Spring Rain (41 page)

The crown of thorns was gone from the rugged cross this morning, and it was draped in royal purple. Easter lilies filled the room, their trumpets silently shouting, “Resurrection!” and their fragrance rising in a sweetly scented offering to the Creator.

Leigh’s heart leaped in thanks. She could only imagine the bubbling joy within Julia, her spirit bulwarked in resurrection faith and her body bracketed by the man she had fallen in love with and the son who was well enough to come to church today.

As she sang “Up from the Grave He Arose,” Leigh thought of the two who bracketed her, the child with whom she shared her hymnal and her life and the man who owned her heart.

Oh, Lord, lead us, Clay, Bill, and me. Teach us. Show us Your will.

When they took their seats and Clay’s shoulder pressed against hers, she allowed herself to lean into him ever so slightly. She felt him turn to her and smile, and she glanced up with a smile of her own. When she turned back to Pastor Paul, she noticed Bill was leaning forward, looking at her and Clay through narrowed eyes. She patted his knee, and he slouched back in the pew. She took his hand, and he looked scandalized as only a kid can when his mother does something beyond the pale. She grinned at him and after a quick squeeze, released him. He gave a sigh of relief, and she turned her attention to worship.

When they gathered outside church after the service in the bright spring sunshine, Clay said, “We have a slight detour before we go home.”

“We do?” Ted said.

“We do. How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?”

Ted brushed Clay’s questions aside with a wave of his hand. “I’m fine.”

“Where are we going?” David asked, standing behind Julia, his hand firmly on her shoulder. He was so close to her that Leigh doubted sunlight could slide between them. “We’ll meet you there.”

It was obvious to anyone watching him that Clay was about to put his foot in his mouth and say something stupid like, “Mom came with us; she’ll leave with us.” Leigh was much relieved when Bill shouted the answer to David’s question before Clay had time to embarrass himself.

“Pop-pop’s house! We’re going to Pop-pop’s house.”

“What?” Leigh stared at her son.

“It’s your Easter present,” Bill said. Pride gleamed in his eyes as he looked at her. “Wait ’til you see. We—”

“Bill,” Clay said in warning. He gave Bill the quiet signal, finger held over his mouth.

Bill looked at Clay and giggled conspiratorially, though he was clearly bursting to talk. Gone were the narrowed eyes and the suspicious looks. With a broad grin that showed every one of his back molars, he ushered Leigh to the Cherokee and seated her in the front passenger side. He and Ted climbed in the back.

Leigh turned and looked at her son. “What’s going on here?”

Bill wanted to tell so badly he appeared to be in pain, but he kept his secret. “I can’t tell. You have to see.”

She turned to Clay. “When you two disappeared these past few days, you’ve been taking him to my house, haven’t you? Treasure hunting?”

“Yes to the first and no to the second.”

She waited but he said no more. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

He nodded, his attention riveted on the largely empty roads. You’d have thought he was fighting great hordes of summer tourists, so intense was his concentration.

“You know you’re driving me crazy, both of you!” She flounced back against her seat, making a great show of her frustration. Bill laughed.

“You two apparently don’t know one of life’s basic rules,” Ted offered. “Never tease a lady on Easter. This is very good advice. The lady will not like it—”

“And teasing isn’t nice,” Clay finished with him. The brothers laughed.

Bill and Leigh just stared.

“A corruption of one of our favorite children’s books,” Clay explained.
“Never Tease a Weasel.
Mom read it to us on the average of twice a week for years, hoping we’d get the lesson.”

“Obviously you didn’t,” Leigh said, but she was laughing.

“Close your eyes, Mom,” Bill instructed as they turned onto the street where the Spenser house sat in solitary splendor.

Leigh squeezed her eyes tight and put her hands over her
closed lids for good measure. The car slowed, then stopped. Expectancy filled the air.

“Now,” Bill yelled. “Look!”

Leigh looked, blinked, then blinked again. She knew her mouth was hanging open. She climbed out of the car in a daze.

The once ragtag, falling-down house actually looked attractive. Not beautiful, that was asking too much, but pretty. In fact, it looked prettier than she’d ever seen it.

