Spring Rain (18 page)

Ted ran his tongue over his dry lips. “You’re an ostrich, Clay. You’re in denial. You think that if we don’t mention it, it’ll go away.”

Clay looked out the window again, watching Clooney dig another hole in the sand. He rubbed whatever he’d found between his fingers to brush away the grit. Whatever it was satisfied him, and he put it in his fanny pack.

At least someone was having a good day.

Clay resisted the urge to leave the bedroom. He was here, trying to be nice because he knew he had to come to some resolution with Ted. He couldn’t live with himself otherwise. Since it seemed that all Ted wanted to do was bait him, he had no idea how their reconciliation was to occur. All at once he felt unutterably sad that the two of them, who had once been so close, could now barely speak civilly.

“You’ve been a sore trial to me all my life,” Ted said suddenly.

“What?” Clay stiffened in shock. This was more than baiting. This was insult.

“The perfect brother. President of this and captain of that. Always saying the right thing. Always smiling and polite. Always making Mom and Dad proud. Always right!” His pale face flushed.

“Come on, Ted.” Clay’s heart was pounding at the venom in Ted’s voice. What had he ever done to deserve this attack? “Surely I wasn’t that bad.”

Ted stared at him a long, unblinking minute. “Sometimes I’ve come close to hating you.”

Clay jerked. He exerted every ounce of self-control at his command and said softly, “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“See?” accused Ted, finger-pointing. “You can’t even get mad!”

“Oh, I can get mad all right.”

“I don’t believe it. It’s an emotion, and you don’t feel emotions.”

Clay thought of his confusion over Leigh, his concern for his mother, and his resentment toward Ted. “Little you know.”

“I know it’s about time we were honest with each other.” Ted glared at Clay. “You hate me as much as I hate you.”

Clays heart pounded. It wasn’t Ted’s words themselves that hurt as much as it was the bitterness, the antipathy shimmering hot and red from them. “I don’t hate you, and that’s God’s honest truth.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Clay shrugged. “Your choice.”

“Right. My choice.” Ted glared. “I made my choices, and that’s why you hate me.”

“I resent you,” Clay said carefully. “That’s different from hate.” “How?”

“If you hate someone, you just say, ‘Forget him.’ When you
resent someone, you try to get along. At least I do.”

“So you ‘resent’ me for who I am.”

“I resent you for what you’ve done to the family. You went off to have your fun and games, and look at what your choices have done to Mom!”

Ted pointed a finger at him. “You’re yelling.”

“I am not,” Clay yelled.

“You hate me.”

“I do not!”

Ted grinned, obviously pleased with himself and the rise he’d gotten out of Clay. Clay took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself.

“I’ve admitted that I resent you and feel bitter toward you,” Clay said, proud that his voice barely shook. “But I repeat: I. Don’t. Hate. You.”

“The Bible says resentment and bitterness are as wrong as hatred.”

“Thanks for telling me something I didn’t know.”

Ted laughed at Clay’s response. “The perfect son is sinning!” Ted crowed.

“The Perfect Son never sinned. I, being all too human, sin regularly.”

“But acceptable sins,” Ted said. “Not like me.”

“Not like you is right!” Clay turned his angry, bitter eyes on his twin, lying there so smugly and seeming to feel no remorse for his wrongs. “You picked the worst of the worst!”

“Picked? Picked?” Ted pushed himself up on his pillow, his eyes alight with his own deep anger. “Do you think I had a choice in being gay?”

“You bet I do!”

“You think I didn’t fall on my face before God and beg for this to be taken away? You think that I didn’t plead with Him to be ‘normal’? You think I didn’t cry over verses like: ‘In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion’? Or how about this one: ‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.’ See? I’ve thought about them so much I’ve memorized them.”

Clay stared. “I thought you were always proud of being gay. You sure flaunted it enough.”

Ted shrugged. “I learned to be proud. It was better than being ashamed. But first I went through torment because I knew what the Bible says and what Mom and Dad would say. And you,” he added in a small voice.

Clay felt a faint flicker of hope. “You actually worried about what I thought?”

