Year of the Monsoon

by Caren J. Werlinger

  Year of the Monsoon

  By Caren J. Werlinger

  Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC.

  Copyright © 2010, 2014 by Caren J. Werlinger.

  All rights reserved.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9886501-8-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9886501-9-0

  Cover design by Patty G. Henderson

  www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com

  Book design by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  E-mail: cjwerlingerbooks@yahoo.com

  This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser’s electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books By Caren J. Werlinger

  Currently Available:

  Looking Through Windows

  Miserere

  In This Small Spot

  Neither Present Time

  Year of the Monsoon

  Coming Soon:

  She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things

  Hear the Last Unicorn

  Dedication

  To my parents, Nancy and Ray

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people to thank for their assistance in getting this manuscript at last into readers’ hands. A sincere thank-you to Marty, Marge and Terry for reading early versions of this story and offering feedback and proofreading. To Beth Mitchum, for her editing skills. To Julie French of the Live Baltimore Home Center, for her assistance in researching Baltimore neighborhoods, and to Patricia Morill of the Art Gallery of Fells Point, for her generous time and assistance with my research of the Fells Point area.

  And to my partner, Beth, for always being my first and gentlest critic.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Author Biography

  Chapter 1

  LEISA YEATS COUGHED A little as her first few breaths of cold night air hit her lungs. She pulled her scarf more snugly around her neck as she descended the brick steps of her front porch. From the sidewalk, she glanced back up at the dark window of the bedroom where she had so recently been sleeping in a warm, cozy bed next to her partner, Nan, with their corgi, