Wife, Mother...Lover? Page 5

  “I know. I want to. It’s time I got to know my nephews.”

  “Okay, that solves tomorrow. It doesn’t fix the real problem. They need stability, Leanne. I don’t work a nine-to-five job. I get called out in the middle of the night. Sometimes I don’t come home until the middle of the night. Day care is out.”

  “All right. So you need live-in help.”

  “I’ve had a couple of live-ins. It was nice while it lasted.”

  “But that’s not the real issue, is it?” Leanne knew it had to be something more than that. “Tell me, Mitch.”

  He looked uncomfortable, then he looked downright mad. Finally, Mitch explained.

  “I got into a tight spot at work last month. I was tired. Or maybe just worried about the boys. My head just wasn’t in the right place, and in my job I can’t afford to have my head in the wrong place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Damned if I know, even now. I pulled over this kid in a fancy sports car. He was mouthing off, saying all sorts of crazy things. Next thing I knew, I was staring down the barrel of my own revolver, in the hands of this seventeen-year-old who was high as a kite and talking about blowing my brains out.”

  “Oh, my God.” Leanne started to tremble.

  “And I kept thinking that if I didn’t get myself out alive, there was no telling what would happen to the boys. That they didn’t have anyone else but me, and I was doing a lousy job of raising them anyway.”

  Leanne felt a little queasy just imagining what might have happened. And she couldn’t look at Mitch, couldn’t imagine the boys being without him as well as their mother. “Cutting yourself out of their lives isn’t the answer.”

  “Tell me what is,” he demanded. “If you’ve got the answers, tell me. Because I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  He was wearing that bleak, worn-down look she remembered so well from Kelly’s funeral. She folded her arms across her stomach, because she hurt for him and the boys and her sister, and she didn’t know how to make that ache go away. She didn’t know how to help or what to say, but she was afraid it was up to her to make things right.

  She decided to get the obvious points out of the way. “You think Rena’s the right person to raise them?”

  “She wants them,” he said.

  “Because she’s selfish?” Leanne tried not to let her own hostilities toward her stepmother come through, but suspected she hadn’t succeeded in that. “Because Rena regrets not having children of her own and it’s too late for her to do that now?”

  “I don’t know why she wants them,” Mitch admitted.

  “Maybe because she thought she was going to get four children when she married my father. But I never saw her as a mother. Kelly did for a while, but she’s gone now. Even Alex and Amy aren’t that close to her anymore. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know there’s some tension there.”

  “Tension?” Leanne almost choked on the word. “Rena nearly drove them crazy. She’s incredibly manipulative and opinionated and downright selfish.”

  “Opinionated,” Mitch said. “I’ll give you that one. And she can be a little pushy at times. But I think her heart’s in the right place. I think she loves the boys.”

  “For as long as they do what she wants.”

  “She’s only forty-two,” Mitch argued. “She’s in good health, so she could reasonably be expected to live until they’re adults. She could be home with them every day. She and your father are financially secure now. They have so much time and energy they could devote to the boys.”

  But that wasn’t the real issue, Leanne wanted to shout at him. Instead, she settled for asking, “Do you want Rena to raise those boys? Do you think that’s what Kelly would have wanted?”

  “Kelly wanted to raise them herself. I wanted to raise them with her, but that’s not one of our options.”

  “Neither is giving them to Rena.” Leanne had to make him see that. “Mitch, you don’t know her the way I do, and I think if you’d just take some time to think this through, you’d see that I’m right. It must have been incredibly difficult in these past months, but things are going to get better. If you’ll just give it some time.”

  Mitch started to object, but Leanne cut in. “You don’t have to decide anything right now. I’m here. I can stay a few days and give you some time to think and to find someone to take care of the boys.”

  There was nothing to keep her from staying. She certainly didn’t need the money, and she was overdue for a break. “Please, Mitch. Let me do this. If not for you, for Kelly.”

  He thought about it long enough to make her nervous, to make her wonder what her next argument would be. Finally, he answered.

  “All right. Stay for a few days.”

  “Good.” She relaxed a little, then considered the practicalities. “Is there a hotel nearby?”

  “Not close.” He hesitated again, then said, “Look, you might as well stay here. I need to leave early in the morning, and it’s probably going to be after six before I’m done tomorrow night.”

  It made sense, yet it still made her uncomfortable. She would have liked some distance between herself and this brokenhearted, yet altogether disturbing man.

  “Why don’t you take the room next to the boys’,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “And, Leanne?”

  “Hmm?” She worried for a minute he’d already changed his mind about having her here.

  “Thank you for coming. Thank you for staying.”

  Chapter 4

  Soon after dinner, Mitch retired upstairs, while Leanne sat in the living room with a book on her lap. Tired, but reluctant to go to bed, she looked around the room.

  On the table beside the sofa was a small, silver-framed photograph of her sister. Leanne tried but failed to judge it objectively, as if it were something related to her work, not a terribly intimate portrait of a young, beautiful woman she had loved very much.