Ted looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”

Clay shook his head, confused. “Then why did you allow it to happen if you knew what it was going to do to all of us?”

Ted sighed. “Do you know how selfish that sounds?”

“What?” Clay was lost.

“You talk like I did this to spite you!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Ted hit the heel of his hand against his forehead. “You still believe being gay is a choice, don’t you?”

We come to the crux of the matter, the crucial disagreement.
“I sure do. ‘Choose today whom you will serve.’ I’ll never believe God predisposes someone to perversion.”

“No more than you’re predisposed to pride!”

Clay blinked, then rallied. “My pride is not the issue here.”

“No, it’s not, but it brings up a good question, O Perfect One. Is being gay a worse sin that being proud? Huh? Is it? Is it? Isn’t all sin offensive to God?”

“Of course! But at least I’m willing to admit that I need to work on my pride, that it is wrong. I know I can’t let it run rampant. I work on controlling it.”

Ted didn’t respond, and Clay knew he had him.

“We have to fight sin.” He flinched inwardly at how pompous that sounded even though it was true. “We have to be like Joseph and flee when the opportunity to sin arises.”

Still Ted said nothing.

“Right?” Clay pressed. “Right?”

“You don’t understand!” Anger and desperation laced Ted’s voice.

“I understand enough!”

“Hah! You haven’t got the least bit of understanding and certainly no sympathy. You’re hard and unforgiving!”

Stung by the truth of the accusation, Clay put on the armor of self-defense and charged full speed. “Just who do you think you are to point the finger at me? You’re the one that talks of hate, not me. You’re the one—”

“Stop it! Stop it, you two!”

Clay blinked and turned. Leigh stood at the foot of the bed, literally shaking, her hands clasped and pressed against her heart. Her fine dark eyes were wide with tears and her face white.

When had she come in? He glanced at Ted and saw his twin was as startled to notice her as he was.

“Don’t you two have the sense you were born with?” she hissed. Her eyes, distress and disapproval shining through the tears, moved from one brother to the other in accusation.

“What’s wrong?” they asked, almost in unison.

“What’s wrong? Aside from the fact that you’re both idiots? You’re yelling and screaming like shrews.”

Clay looked at Leigh in amazement. How did she project so much censure without raising her voice? Must be all those years of disciplining fourth graders.

“We were not yelling. We’re discussing.” Ted frowned at her.

“Ha! Your voices are carrying downstairs.”

Clay glanced out the bedroom door at the stairwell and realized that it served as a funnel to carry their voices. Some of their accusations replayed on his mental tape recorder, and he flinched.

“Your mother is down there crying in her cake batter as we speak,” Leigh lectured. “You don’t think she has enough heartache? She needs to hear her sons yelling their hatred of each other?”

“I never said—” Clay started automatically.

She just stared, disdain dripping, and he shut his mouth. He also dropped his eyes before the righteous wrath in hers.

“So stop it!” Leigh’s chin suddenly wobbled, and she pleaded, “For her sake, at least try to be civil. She loves you both so much.”

“He—” both Clay and Ted began at the same time, each pointing to the other. It was an automatic response, honed through years of childhood and instantly reactivated under the pressure of the moment.

In the space of a heartbeat Leigh’s countenance transformed from reasoned plea to fury. “Stop it, I said! Stop it!” She was so upset she was breathing fire. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
wide with the force of her anger. She was beautiful.

“Let me tell you two idiots something.” She jabbed her index finger at first one brother, then the other.

“Hey, love,” Ted interrupted with a half smile, indulgent and a little bit condescending. “We were having a private conversation.” His tone of voice, Clay noted, was much kinder and gentler than it had been with him.

“Not when the whole neighborhood can hear you yelling you weren’t,” Leigh shot back. “And don’t you talk down to me, Ted Wharton.”

Ted glanced at Clay and rolled his eyes, a move Leigh saw and that made her furious. Clay started to grin, but when Leigh turned her attention to him, he swallowed the smile fast.

“As I was saying—” she looked back at Ted as if daring him to interrupt again—“there are all kinds of reasons why a person becomes gay. I certainly don’t know how to separate what’s truth from what’s mere theory. In actuality I imagine the reasons are as varied as the men involved.”

