Leigh (26 page)

“Thank you.” Unable to bear speaking about it one more second, Leigh hung up. She slumped as if boneless onto the sofa and
lay there looking up at the ceiling.
This can’t he real. I can’t he pregnant. I was only with him one time.

Her conscience taunted her in a smug tone, “It only takes one time.”

She’d just begun to move on with her career, with her life, to put the one-night affair behind her…

Her conscience sprang up to accuse her, “Make that
your
one-night stand.”

In pain and utter humiliation, Leigh closed her eyes. She’d been so naïve she hadn’t even thought about birth control and
Trent must have assumed she was on the pill—like all his other women. The thought was a stinging lash to her heart.
Pregnant. I thought no one would ever have to know. What do I do now?

L
eigh drove up the road to Ivy Manor, still feeling as if she’d been flattened by a truck and then dragged for a mile or two.
The generations-old house looked like a Christmas card: a dusting of snow on its roof and over the hardy green ivy around
the entrance, a large evergreen wreath with a bright crimson bow on the front door, and a lovely Christmas tree glowing in
the front window. Woozy from too little sleep, Leigh tightened her self-control to the maximum. She wouldn’t ruin her grandmother’s
holiday celebration with bad news. No one here needed to know she was pregnant.

Leigh parked her car in the large garage that had been the stables for the manor long ago. She was weak from crying, and carrying
her luggage had never been more wearing. She passed the empty little cottage and the summer house on her way to the backdoor.
Then the door swung open, and her grandmother was there with her arms open wide. “My darling! My sweet girl!”

The physical warmth from the house wafted into Leigh’s
face, and the warmth of the welcome blew into her heart. She hurried forward. Dropping her luggage, she fell into her grandmother’s
arms. She’d practiced what to say, to keep her sadness from her grandmother. She opened her mouth to recite her greeting and
blurted out instead, “Grandma, I’m pregnant.” Then she burst into tears, sobbing against her grandmother’s soft shoulder.

Kitty was standing behind Chloe and heard Leigh’s wail and weeping. She closed her eyes. What had the poor child gotten herself
into? “Bring her inside, Chloe,” Kitty instructed, knowing someone had to be strong at this moment. “She needs something hot
to drink, and she needs to sit by the fire. Thank heaven Bette isn’t arriving until tomorrow.”

Chloe obeyed Kitty and drew Leigh into the house. Kitty dragged the luggage inside and shut the back door. Chloe’s housekeeper,
Rose, was standing in the toasty kitchen at the stove, watching the timer. She was baking sugar cookies. From her expression,
Kitty knew she’d overheard Leigh, also.

“Don’t worry, Miss Kitty,” Rose said with a grim expression. “What’s said in this house stays in this house.”

Kitty nodded. “Thank you. Would you put the kettle on for tea?” Rose assented, and Kitty went into the parlor. Chloe had Leigh
sitting beside her on the loveseat near the hearth. To give Leigh time to compose herself, Kitty stopped to stir the coals
and put kindling and a few more logs on the cozy fire. Flames danced up. She turned. “How far along are you?” she said in
as businesslike a tone as she could manage.

Leigh looked up. “Almost two months.”

“Who’s the father?” Kitty sat down across from Chloe in the wingback chair. This scene brought back her own sad memories.

Leigh winced as if Kitty had slapped her. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t marry. He’s got a wife.” This admission brought on
another gale of weeping.

Kitty absorbed this blow, knowing that this was worse, much worse, than what she’d thought. She’d hoped they’d just be planning
a hurried wedding. But that was impossible unless… “Is it a happy marriage?”

“I don’t have a clue, and I don’t care.” Leigh’s voice rose, the beginning of hysteria.

Kitty fell silent while Chloe stroked Leigh’s long blonde hair, murmuring love phrases and kissing Leigh’s temple. Kitty let
Chloe do her work. She was good at understanding and comforting. Much better than Kitty.

Finally, Kitty asked, “Do you want to tell us about it? I don’t see you having an affair with a married man. Didn’t you know?”

