying to respect his tender Christian sensibilities. “I promise to clean up after him.”

  “One week,” said Mr. Kelly. “You can keep him one week and one week only. I’m not a hard man. One week for you to find him a good home.”

  But Clay knew Terror was staying even if his landlord didn’t, so he and Mr. Kelly played Keep the Dog tag until the day Clay resigned from the navy and left for Seaside, Terror beside him.

  Clay hit the brakes when the car in front of him slowed suddenly. Terror went flying forward, sailing off the seat and landing in a heap beneath the dash, rear legs over his head.

  “Are you okay, buddy?” Clay bent to lift the dog and place him back on the seat. “Didn’t mean to upend you. It was that guy’s fault.” He gestured to the car with his head. “You should buckle your seat belt.”

  Terror looked at him and smiled.

  For not being an intellectual, Terror had done an outstanding job of teaching Clay something he hadn’t realized before: He no longer liked being alone. He no longer had to prove whatever it was that demanded he be independent, whatever it was he had been trying to prove to himself and the world. Coming home to the click-click-click of doggie toenails on Mr. Kelly’s hardwood floors and the whuffle of a canine hello filled a need Clay hadn’t even known he had. It also made him aware that he was still lacking somehow.

  And all this turned his mind to the people in his life, the people he had carefully held at arm’s length for the past decade, the people who held a special place in his heart though they wouldn’t know it by his actions: his mother, his brother. Sweet Leigh.

  Clay smiled down at his dog as he drove off the causeway and onto Ninth Street. He was home. He smiled for a full minute before he felt the familiar clenching in his midsection. Home hurt.

  Because of Leigh.

  Always because of Leigh.

  The problem began years ago when as a sixteen-year-old she had first attracted his eye. Not that she knew it. Not that anyone knew it. He had been good at holding his thoughts close, and he had carefully kept private all his feelings about Leigh right up until graduation night at Seaside High.

  He watched her all through commencement, salutatorian of their class to his valedictorian. As such they led the procession of graduates and sat next to each other throughout the program. She barely looked at him, sitting silent and composed and unapproachable.

  After the ceremony the halls were full of family groups: graduates, parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles. He was surrounded by his family, his parents bursting with pride over his and Ted’s accomplishments, their gold tassels indicating they were honors graduates. His grandmother and two aunts patted him happily while the uncles stood slightly apart, waiting their turns to offer congratulations.

  She was completely alone. No relatives. Not one. Her mother had been dead for years; he wasn’t sure how many. And her bum of a father was in jail, awaiting trial for robbery and manslaughter for killing a man with the getaway car. If she had any grandparents or aunts and uncles, they weren’t present tonight.

  He watched the sway of her beautiful hair that hung halfway down her back. With every step she took, it shifted from left to right, a shining, moving curtain. He always had the urge to run his fingers through that sheet of chestnut, just to see what it felt like.

  How had she turned out to be so sweet with Johnny Spenser for a father? And she was smart. He had thought there for a while that she was going to beat him out for the number one spot in the class. She was so fierce about her schoolwork, like it was the most important thing in the world. He often watched her take a test or work in the library, the tiny frown line between her eyebrows indicating her intensity. He wanted to smooth that little line away so she would feel better, so he could feel what her skin was like. He imagined it was soft, like a rose petal.

  “We’re so proud of you, Clay! You are such a fine boy.” It was Grandmom Wharton, hugging him too hard as usual. The ardent clasps to her bosom wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t insist on wearing garish pins that all seemed to have multiple lethal points that inflicted intense pain and fell mere millimeters short of running you through. Often as boys he and Ted had compared wounds after a visit with her.

  He flinched at the pricks of pain somewhere in the vicinity of his ribcage as he watched Leigh over Grandmom Wharton’s shoulder. Leigh pulled her cap with its gold tassel off her head and slid her gown off. She was wearing a white dress that had little pink flowers embroidered around the hem, tendrils of green reaching from one bloom to the next. All around her girls were wearing shorts or slacks, but she wore a dress. Like graduation was special, and you dressed up for it.

  She lifted her hair with one hand and let it slide little by little down her back in a shimmering waterfall. Then she turned and walked out the front door of the school. No one said anything to her, busy as they were with their families.

  No one except Ted.

  “Leigh,” he called and ran to her, thus escaping Grandmom’s waiting arms and pin.

  She stopped and turned, welcoming him with a warm smile.

  He threw his arms around her and hugged her. She hugged him back, her smile lighting her face. She caught Clay watching her as he absently rubbed the pinpricks in his side, and their eyes locked. Her smile faded.

  Clay nodded slightly, and she gave a faint quirk upward of one corner of her mouth. Then Ted stepped back, and she focused her attention on him. Clay watched his twin kiss her on the cheek and wondered why she smiled so brightly for Ted and not for him.