Clay opened his mouth to comment, but when he received another stinging stare, he made believe he meant to cough all along.

Leigh swept on. “Whatever the reasons or excuses for the temptations and tendencies to be gay—” she drew herself up, and it was obvious she was about to make her main point—“the biblical standard outside of marriage is absolute. It’s abstinence, plain and simple, whether you’re gay or straight.”

Ted frowned and swallowed, obviously unhappy with her comments.

Clay watched her with delight. He liked her reasoned argument, but mostly it delighted him that she was finally giving Ted what for. And Ted would listen to her. He liked her.

Go get him, Leigh.

“And in this room,” she continued with a dark look first at Ted, then Clay, “I don’t see anyone who’s practiced abstinence any more than I see anyone who’s lacking in an overabundance of pride!”

With that pronouncement, she turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

All Clay’s momentary affability disappeared, and he felt his
temper boil over. To be painted with the same brush as Ted, and by Leigh no less, was more than he could stomach. He strode from the room, the light of battle in his eyes. He caught up with her in the hall and grabbed her arm. He dragged her away from the steps to the far corner of the hallway and spun her to face him. He glared down at her with the same intimidating expression that brought the most rebellious sailor to heel.

She looked taken aback by his manhandling, but only momentarily. Her eyes slitted, and her frown became fierce. She was not in the least frightened by him towering over her in a rage. She fisted her hands on her hips and glared back.

“Don’t you put me in the same category as Ted,” he hissed, his face close to hers. “Or you for that matter.”

She glowered back, contempt written clearly on her features. “Why not?” Her voice was a whisper, but it vibrated with emotion. “You took advantage of a lonely girl who wanted nothing more than for someone to love her. She was ripe for the picking, and you picked. Don’t you ever talk to me about being lumped with anyone!”

“He’s promiscuous.” He pointed to Ted’s room.

“Not for many years.”

He didn’t listen. He was too full of pride and his pharisaical honor. He narrowed his eyes at her. “And she was more than willing!”

Leigh flinched, paled, then rallied. “Of course she was willing! You were her hero. That you finally paid attention to her was a dream come true. Many nights she lay awake, fantasizing that you’d deign to talk to her. Then you took her home. You kissed her. You made love to her. And it wasn’t just anyone loving her. It was
you.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and she scowled fiercely.

Just that quickly all his anger dissipated, and he stared at her impassioned face, trying to protect himself from the truth, the pain of her words.

“Do you know,” Leigh continued, her gaze moving to the wall behind him, almost as if she couldn’t stand looking at him any longer. “I was actually dumb enough to believe you cared. When you left, you started to say something and fumbled with the words.” Her gaze slid back and skewered him. “Do you remember?”

Clay nodded. He remembered all too well. His conscience had been roaring in his head as he’d stood by that door, and he’d tried to say he was sorry for what he’d done. The words had refused to come, lodged as they were somewhere below his Adam’s apple.

“When you kept saying, ‘Leigh, I—’ and clearing your throat, I was stupid and naïve enough to think you were trying to get up the nerve to say you loved me.” She gave a bitter laugh.

He felt again after all these years her hand soft upon his lips and saw her sweet smile.
“It’s all right if you can’t say it tonight, Clay.”
She raised her other hand and rested it against his heart.
“I love you too. Just hug me good night. You can say it later.”

“Leigh.” As overcome by remorse now as he’d been then, he reached out a hand in apology.

She jerked back as if burned. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare.”

Anger simmered in him once again. She’d been glad enough for his touch last night when she needed his comfort.

“It’s not like I was your first,” he said in a cold voice. “You were already pregnant when—” His voice died in his throat when he saw the look of fury and utter contempt she turned on him.

“At times like this I wish I swore so I could call you a few of the choice names you deserve,” she hissed.

“You used to be such a sweet, quiet little girl,” he hissed back. “How things have changed.”

“And you used to be honorable!”

She spun on her heel and rushed down the stairs while he stood frozen to the spot. Talk about a shot to the heart!