Carly (4 page)

“Yes, we see that you need to know your father’s identity even if you never choose to meet him,” Bette said. “We love you,
Carly, and we’d like to help you.”

“But you won’t.” Carly turned her face away from them. How could they hold back the information that meant so much to her?

Bette stood up. “We can’t. All of us have learned through hard experience not to meddle, not to interfere. I tried to, and
I nearly lost your mother, nearly lost my relationship with her, with you. I’m . . . I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing,
crossing some line that could break our family apart. Our family is strong and fragile at the same time.” She shook her head
and began pacing.

“Someday I’ll find my father.” Carly rose, confronting her grandmother. “Someday I’ll know everything.”

“And your mother will be the one to tell you,” Chloe spoke up. “I have confidence that she will. She’s going through something
now.” Chloe shook her head. “The past is still strangling her. But I have faith that she will make the right decisions when
the time comes.”

“I do, too,” Kitty agreed.

Carly grimaced. “Well, I don’t. I’m her mistake. She’d be happier if I weren’t here, if I’d never been born.” The familiar
desperate feeling rushed through her. She ran from the summerhouse down the lane toward the stream. Silent tears washed her
face.

Later, after everyone was in bed, Chloe shrugged into her cotton robe and slippers and crept down the hall to Nate and Leigh’s
room. Bette and Kitty were both staying in the little cottage so Nate and Leigh could be near Michael and the children’s room.
Chloe knocked.

Nate opened the door. “Do you need something?” he asked with concern.

“I need a few private words with my granddaughter.”

He gazed at her a moment, then nodded. “I’ll go downstairs and get a glass of milk.” After squeezing Chloe’s shoulder, he
walked around her and headed down the staircase.

Chloe entered the spare bedroom, lit by the soft glow of the bedside lamp.

Sitting on the edge of the colonial four-poster, Leigh was wearing a pale cotton nightgown. She didn’t look up.

“I haven’t come to scold or argue,” Chloe reassured her as she sat down at the little empire-style desk in the corner. “I’ve
come to make a suggestion.”

“What’s that?”

“I think you’ve overlooked someone who could help with this problem.”

Leigh looked up. “You mean Frank?”

Chloe nodded. “Since he’s made a career in the military, he could give you advice and a different perspective on the army.
And he’s known you since you were a teenager. He understands you.”

Leigh buried her face into her hands. “Why can’t life ever be easy?”

“It never is. We’re strong people, a strong family, or we wouldn’t still be here in this house that’s nearly three hundred
years old. I can remember when Daddy had electricity installed.” Chloe glanced around. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Mother
had a fit when the workmen had to open up walls. But candles and oil lamps no longer were sufficient, and we had to move with
the times.”

Leigh looked up. “And you think I’m acting like your mother? Trying to hold back progress?”

“You are now the previous generation. A chilling thought, no doubt.” Chloe smiled. “But remember, I’m the
oldest
living generation, even more chilling. It gets very lonely when you outlive all your friends and relatives. I’m so fortunate
that Kitty is here with me. But there isn’t a day that I don’t miss my Roarke.” Chloe paused.

“You want to talk about Nate and me,” Leigh prompted. She wouldn’t make eye contact.

Chloe walked over and sat down on the soft quilt beside Leigh. “Honey, good men who love us are rare. I’m afraid Nate’s right.
You’ve been burying yourself in work, and it’s showing in Michael. I can see it.”

“I don’t want to hear that.” Leigh turned her head away.

“I don’t want to say it. But I also need to say that you should never have linked divorcing Nate and Carly. You should not
have made it sound as if you were putting the blame on Carly if you divorced Nate.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Leigh swung back and turned her face into her grandmother’s shoulder. “Whatever problems Nate and I
are having, Carly didn’t cause them.”

“I know, dear. But you need to say that to your daughter and make it right.” Chloe rubbed Leigh’s tight back muscles through
the thin cotton gown. “Call Frank. He can help.”

“Don’t you think he might be prejudiced in favor of the military?” Lifting her head, Leigh gave a twisted smile.

