Year of the Monsoon Read online

  “Yeah, this is fine. I’m in between clients,” Nan said.

  “Oh, good,” Lyn said, sounding relieved. “I always hate to call you at work, but there’s something you need to see down at the gallery. Any chance you can come by after you finish?”

  Nan glanced at the clock. Her last client was late. Looked like a no show. A good way to start Memorial Day weekend. “I could probably be there within half an hour. Are you there now?”

  “Yes,” Lyn replied excitedly. “I’m working here all weekend. Just get here as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.”

  Puzzled and curious, Nan began gathering her things and closed up the office. About twenty minutes later, she was parking down near Fell’s Point. Lyn was waiting for her when she entered the gallery. She grabbed Nan by the hand and led her back to the office. There, in a small crate was a corgi puppy.

  Lyn was wringing her hands, looking excited and apprehensive at the same time. “I know, I know,” she said. “But someone returned him to the breeder and they need to find a new home for him. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I thought I’d better show him to you first. If you don’t like him, I’ll take him back to the breeder. She’s a customer of ours, someone we all know.” Lyn rattled all of this off so fast, Nan couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  “Lyn!” she said finally, and Lyn nervously fell silent.

  “First of all, why did they return him?” Nan asked.

  “For some reason, they thought getting a puppy to go with their new baby would be a really good idea,” she said sarcastically.

  “How old is he?” Nan asked, squatting down to get a better look at the small creature watching her.

  “Four months,” Lyn replied, watching as Nan opened the door of the crate and the puppy come bounding out. He was still covered in puppy fluff, tri-colored, with huge ears that looked three sizes too big for him.

  He let Nan pick him up, licking her face and becoming surprisingly calm when she turned him on his back, cradling him to her.

  “Is it too soon?” Lyn asked worriedly. “I know how much you and Leisa miss Bronwyn, and I wouldn’t have interfered normally, but this puppy literally fell out of nowhere.”

  “Sometimes, those are the ones that are meant to be,” Nan murmured, watching the beautiful brown eyes staring up at her.

  “So?” Lyn held her breath. “Do you think this is someone you might want to take home, just to see what Leisa thinks? If she doesn’t want him, I will come get him tonight and bring him back to the breeder,” she promised.

  Nan looked up at her, and then back down at the puppy. “We might as well see what she says.”

  When she pulled up in front of the house, Nan wisely set the crate down in the front yard to let the puppy out before taking him into the house. After he had emptied his bladder, she carried him inside. “Leisa? Where are you?”

  “I’m back in the den,” Leisa responded.

  Nervously, Nan walked partway down the hall and set the puppy down, letting him enter the den on his own. From inside, she heard, “What –?”

  Nan peered around the edge of the door and froze.

  “Surprise,” Leisa smiled, sitting on the floor with the puppy in her lap.

  There, where a chair and lamp used to be near the window, sat a piano.

  “What –?”

  Leisa watched her anxiously.

  Nan walked over and ran her hands over the smooth walnut. Sitting at the bench, she touched the keys, but didn’t depress them.

  “You won’t hurt it, you know,” Leisa said from the floor. “If you don’t like it, it’s returnable, or we can exchange it for one you like better. I don’t really know anything about pianos, so I wasn’t sure what you would like.”

  Nan looked over at her, the puppy gnawing playfully on her fingers. “And Lyn promised he could be returned to the breeder if you don’t think it’s time. He’s an orphan.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Leisa murmured, picking him up and cradling him under her chin. “Play us something,” she suggested, shifting so her back was against the couch, letting the puppy down to explore.

  Turning back to the piano, Nan tentatively hovered her hands above the keys, and then, slowly, softly, began to play a long-ago memory. Entranced, Leisa listened, and she realized the puppy was listening also as he sat, his head tilting from one side to the other as the notes reverberated in the air.

  “That was beautiful,” Leisa said when Nan stopped. “What was it?”