“No! I didn’t.” Leigh looked crestfallen. “He said… he said that everyone knew he was married. But I didn’t.” As if exhausted,
Leigh rested her head on Chloe’s shoulder, almost panting from the exertion of weeping. “He didn’t wear a wedding band, and
I didn’t think…”

Kitty nodded grimly. “We know, honey. You’re not the first one to find out too late…”

Chloe looked across the room at Kitty, obviously pleading with her for help. Chloe couldn’t address falling in love with a
married man, but she knew that Kitty could.

Kitty looked inside herself at the old scars and wealth of regret. She possessed the awful experience that might help her
very dear great-niece through this disastrous valley. She could only hope it would be enough. “Leigh, what do you intend to
do? You aren’t thinking of an abortion, are you?”

Leigh sat up and looked at her. “The doctor wanted to warn me of the dangers of backstreet abortions… I can’t
imagine doing that. It terrifies me. Then she said something about adoption. I don’t know if I could do that, either.” Leigh
looked at Chloe. “But Uncle Jamie was adopted, and you adopted my uncle Thompson, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Chloe squeezed Leigh’s hand. “And he’s been such a blessing to us—to me. Especially now since Roarke’s gone and Rory’s
living in Philadelphia.”

“But I don’t know if I can face going through a pregnancy alone,” Leigh said, weeping quietly, one hand over her eyes. “I
feel so stupid. So alone.”

“You’re not alone, dear.” Chloe patted Leigh’s shoulder.

“That’s right, my dear,” Kitty said, drawing up her strength to reveal here and now what she hadn’t spoken of since 1931.
“Your grandmother and I will help you. Just as Chloe and Roarke helped me when I got pregnant out of wedlock.”

Leigh stopped crying abruptly and stared at Kitty.

“Thank you, Kitty,” Chloe murmured.

“You had a baby?” Leigh said. “But…”

“I gave birth in California in 1931,” Kitty said in a grim voice, “and then brought my baby to Washington, D.C., to the same
orphanage that Jamie had been adopted from. Your grandmother and my brother met me there and adopted my son as theirs.”

Leigh’s eyes widened. “Uncle Thompson is your son?”

At that moment, Rose stepped into the parlor with the tea tray in hand. For a few seconds, all four women froze in place.
Then Rose reiterated in her calm way, “What’s said in this house stays in this house. Though I think most of Jerusha’s generation—black
and white—figured it out for themselves. If the good Lord had wanted Thompson to look any more like a
born
McCaslin, He’d have had to stamp the name ‘McCaslin’ on the boy’s forehead.”

Kitty chuckled at this—in spite of the bottomless guilt and regret that still tugged at her, tortured her from time to time.
If only times had been different, if only she had been different, wiser. But the past was dead and gone. The present was all
she could affect. “Why don’t you take tea with us, Rose? Leigh needs all of our support now.”

“I brought four cups.” Rose grinned and then set the tray on the coffee table. She took the chair beside Kitty’s and began
pouring and handing around the hot tea. “I can hear the oven buzzer from here. Don’t want to burn the cookies. Dory asked
for them special.”

“Now start at the beginning, Leigh,” Kitty urged. “Tell us how this happened.”

The three of them listened to Leigh’s tearful recital of the facts of her one-night affair. “It doesn’t seem fair,” Kitty
sighed.

“Who… who was Thompson’s father?” Leigh asked.

Kitty had been expecting this question. “Do you remember that photograph I keep on my desk at home in San Francisco?”

“Him? I always wondered who he was. What happened to him… to you?” Leigh looked as if Kitty had grown another head.

“You mean why did we part, and why do I keep his photo around?”

“Both.” Leigh studied Kitty, her face twisted in concentration.

“I keep his photograph on my desk to remind me that even the most intelligent woman can make horrible mistakes, commit the
most foolish sins. You see, I thought I was desperately in love with him. But in truth, I was just desperate. I was thirty,
and he was charming and tragically married but separated from a wife who wouldn’t give him a divorce. I
thought ours was a grand love story. But I was just a fool, living in sin with an unfaithful alcoholic. When I finally figured
that out, I left him and moved to San Francisco.”