The downspouts and gutters were firmly back in place. The weeds were gone from the walk and the garden. The lawn, still more sand than grass, was raked and groomed. In the garden a quartet of small azaleas, alive with fat pink buds, nestled among the newly opened daffodils. The enormous forsythia was bursting with golden blooms, filling the yard with sunshine. The old aluminum lounge chair had disappeared, and the window frames had been sanded and repainted. The front door was a beautiful Williamsburg blue. It was the door that made her eyes fill.

“Bill,” she said around the huge lump in her throat. “You did this?”

He nodded proudly. “Me and Clay. Happy Easter, Mom. Now you can sell it.”

“Oh, Bill, thank you!” She grabbed the boy and hugged him so hard he made gagging noises.

She let him go and turned to Clay. “Thank you so much.” How stilted and awkward she sounded. What she really wanted to do was grab him hard too, and not just with gratitude, but aware of her audience she stuck out her hand. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“I don’t get a hug too?” He looked forlorn, a little boy who had just been told the bakery was all out of the sweets he’d come to purchase with his own cash.

Feeling slightly self-conscious under Ted’s sardonic eye, Leigh wrapped her arms around Clay and squeezed lightly.

“You can do better than that,” he whispered in her ear as his arms tightened about her.

“Oh, Leigh, how wonderful it looks,” Julia exclaimed, climbing out of David’s car and saving Leigh from the enticing danger of hugging Clay harder.

“Doesn’t it?” Leigh turned to Julia in relief. Or was it disappointment? “Bill and Clay did it. It’s my Easter gift.”

“Just don’t look at the windows on the sides or back,” Clay said. “We’ll get to them at a later date.”

Everyone walked around the house, laughing at the many unfinished shutters and peeling window frames still needing work. At the back of the house they pointed to the kingfisher sitting on the phone lines that ran parallel to the old railroad bed. They oohed and aahed as a blue heron lifted gracefully from the marsh and flew off toward the bay.

David and Julia trailed the rest, with the group yet separate, holding hands and smiling at each other. Whenever the pack stopped moving, they stopped too, slightly behind, leaning into each other.

“You’d think they can’t stand up alone,” Clay muttered in Leigh’s ear.

“Isn’t it great?” she whispered back and patted his hand as his face darkened. She had noticed that Julia no longer wore her wedding ring, but she wasn’t going to be the one to call that fact to Clay’s attention.

She went to the huge forsythia and broke off a great armful of the floral sunshine. “I need enough for Julia, for me, and for my classroom.” She sighed. “I don’t want to go back to school.”

Bill made a face. “Who does?”

“I don’t mean to break up a good time, but we need to hurry or dinner will be ruined,” Julia said.

Everyone climbed back in the cars and went home to an Easter dinner of ham, scalloped potatoes, broccoli casserole, pineapple bake, and fresh rolls. Dessert was Julia’s wonderful apple caramel pie or pecan pie. Afterward, Ted went up for a nap, Bill went home to change into play clothes, Julia and David went into the living room, and Clay and Leigh began the cleanup. When Leigh returned to the dining room for another load of dirty dishes, she found Clay skulking near the living room doorway.

“Hey, sailor, I thought you were supposed to be helping me with the cleanup.”

“What’s going on with them?” he demanded with a fierce scowl, staring after his mother and David.

She looked at him. “Grumpy for Easter Sunday afternoon, aren’t we?”

“I am not grumpy,” he grumped. “I’m concerned. And I don’t need your editorial comments. What I need are answers.”

“Then ask them your questions.” She nodded toward Julia and David.

“I’m asking you.” His tone was testy.

“Extra sensitive to advice today too, I see.”

He glared and she smiled sweetly. “Did you ever think that it’s not your business?” she asked.

He glowered at her. “Not my business? She’s my mother and—” He stopped himself and went back to skulking.

“And?” she prompted. She knew exactly what he was worried about, but she wanted him to say it aloud so she could rebut.

He scratched his head, clearly unhappy. “Here we all go off to church this morning, you, me, Bill, Mom, even Ted for the first time in who knows how long.”

Leigh saw the brief flash of joy when he spoke of Ted. She wondered if it was for the reconciliation he and Ted were enjoying or for Ted’s improved health. She decided it was for both.

“There we all are,” he continued, the grimness returning, “and what does
she
do?”

“She being your mother?”

“Who else?
She
goes off with David without giving us so much as a backward glance.”