  Nan smiled. “Something I learned for Marcus.” She came over and sat next to Leisa on the floor. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured, taking her hand. “It’s like a whole piece of me has been locked away all these years, ever since the church mob forced Marcus to leave.” She shook her head. “Marcus, Todd. I’ve lived too much of my life walling off parts I didn’t want to think about. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

  The next evening, Nan and Leisa and the puppy, along with Jo Ann and Bruce, were invited to Maddie and Lyn’s for a cookout.

  “Lyn will be home soon,” Maddie said as she picked the puppy up and snuggled him. “He is adorable. What’s his name?”

  “Gimli.”

  “Really?” Maddie chuckled as set him down and handed out drinks.

  “Gimli? What kind of name is Gimli?” Jo asked.

  “It’s perfect.” Bruce smiled as he played tug of war with the puppy, who was growling as fiercely as he could through a mouth filled with rope toy. “Doesn’t ‘corgi’ mean ‘dwarf dog’ in Welsh?” he asked.

  Leisa grinned. “Exactly.”

  Lyn came in a short while later. “Oh, my gosh,” she moaned as she dropped, exhausted, into a kitchen chair. Leisa handed her a Corona with a slice of lime pushed into the mouth of the bottle. “Thanks,” Lyn said, closing her eyes and taking a long pull on the bottle. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I said I would work Memorial Day weekend.”

  “Was it not worth going in?” Nan asked. Her eye was caught by Puddles’ positioning herself safely on a kitchen chair, her back to the puppy. She watched as the cat deliberately let her tail drop over the edge of the seat, twitching the tip like a wriggling worm luring a fish. Gimli sat down, snapping his jaws, trying to catch the tail with each twitch.

  “It was packed!” Lyn exclaimed. “We probably sold more paintings this weekend than we have all year, but I didn’t expect it to be that busy.”

  “That’s why we don’t go to the beach any more on this weekend, remember? Any place near the water is going to be nuts,” Maddie reminded her as she sprinkled seasoning on the hamburgers and chicken. “You relax; we’ve got dinner almost ready.”

  Lyn looked down at Gimli, who had gotten bored with the aloof cat and was now tasting her sandal straps and deciding he liked them. She picked him up and held him, rubbing her cheek against his soft fur. She looked at Leisa and said, “I think this is just what you guys needed.”

  Leisa and Nan came in from a walk with Gimli. Exhausted, the puppy walked into his open crate in the kitchen and promptly fell asleep. Leisa turned on the television, and Nan went to the den. A short while later, Leisa heard the sound of the piano. She smiled. Nan had spent some time almost every evening playing, usually by herself with the door closed.

  “It seems to calm her,” Leisa had said to Maddie and Lyn after Nan finally showed them the piano, something she was reluctant to do at first.

  “I don’t want to play for anyone,” Nan warned Leisa before she would agree to tell them.

  “It’s probably like meditation in some ways,” Maddie suggested.

  “Did you know she played?” Lyn asked curiously.

  Maddie shook her head. “No,” she said thoughtfully, “but it doesn’t surprise me. I think with Nan, you could know her for a lifetime and still not know everything.”

  Leisa was startled now by the ringing of the telephone. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” came a Southern accent Leisa recognized immediately. “This is Georgina Tay
lor. Is Dr. Mathison at home, please?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Taylor. Just a moment.” Leisa carried the phone down the hall and knocked softly. “It’s Todd’s mother,” she said. She handed the phone to Nan and went back to the living room, her heart pounding as she prayed they weren’t going to get bad news.

  Nan came in several minutes later and sat on the couch.

  “Well?” Leisa prompted, her heart sinking when Nan didn’t say anything right away.

  Nan looked at her and said, “Todd’s fine. Health-wise. But apparently, he’s staging a little rebellion. He’s refusing to go to their family reunion, he says he won’t have any more chemo,” she paused, “and he says he wants to come live with his real mother.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  Nan shrugged. “I said all the things a good psychologist should say – that he’s just acting out, he’s angry, it’s a phase, it’ll pass. I reassured her that I am not going to agree to his coming up here to live. She thinks he’ll try calling me soon.”