“And you gave your son to Grandmother to raise?” Leigh sipped her tea at last. “I don’t know if I can do that. Give my child
away.”

“Well, as I told my own three daughters,” Rose cut in, “some men come and go in a woman’s life, but babies are forever. Miss
Kitty was right to have her baby, and Thompson didn’t suffer none from being raised here by his own blood. But times are changin’.
Miss Leigh, you can keep your baby and raise it yourself.” Rose aimed her cup at Leigh. “You keep your own blood. You’ll never
regret it.”

“We’ll help you, sweetheart,” Grandma Chloe said, squeezing her shoulder. “I want my first great-grandchild very much.”

“Mother won’t want me to keep my baby,” Leigh said, looking resentful, hunted.

“That doesn’t really matter, does it?” Kitty lifted her chin. “This will be your decision.”

“Does Uncle Thompson know?” Leigh asked. “I mean…”

“Yes,” Chloe replied, “I asked him when he turned twenty-one if he still wanted to meet his mother. When I couldn’t persuade
Kitty to come to him, he flew to San Francisco at her invitation.”

Leigh looked to Kitty. “How did that go?”

“He was kind enough to understand why I’d given him to Chloe and my brother. He told me he hadn’t suffered because Chloe had
been such a wonderful mother. And she’d told him as a child that he was McCaslin by blood and not to worry about who his real
parents were, that she would tell him when he became a man.”

Kitty paused before she could go on. Speaking of Thompson like this was costing her more emotionally than she’d feared. But
she went on resolutely, “Both he and I are sorry that we missed so many years together. But I write him regularly. And he
calls and writes me. He’s visited me and brought his bride to meet me on their honeymoon.”

Leigh nodded slowly as if pondering all this.

“It’s your life,” Kitty said, switching back to the main topic: Leigh and her baby. “You’ve made a mistake—you trusted someone
who was untrustworthy. You aren’t the first woman to make that mistake.”

Rose snorted over her tea. “Ain’t that the truth,” she muttered and continued, “We women got a way of hearin’ things men don’t
remember saying.”

Kitty almost smiled. “But we all have to go on. And no one can say that this hasn’t been a rough year for you.”

“Yes,” Chloe took over, “I don’t think you would have done this if you hadn’t suffered such overwhelming loss this year. If
Dane hadn’t died, you might have been pregnant by him now. But he’s gone, and
no matter what,
we’ll all love this baby.”

Kitty leaned forward. “We will.”

Chloe put her arm around Leigh’s shoulder and hugged her. And Rose raised her cup and said, “That’s a fact.”

The next evening in front of another warming fire, Leigh sat in the same spot beside Chloe. Kitty was in the same chair as
the day before, but Dory had taken Rose’s place. Bette stood nearby. A cold December wind was buffeting the old windows and
rattling the panes. Leigh leaned closer to the fire. The Christmas decorations that gave the room a festive air
didn’t fit the occasion. Just a few minutes before, Leigh had told her mother about her pregnancy.

She’d wondered what her mother’s reaction would be. She hadn’t had to wait long to find out. Her mother had immediately tried
to send Dory from the room as if she would be contaminated by the discussion. But now a teen, Dory had refused, and Grandma
Chloe had backed her up, saying this was a family matter and Dory was part of it. Visibly fuming, Bette had paced up and down
a few minutes and then turned to face Leigh.

“Of course, you must give the baby up for adoption.” Her mother was pink in the face. “We’ll find you a good unwed-mothers
home out of state, and you’ll just go away and no one will ever have to know.”

“No,” Leigh objected, revolted by the idea of being
sent away
like a leper, “I don’t—”

“How could you have let this happen?” her mother interrupted her, “when Dane is barely cold in his—”

“That’s enough,” Chloe snapped and then she tempered her voice. “Don’t say things you’ll regret, Bette. Leigh made a bad decision,
and we all know why this happened. You lost Ted. But Leigh lost both the man who’d been her loving father
and
the man she was going to marry this year. She wasn’t thinking like herself. And someone took advantage of that.”