  “Ted,” his mother called. “We have to go.”

  Ted squeezed Leigh’s shoulders once again and came back to the family cluster. Leigh continued out the door and down the steps alone.

  As his family distributed itself in the various cars they had driven to the school, Clay continued to think about her. In fact, he’d thought about her quite a lot recently, and he was pretty sure God wasn’t very happy with some of his thoughts. He swallowed and made an effort to curb his hormones. It was bad enough Ted had turned out to be so perverted and loose. Clay was better than that, at least most of the time. And his thoughts were directed toward a girl. God had to like that.

  He glanced out the school door again and saw her disappear
down the street. An ocean breeze blew her skirt against her legs, and her hair fanned out behind her. He sighed with pleasure at the sight.

  Taken as he was with her, he still knew very little about her. He knew she never stayed after school for any activities, just hurried home. He suspected that was because of Johnny Spenser. But she’d been on in-school committees with Clay, and she was always polite, reliable, sweet. And cute as could be. But she rarely talked to him. Certainly she wasn’t at ease with him like she was with Ted, though sometimes he caught her watching him. She’d always blush and look away fast.

  After a few minutes the cars and drivers were sorted out, and the family all left the school. Mom and Dad went in their car, the aunts and uncles in theirs. Ted ended up driving Grandmom, and Clay was alone.

  Instead of turning right toward the north end of Seaside and his home, he turned left. He drove slowly down Bay Avenue, watching the sidewalk carefully. In a couple of blocks he saw Leigh, walking alone, head down. He pulled to the curb.

  “Can I—” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “Can I drive you home? It’s a pretty long walk for you.”

  She smiled at him, not as brightly as she smiled for Ted, but at least it was a smile. She hesitated a minute before deciding. “Thanks,” she all but whispered and walked to the car.

  He leaned across the seat and opened the door. She slid in and carefully fastened her seat belt. He put the car in drive and eased back into traffic. They sat in silence.

  Why didn’t she talk with him like she talked with Ted? And why couldn’t he talk with her like he talked with all the other girls? Of course he didn’t really care whether the other girls talked to him or not.

  “You look very pretty tonight,” he finally said, desperate for something, anything, to break the silence.

  She looked at him in astonishment. “Th-thank you.”

  “I like the flowers around your skirt.” He flushed. Talk about sounding like an idiot!

  “Do you?” She spread her skirt, examining the flowers. “I wasn’t certain if they were right.” She grinned wryly. “I never seem to get clothes right no matter how hard I try. But I wanted to do something to the dress. It was just too plain.”

  “You did the flowers?” He didn’t know why that surprised him so much.

  She nodded. “When I realized I couldn’t beat you after all, I stopped studying quite so hard and embroidered instead.”

  He looked at her and laughed. She grinned back until he stared too long. She flushed, turned, and studied the houses on her side of the car.

  “You’d better watch the road,” she said softly.

  He barely heard her over the pounding of his heart.

  When they pulled up to her house, he climbed out of the car and hurried around to open the door for her. He’d never been a great proponent of manners before this minute. In fact, he and his mother had had some great debates where he played devil’s advocate on the topic, saying manners and etiquette made for a false and unnatural society. Besides, if women wanted to be treated as equals, then they could open their own doors like men did. She’d have dropped her teeth to see him now.

  They went up the walk in the gathering dusk. When their arms brushed as they moved along the narrow and broken cement strip, Leigh shivered. She unlocked the blue door of the shabby bungalow just off the marshes that rimmed the bay and slid the key back in her purse. She reached over and placed it on the little table just inside the door.

  He stared at her, a specter in her white dress, as suddenly facts clicked. “You live here alone.”

  She frowned, that little line appearing between her eyes. “Yes. So?”

  “It just hit me.” He felt like a fool. He knew her mother was dead. He knew her father was in jail. Somehow it hadn’t dawned on him that the consequence of that was that she lived alone.

  She looked into the dark house. “I turned eighteen two months before my father went away. Children’s Services wasn’t interested in someone my age. And I don’t want them to be anyway.” The frown was still there, fierce now.

  Without thinking, he reached out and smoothed that little line. As his fingers feathered across her skin, he realized he had been right. Rose petals. His fingers trailed softly across her forehead and down her cheek to her chin. He lifted her face.

  It was to be just a congratulatory kiss, like the kiss Ted gave her. And a brotherly hug, nothing more.

  Or so he told himself.

  But she had leaned into him so easily and slid her arms around his neck so trustingly. And she had been so warm and sweet. But it was her sigh that undid him, a sigh of delight, of pleasure. So he pushed well beyond the kiss, and she yielded.

  As Clay drove into Seaside, he flinched at the memory.