The next morning at Ivy Manor, Leigh sat beside the telephone in the den downstairs. She could hear Rose talking to Chloe
in the dining room. No more delay. She forced herself to dial Frank and Cherise’s number in northern Virginia. Frank worked
at the Pentagon now, so he’d moved back from Georgia about three years before. A young female voice answered, and Leigh asked
for Frank.

“Hello,” Frank’s rich, familiar voice came on the line.

“Hi, Frank, it’s Leigh.”

“Leigh! What a great surprise. We were really sorry that we couldn’t make Carly’s graduation party.”

“I know. We felt sorry we couldn’t get to Lorelle’s party.” Frank’s second-born, his eldest daughter, had graduated that year,
too.

“What can I do for you, Leigh?”

“I couldn’t have called just to talk?” she asked, delaying the conversation she did not want to have.

“No, we’re both busy people and we’ve never had much time just for chatting. What’s up?”

After what her grandmother had said the night before about Michael’s being neglected, Leigh didn’t like that response. But
she drew in breath, readying herself. “I need to talk to you about Carly. She wants to enlist in the army.”

There was a brief silence. “Your daughter, too? Did they plan this together?”

Leigh wrinkled her forehead. “What do you mean?”

“Lorelle intends to enlist as well.”

“No.” Leigh was shocked. “Why wouldn’t she go to college first, then go in as an officer?”

“Wants to make it on her own and wants to pay for college on her own.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the middle child thing. Cherise thinks Lorelle’s trying either to get our attention or stand out
from her brother, James, who went dutifully off to college but doesn’t plan a military career. Or maybe it’s generational.
We boomers, we’re the ‘Give peace a chance’ generation. Maybe our kids are reacting to that.”

Leigh tried to juggle this unexpected development.
Who would have thought?
“This is really weird.”

“I know. We’ve had a few lively discussions here with Lorelle. I bet you’re as thrilled as we are.”

“Then you don’t think I’m wrong in refusing to give my consent.”

“Give your consent?”

“Remember, Carly is almost a year younger than your Lorelle, still a minor.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten. Your girl finished high school early.”

“Yes, and I refuse to sign for her . . . but Nate says he will sign for her.”

“Ah.” Frank sounded smug.

Irritation prickled through her nerves. “Ah, what?”

“Leigh, Carly’s enlisting in the army isn’t the end of the world. She’ll still have a lot of years left when her enlistment
ends.”

“I just don’t see Carly in the military,” Leigh declared, putting all her will into it.

“Why?”

Leigh paused, marshalling her reasons. “She’s so slight, you know. She’s not one of these strapping young women who could
play football. She could get hurt.”

“Recruits rarely get hurt beyond bumps and bruises, and the army takes in all kinds. If I remember correctly, Carly lettered
in track all three years of high school. That means she’s probably in better shape than most recruits.”

“I just don’t want her to do this,” Leigh said, feeling rising desperation.

“Don’t you remember how my family had a fit when I went in for officer candidate school?”

“But you went in the military as an officer.”

“I know, but our daughters don’t want to go through college first. They want to do it their way. Just like we did.”

“You’re not much help.” Leigh couldn’t argue. She remembered all too well the way both of them had pushed against their parents’
restraints.

“Leigh, Carly sounds just like you at seventeen. She has her own agenda and will do it with or without your consent. I mean,
she just has to wait until she turns eighteen, and then she won’t need your consent.”

Leigh frowned and twisted the phone cord. “That has been pointed out to me. Repeatedly.”

“Step back, Leigh. They have to grow up sometime. We want to protect them, but we can’t. Remember, I survived two tours in
’Nam and,” he teased, “you survived tear gas and rioting at the ’68 convention in Chicago. Your daughter is tough enough to
make it through basic training.”

“I wish you’d sided with me,” Leigh scolded. “It would have given me something to hang on to.”

Frank chuckled. “Hey, there’s a good chance that our two girls will end up on the same post for boot camp. There are only
a few posts where women companies go through basic training. They probably won’t end up in the same platoon, but at least
they’d have someone on base that they know.”

“I thought the army had gender-integrated basic now.”

“No, we tried that from 1978 to 1982. And some people are talking about bringing it back. But we had too many people thinking
that the female recruits were getting injured at a higher rate.”

“That’s a reassuring thought.”