  “Has he called yet?” Lyn asked a couple of nights later.

  Leisa glanced at Nan. “He called last night,” she said when Nan didn’t reply immediately.

  Maddie looked up. “What did you say?”

  “You understand me so much better than they do,” Todd said. “You and Leisa both.”

  He hadn’t come right out and said it. Yet.

  “Todd, it often feels like other adults understand you better than your parents, because it’s temporary. They’re only around for the good stuff, and they don’t have to discipline you,” Nan said. “But your parents are still your parents.”

  “No, they’re not,” he burst out angrily. “They adopted me, but you’re my real mother.”

  There it was. Nan closed her eyes, steeling herself.

  “I am not your mother,” she said icily. “You were an accident. I didn’t want a kid then, and I sure as hell don’t want a kid now. Whatever is going on with you and your family is not my problem and not my responsibility. You need to deal with it.” She listened to the deafening silence on the other end of the line. “I have to go now.”

  “What did you say?”

  Nan pushed away from the table. “What I had to,” she said, calling the puppy to go outside.

  “I’m sorry,” Lyn said, berating herself for asking.

  “It’s okay,” Leisa reassured her, filling them in on Nan’s conversation with Todd.

  “Is she all right?” Maddie asked, looking out the kitchen window at where Nan stood, arms crossed as she stared at the ground, oblivious to the fact that Gimli was happily rolling on his back under one of the trees.

  “Not really,” Leisa replied. “She said she thought the monsoon was over, but it feels like we keep getting battered over and over again.”

  “You know,” Maddie mused, her eyes narrowing as she tried to recall, “I can remember the old Indonesian woman telling us that after the worst monsoons, victims would still be found months, even years later, and some people were washed away and never found. It was something they had to learn to live with.”

  Nan suddenly burst into the kitchen, holding the puppy at arm’s length with her face screwed up. “Poop. He was rolling in poop,” she growled as she carried him to the bathtub.

  “Well, that certainly puts things back in perspective, doesn’t it?” Maddie said as Leisa and Lyn cracked up laughing.

  Maddie buzzed down to Leisa’s office. “No big hurry, but could I talk to you when you have a few minutes?” she said.

  “Sure. I can be there in twenty or thirty minutes?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Leisa finished writing a social history on a new child who had just come to St. Joseph’s, and then went up to Maddie’s office.

  “Come on in, and close the door,” Maddie said.

  Leisa did as she was bidden and sat down.

  Maddie cleared her throat then said nothing. She cleared her throat again before saying, “I’ve been thinking about you and Nan and Mariela.” She paused again.

  Leisa frowned. Maddie never had this much trouble expressing herself. “What about us?” she asked.

  Maddie looked her in the eye and said, “If you and Nan are ready to seriously consider adopting Mariela, I will allow weekend visits.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  Lyn had come into the living room, and picked up the remote to turn the television off.

  “What is it?” Maddie asked as Lyn sat down beside her on the couch, tucking her legs under her.

  “You know that I never interfere in your work, or the decisions you have to make,” Lyn began. Puddles jumped up onto the back of the sofa, placing herself easily within reach of some petting. “But this time, I think you’re wrong.”

  Maddie turned to her. “About what?”

  “About Nan and Leisa. And Mariela. I know they’ve been through a rough patch, but they’re back together. They seem to be through the worst of their problems.” She placed a hand on Maddie’s knee. “They both risked their lives to save her. They could easily have been killed that night, and they did it willingly. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this – maybe it’s seeing Nan warm up to a child for the first time; maybe it’s Mariela herself. There is just something special about that little girl.”

  Maddie thought about this. “There is something about her.” She sighed. “I think maybe you’re right. Watching Nan do the right thing with Todd, hard as it was, made me wonder if I’d done the right thing.”

  “They’ll have Jo Ann and Bruce, and us, as extended family,” Lyn reminded her, relieved that Maddie had already started to reconsider her decision.