  “Terror, you’d think that after all these years it’d go away, wouldn’t you? Or at least lose its power to cut.”

  Terror panted happily at Clay as he turned south on Bay instead of north toward home. Just a look, he told himself. Just a look.

  Seaside was the same in so many ways. It was amazing. He knew that on the beach the old homes were being torn down, and great new homes with masses of windows and endless decks were being constructed, just waiting for a hurricane to come along and destroy them. Here in the center of town, the old summer cottages and Victorian rooming houses still stood, shingles bleached by sun and salt air. Most of them were closed up, their doors and windows shuttered for another month or two until the seasonal preparations began.

  He turned a corner, and Leigh’s old home came into view. Memory smote him like it was yesterday. He closed his eyes against the sharp stab of regret.

  If I weren’t a Christian, he thought for the thousandth time, I’d never even remember her. She’d just be one of many.

  Instead she was his one and only.

  He sighed. Oh, Lord, I know I’m going to see her almost daily. She can’t run away like she usually does because she has to stay here and go to school. You’re going to have to get me through the next stretch of time. It will be difficult for both of us, assuming she even remembers. And of course, there’s the matter of Ted.

  He forced himself to unclench his teeth. He climbed out of the car, Terror on his heels.

  “Don’t you go near the street, boy,” he instructed the dog. “Stay with me.”

  Terror looked at him with his happy grin and leaned against his leg. It was like he said, “Whither thou goest.…”

  Weeds, still winter brown, resided in the cracks of the concrete walk and in what had once been a small garden. There a few shoots of hardy daffodils moved lazily in the ever present breeze, the buds fat with nascent bloom. The lawn, never worth that name at the best of times, was a stretch of sandy dirt reaching from curb to house. An occasional clump of Bermuda grass struggled to survive in the arid soil. The only bright spot was a huge, unruly forsythia in full bloom at the southeast corner of the house.

  The clapboard was so bleached that it was impossible to tell its original color, and the paint on the window frames was peeling like an old sunburn. The door was a dingy, streaked, and incredibly ugly blue. The roof was missing shingles, and the gutters and a downspout had broken loose from their moorings, leaning drunkenly across a broken aluminum chaise.

  Did they fall because of a storm or just neglect? Who knew? Who cared? Certainly not neighbors, for there were none.

  The Spenser property had always stood off by itself, more than a block in any direction from another house, and amazingly that hadn’t changed. Pampas grass as tall as a man stretched from Leigh’s house to the next house in each direction. A redwing blackbird sat on a stalk of the grass and trilled, its wing slash of crimson and yellow brilliant against its black plumage. The lots across the street were less wild in appearance though just as vacant, nothing but scrub growth able to survive in the sandy soil.

  Clay always figured the Spensers lived so away from people because Johnny wanted privacy for his nefarious dealings. Unfortunately in a small town like Seasid
e, that seclusion isolated Leigh further from a normal life.

  Behind the house was the bird reserve that adjoined the property. Back there, just the other side of the now trackless bed of the railroad that had once linked the shore communities of South Jersey, lay the marshes with more wheat-colored pampas grass waving in the breeze. In the brackish streams that laced the marshes lived waterfowl of all kinds: blue herons with their long, snaky necks, topknotted kingfishers, straw-billed egrets, iridescent mallards, midnight black grebes with their white beaks, and a multitude of geese.

  Beyond the marshes was the bay, wide and beautiful, home, at least here where development hadn’t encroached, to the splendid osprey and countless less flamboyant birds. His mother had written him about the local excitement when they thought a pair of bald eagles was nesting here, but apparently the pair moved down the coast to the large preserve near Cape May.

  Awash in melancholy, Clay looked at his watch. 6 P.M. He bent down and patted his dog’s head. “Let’s go, boy. Mom’s not expecting us tonight, so I’d better stop somewhere for dinner before we show.”

  He pulled up to one of the few restaurants open off-season and told Terror to be a good boy and take a nap. He’d be back soon. He climbed out and held Terror in while he closed the door, sliding his hand out at the last minute. He bumped the door with his hip to get the latch to give its final click.

  Suddenly, Terror remembered his lessons about standing with his paws on the window ledge. He reared up and watched Clay with sad, accusing eyes.

  “I’m coming back,” he assured the animal.

  Terror looked skeptical. It was as if he knew how Clay had come back to Leigh.

  He shook off the guilty feeling as he pulled the restaurant door open. The dog knew nothing. It was his own conscience talking, more tender than ever after the visit to the house by the bay. He took a table by himself at the back of the dining room and gave his order. He pulled out James Scott Bell’s latest legal thriller and began to read.

  Unfortunately he couldn’t keep his mind on the well-written caper. Leigh kept popping up on the page, her brown eyes alternately warm as they’d been when he left her all those years ago or scornful as he imagined they’d be today.