  Kelly wore a dress in a deep blue that brought out the color of her eyes. She was sitting on the ground, which was covered with autumn-colored leaves. The light was filtering through the branches of a massive tree, leaving patches of shadows and light all over Kelly’s face and her body—something that Leanne would never have allowed if she’d been the one photographing her sister that day.

  Leanne saw a woman whose seemingly perfect life was about to be shattered. Kelly was smiling brightly with her face lifted toward the camera, a patch of sunlight caught in her hair, turning it to spun gold. From the look on her face, Leanne knew Mitch had been behind the camera that day, and the love so obviously between them was like a tangible thing caught within the mix of chemicals on the film.

  Leanne had envied them that love. She had envied everything about her sister’s life—her husband, this house, the fact that Kelly saw Alex and Amy, even their father, at times. They were a family, one she hadn’t felt a part of in a long time.

  The rift reminded Leanne of one of those feuds, the kind where the fighting had gone on so long no one remembered exactly why it had started. It simply existed, with a life all its own.

  There was an awkwardness that settled around her family whenever they came together. Nothing felt right or natural. The complications just piled up on top of one another, until there were walls so high they might have protected a fortress.

  Or two fortresses. Her family in one, Leanne alone in the other.

  Leanne picked up the photograph of Kelly and held it to her. Closing her eyes, she remembered how it had felt to hold Teddy this afternoon, and she yearned to hold her sister just like that.

  One more time, Leanne thought. If they could talk one more time... There were so many things Leanne wished she could say.

  Why she had never managed to say them when Kelly was alive she simply didn’t understand. Why Kelly’s letter had come so late? Why she hadn’t gotten home in time...why?

  A choking sound that Leanne hardly recognized rose up in her throat and into h
er mouth. A sob tried to escape her next, but she managed to smother it by clamping her lips together and sucking in a ragged breath. Tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks.

  Then she had the feeling that she was no longer alone. Standing and turning around at the same time, she felt the photograph slide from her grasp. It bounced off the sofa cushion, then hit the floor with a thud.

  Leanne held her breath, but the glass didn’t shatter.

  She looked up and saw Mitch standing on the landing, a glass of water in his hand. He was still wearing his sweatpants, but he’d taken off his shoes and his shirt. Leanne had a quick impression of long, sleek expanses of muscle and warm, brown skin before she turned away.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  As Leanne picked up the photograph, she swiped at the tears on her cheeks and wondered what he’d heard, what he’d seen.

  The next thing she knew, Mitch was beside her, and she tried not to look at him. Not his face. Not the broad expanse of bare skin. Not anywhere.

  His hand was coming toward her, and she tensed before she figured out that he only wanted the photograph.

  “It’s fine,” she said, flustered to the core and still reeling from the emotions brought on by being in Kelly’s house, holding one of Kelly’s babies close, seeing the look in Mitch’s eyes when he talked about his wife, even now when more than a year had gone by since he’d lost her.

  “I’ll take it upstairs with me.” He handled the photograph as though it were made of pure gold. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  Mitch turned to go, then paused. She saw the rise and fall of his shoulders, saw the tension in the set of his jaw, before he faced her once again, as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded, despite everything she was feeling and all she wished she could say.

  She wanted to know about Kelly, about those moments before her sister had died.

  When Leanne finally made it home after the funeral, her family had closed ranks. It was as if they didn’t think she deserved to grieve for her sister. So she’d never really gotten any details, yet she had so many questions.

  Mitch was not the one to ask, she told herself. Clearly, he’d suffered most of all, was suffering still. She would ask anyone but him.

  Leanne turned and dared a glance at the stem-looking almost-stranger who was her brother-in-law. He hadn’t left, hadn’t moved from her side. And he seemed to be fighting battles of his own right now.

  Did he hate her for everything that was wrong between her and Kelly? Did he want to lash out at her again for not being there when Kelly needed her? Leanne suspected he did, and she stood and walked to the opposite end of the room. Putting her back to him, she wiped away another stray tear.

  “Do you need anything?” Mitch inquired.

  Leanne laughed sadly, the sound alone enough to scare her. She needed so very many things, and he would never be the person to give them to her.

  Still, when she heard footsteps behind her, coming near, she was so afraid that Mitch had found an ounce of compassion inside himself for her and that he was going to make the mistake of being kind to her. If he did, she would simply shatter into a million pieces.

  When Mitch was close enough to reach out and touch her, she turned slightly and put out a hand. “Don’t,” she said, with more force than she intended.

  “My mistake.” His voice was clipped and even harsher than hers. “I should have known better.”

  Leanne waited and listened. His footsteps sounded on the living-room rug, then on the wooden steps. Finally, when she heard nothing else from anywhere in the house, she dropped her hand to her side and hung her head.

  Loneliness, as powerful and as overwhelming as any she’d ever known, came over her like a tidal wave. It chilled her and threatened to sweep her away, the force of it so strong she could scarcely fight it.

  She couldn’t let Mitch help her now, couldn’t let anyone. Because for fourteen years, there had been no one. And before that, there had been only her brother and sisters. But she had been the one to take care of them. She’d nursed them all through their grief and their loneliness after their mother’s death.