“I didn’t say it was fact. It was just the prevailing idea. And it should reassure you if you’re worried about Carly’s safety.”

“Frank, you’re not helping.” Leigh felt a little sick. Her daughter on an army base? In a platoon?

“I’ll tell Lorelle so she and Carly can chat about it.”

Leigh tried to hold on to her stand. “I don’t want this to happen.”

“Leigh, I’ll tell you what I told Cherise: ‘Mom, it’s time to let go.’”

May 28, 1990

I
n the large, crowded, but oddly silent reception hall at the army base, Carly fingered her earlobes, touching the tiny diamond
earrings that had been Kitty’s graduation gift. She’d worn them daily since receiving them. Now she stood in line, waiting
to enter the amnesty room, trying to think what to do.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to bring anything valuable on base—especially not jewelry. Now they’d been told that they must
leave whatever they shouldn’t have brought onto base, and that they would never see what they left there again.
Why didn’t I take them off?

Carly almost raised her hand to ask if she couldn’t send the earrings home. She stopped herself. Nate, who had done two years
in the army when the peacetime draft was still in effect, had told her to remember two things to survive basic training. First,
she shouldn’t take anything said or done personally. Second, she should never call attention to herself. In an effort to follow
number two, Carly had dressed in a plain navy blue T-shirt, jeans, and worn Nikes to arrive on base.

So now, if she raised her hand, she’d be calling attention to herself, negating her effort to blend in. But she couldn’t bear
to part with the earrings. Kitty was nearly ninety-three. How many more gifts would Carly receive from her?

“Rich witch,” the female recruit closest behind her hissed into Carly’s ear. This slur was followed by a string of vulgar
insults.

Caught off guard, Carly merely glanced at the girl whose name was something like Alexa or Alex. Then the line moved forward.

It all went down so fast that Carly didn’t realize what was happening until it was over. Alex-somebody, the name-caller, hooked
a foot in front of Carly’s ankle. Carly felt herself losing balance—smoothly she turned and executed the response she’d learned
in years of tae kwon do lessons. She used the other girl’s momentum to propel her down onto the floor. Then, breathing fast,
Carly stood above, gaping down at her.

Suddenly another woman’s nose touched Carly’s. “What in the heck do you think you’re doing?” Spit from the drill instructor’s
mouth splashed Carly’s face.

“She tripped me,” the girl on the floor accused.

“I don’t give a whoop who tripped who. Drop and start push-ups. Both of you!” she roared, spitting in Carly’s face again.
“Now!”

Carly dropped and began performing push-ups. The girl beside her started doing the same. Carly felt her heart pounding, not
from the physical exertion but over the unexpected attack by a stranger and being yelled at about it. What was this girl’s
problem?

But Carly’s more pressing dilemma—how to keep the earrings—popped up, nagging more insistently. What could she do in the amnesty
room to conceal the earrings on her person? If she could hide them, in three weeks when they were allowed to write letters,
she could send them home.

Perhaps she could hook them to some part of her clothing. But she was still wearing her civilian clothes, which she would
soon surrender for a military uniform and dog tags. But she wouldn’t be changing underthings, would she? No, because she’d
been told what kind of underwear and how much to bring to basic.
I’ll just hook them into the cleft in the front of my
—

“Little Miss Show-Off,” the drill instructor barked above her.

Carly paused and looked up.

“You think you’re going to impress me?” the woman demanded.

Carly glanced over at the other girl, who lay gasping on the floor beside her. Suddenly Carly became aware that her arms were
tired and she was a little winded. “I beg your pardon?”

The DI reached down and pulled her to her feet. “Get back in line.”

Carly stumbled slightly as the sergeant thrust her backward. The sergeant dragged Alex-somebody to her feet and shoved her
behind Carly. “Any more trouble out of either of you, and you’ll regret it!”

Carly didn’t doubt her. She felt herself gasping for breath, not from the exertion but again from the shock. She’d never been
manhandled or verbally abused like this in her whole life. Nate repeated in her mind, “Don’t take anything personally.” That
hadn’t sounded difficult when he said it, but now tears were coiled right behind her eyes, ready to spring forth. She drew
in breath slowly and let it out, gathering her composure. Breaking into tears wouldn’t bring any sympathy here.