  Maddie smiled and placed her hand over top of Lyn’s. “Are you ready to be an aunt?”

  “What changed your mind?”

  Maddie pursed her lips for a moment. “You and Nan mostly. Mariela partly. Lyn some.”

  Leisa grinned. “Feeling a bit besieged?”

  “A bit,” Maddie replied, grinning also. “But,” she added, her grin fading, “I do want you and Nan to talk seriously about this. I don’t know if I should tell you or not, but Mariela has been praying for this. She even asked Linus for advice. It would break her heart if this started and then ground to a halt for some reason.”

  Leisa nodded. “I couldn’t do that to her. If we can’t go into this ready to make a commitment, we won’t start.”

  The doorbell rang and Gimli scrabbled to get to Jo Ann who was coming in carrying a large shopping bag.

  “No,” she said, laughing as she bent down to pet him. “This isn’t for you.”

  Leisa came into the foyer. “What’s all this?”

  Jo pulled from the bag a stuffed bear and some children’s books. “I didn’t know what grade level she’s reading at, so I got a few classics for her library.”

  “Her library.”

  Jo and Leisa turned around to see Nan who looked ill.

  “What’s the matter?” Jo Ann asked. “Are you sick?”

  Nan shook her head and went back to the kitchen.

  “Jitters,” Leisa said. “She sat down and looked at our finances and started panicking about what it will cost to send her to college.”

  Jo’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t you think you should bring her home for her first visit before you start planning for her college expenses?

  Leisa smiled. “Yeah. Most people would do it that way, but I think Nan is trying to brace for this by having everything planned out ahead of time.”

  Jo laughed. “If she figures that out, tell her to write a book.”

  They walked back to the kitchen where Nan was sitting over a cup of tea. Jo sat and laid a calming hand on Nan’s arm.

  “I only got to share long-distance in my sister’s anticipation of bringing Leisa home,” she said to them. “But I know she and Daniel had all the same fears of doing something wrong, not being able to give her everything they want
ed to, but they figured out – and you will too – the only thing you can control is the love you give her. Love is always enough.”

  “Love is always enough.”

  Nan repeated that to herself Saturday night as she stood leaning against the doorjamb, peering into the guest room where Mariela was sleeping.

  Leisa had brought her home after work on Friday and introduced her to Gimli. They’d had a quiet dinner, just the three of them and had watched some television before putting Mariela to bed.

  “Will you be okay in here by yourself?” Leisa asked as she tucked Mariela in.

  Mariela nodded.

  “If you need anything, our room is right next door. You come get us, all right?”

  Nan got up three times that night to check on her.

  “I think she’ll be fine,” Leisa whispered sleepily as Nan got back into bed.

  “I know.”

  “So will you. Now go to sleep.”

  Most of Saturday was spent over at the Gallagher house. Jo Ann and Bruce were ecstatic to have Mariela with them for the day. They invited Maddie and Lyn over for dinner and played Go Fish and Old Maid most of the afternoon. Gimli entertained himself with a new squeaky toy.

  “I didn’t even remember these games existed,” Nan said after losing her fourth hand of Old Maid.

  “These were Leisa’s old sets of cards from when she was little,” Jo said nostalgically. “I never thought we’d have another child here playing with them.”

  Mariela hugged Jo and Bruce when it was time to leave. “What time is church tomorrow?” she asked Leisa and Nan as they walked home.

  “Um,” Leisa stammered as she and Nan locked eyes. “How about if we go to Father Linus’s Mass?”

  “I couldn’t tell her we don’t go to church,” she whispered to Nan a few minutes later when they got home and Mariela was playing in the bathtub. “Linus is the only priest I think I could stand. But I don’t even know what time his Mass is.”

  “Hang on,” Nan said grimly. She picked up the phone and dialed Lyn and Maddie’s house. “All right. We now have a – hold on,” she said, turning to Leisa. “How old is she anyway?”