  It had been draining and exhausting and had eaten up so much time that Leanne didn’t think she’d ever had time to mourn herself. And with Kelly? Well...she hadn’t given herself time. She’d jetted off around the world, working in a frenzy so there would be no time to stop, no time to think. There wasn’t supposed to be time to hurt, either.

  But in this house, surrounded by everyone Kelly loved, Leanne couldn’t escape. Not from her memories or her grief.

  Swallowing hard, Leanne sank onto the sofa. She wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked back and forth because she simply couldn’t be still. Hot, heavy tears burned as they streaked down her face. Alone, she mourned for the sister she would never see again, for all the things left unsaid between them.

  Mitch stalked back up the steps and into his bedroom.

  Carefully, he placed the photograph of his wife on the nightstand by his bed, then thought better of it. It would be one of the first sights he saw when he opened his eyes every morning, and he wasn’t sure if that was wise.

  The days were too long and too difficult for him to start out missing Kelly, although inevitably, every day, that happened. Something always reminded him that she was gone, that nothing would ever be the same again. Mitch tried to stay busy every second of the day, and that had worked for a while. If he was exhausted, he simply didn’t have time to think that much.

  Well, he was certainly exhausted tonight. He should have been well into that wondrous oblivion that was asleep, maybe lucky enough to be dreaming of his wife. But he wasn’t, because Leanne was downstairs, hurting, and she didn’t want him anywhere near her.

  He supposed she must regret having let Kelly down by not being there when the boys were born, and a part of Mitch was still so angry over that he wanted her to suffer because of it.

  But tonight...he actually felt sorry for her.

  He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. A glance at the clock told him it was after midnight. He had to sleep.

  But he’d left her downstairs, her shoulders shaking from the effort to make her tears stop.

  He didn’t even close his eyes or so much as glance toward the photograph he’d brought upstairs, but Kelly’s face came to him then, so close it seemed he could almost reach out and touch her. He felt oddly comforted, felt a peacefulness inside her that he hoped was real.

  She smiled, one of those knowing smiles that told him she was about to talk him into doing something he didn’t want to do.

  And then he thought of Leanne.

  Much as he hated to admit it, Mitch knew Kelly would never have left her sister alone like that. His wife had found good in everyone and everything. She’d been forgiving and compassionate, whereas he was more likely to want to lay blame.

  What would Kelly have done? Mitch asked himself. Forgiven Leanne? For everything? Had Kelly done that already before she died? Mitch had been here. He’d seen Kelly’s nervousness before each and every one of her sister’s visits, seen the despair when those visits hadn’t turned out the way Kelly had hoped.

  Kelly hadn’t known how to fix things. And she’d grieved for her sister. For some reason, being pregnant with the boys had made Kelly feel those old hurts even more strongly than before.

  Mitch remembered when Kelly had written that letter to her sister, a letter he’d never seen. He remembered how hopeful she’d been, how doubtful he’d been that things would work out. And he’d gotten angry at his sister-in-law all over again.

  Today had brought it all back to the surface. Mitch didn’t want Leanne to be nice to his boys or helpful. He certainly didn’t want to need her, but he did.

  So what do I do now? he asked his wife softly.

  She didn’t come to him like some ghostly
apparition, like an image with no substance floating through the air. Mitch wasn’t so far gone that he expected anything like that.

  Still, he talked to Kelly sometimes because it made him feel closer to her and because he believed in God and in some sort of life after this one.

  Kelly, the essence of her, still existed somewhere, he thought. Maybe she was watching over them all. Maybe she was listening to him now. Maybe she would find a way to show him the right thing to do.

  Mitch figured he could use all the help he could get—something he’d told Kelly often enough in these late-night talks he had with her.

  And then, when he closed his eyes, he saw Leanne’s face. He thought of her showing up out of the blue and offering to help him when he needed it most.

  Why? Mitch wondered, still seeing her face as plain as day.

  And then he thought, what if...

  Oh, no, he said aloud. Kelly? No. Not her.

  His only answer was a sudden whish of the wind cutting through the trees and swirling around the house, then dying down as suddenly as it had begun.

  Mitch fought the feeling that he had to do something for Leanne. But at some point, he came to understand that was what Kelly expected from him. And he would have done anything in the world for his wife. So shortly after one o’clock in the morning, he put on his shirt and went back downstairs.

  At first he thought the room was empty, then he spotted Leanne curled up on the sofa, asleep. He grabbed the afghan that was draped over a chair and covered Leanne with it. He thought of leaving her there, then remembered how terrible he always felt when he slept on the thing. He always woke up with his neck stiff and sore, his head pounding; Leanne would, too.

  She would have the boys by herself tomorrow, and that was difficult enough without a headache and a stiff neck.

  Mitch decided he had no choice but to wake her.

  Sitting on the edge of the sofa, he put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. She groaned, then turned so that he could see her face, still wet with tears.

  Obviously, she’d cried herself to sleep.