“She came back for us.”

He harrumphed. “We were clearly an afterthought.”

Leigh couldn’t resist. The man was just asking for it. She turned her saccharine smile full on him. “Poor boy. How did you ever manage to get through those few seconds without her? You must have suffered terribly from separation anxiety.”

He looked down his nose at her. “Sarcasm is a nasty habit.”

She stuck her index finger in his chest, twisting that lethal nail and taking a piece of his flesh, just like she’d done that first night they’d talked. “So’s interfering in your mother’s private life.”

“A lot you know.” He grabbed her hand to protect himself from losing another divot of prized skin and threaded their fingers together. “Your mom died before you were old enough to accept life’s responsibilities. I’m the eldest son. It’s my duty, my responsibility to protect Mom.”

“Very commendable, but I see no grave dangers lurking about.”

“I do. I mean, did you see the way she acted while we were out at your place?”

Out at her place. She felt her heart soften when she thought of what he had done for her. She barely noticed that he had laced the fingers of her second hand with his.

“He’s a nice man, Clay. I know you haven’t known him long, but take my word for it, okay?”

Clay grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door to the living room. “Just look at them.”

“I will not! That’s spying.”

“Just look, will you?”

It was easier to look than to fight, so she did. She saw Julia and David standing face to face, arms entwined.

“They’re staring at each other,” he muttered in Leigh’s ear.

She backed up, elbowing him in the side and trying to pull him away. “Personally I think it’s sweet.”

He glowered.

“I thought we’d never be alone,” David said softly, but the eavesdroppers heard him.

“I love you,” Julia said softly. “I do.”

Clay stiffened, and Leigh turned her head so he wouldn’t see her smile.

David ran a palm over Julia’s hair. His hand settled on the back of her neck, and he pulled her against him. “I love you too, sweetheart.” And he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.

Clay turned red and made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. Leigh grabbed his arm with the idea of pulling him into the kitchen. “That’s what you get for being a voyeur,” she hissed.

“That’s my mother—my
mother
!—in there kissing like a teenager.”

“I say three cheers for your mother.” When pulling didn’t move him, she got behind him and pushed. She felt like Sisyphus or whoever it was who pushed the rock up the mountain in the old myth. “You are one big man,” she panted, but she kept pushing right through the kitchen and out the back door. He blinked at the brilliant sunshine.

“You’re a danger to yourself and others,” she muttered as she stopped in the middle of the yard. She folded her arms and fixed
him with the stern look that worked so well with fourth graders. He seemed unimpressed. “Let your mother alone, Clay.”

“I was doing fine with the idea that they liked each other, even that they went on dates.” He shuddered. “My mother on dates. What’s the world coming to? But now, sheesh. What if he wants to marry her?”

“What if he does?”

“I don’t want a stepfather.” He glared at her, but she saw in his eyes the hurt beneath the anger.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe she wants a husband?” she asked gently. “That maybe she wants to love and be loved?”

Clay swayed back on his heels like he’d taken a hit. “But I love her, and my brother loves her.”

Leigh rolled her eyes, and he flushed as he heard the foolishness of his comment.

“Of course you and Ted love her,” Leigh said. “So do I. But you know as well as I do that there’s a huge difference between the love we offer and the love and comfort David will give her.”

He dropped his head onto his chest, his eyes closed. Leigh looked at him, this wonderful man who loved his mother and cherished his father’s memory. She reached out a hand and laid it on his arm.

“Clay, the next few months are going to be absolutely terrible for her. If David can help her through them, you should be thanking God for him.”

“I know.” Clay looked at her with sad eyes. “I’d never have predicted how wrenching it is to see them together.”

“You’re struggling because it feels like she’s turning her back on your father.” She patted him gently. “Right?”

He nodded, embarrassed. “I want her memories of Dad to be enough. Selfish of me, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “It is. But, Clay, memories won’t keep her warm at night as she lies alone in her big bed.” She grew impassioned, her fingers tightening their hold on his arm. “They won’t give her strength when she’s afraid of the future. They won’t help her when she’s tired of struggling against life all by herself or when she yearns for someone to take her in his arms and make her feel special. They won’t help when she needs someone to be there for her when Ted dies, and when she wants someone to hold her when she cries and
love her even when her eyes are red and puffy and—”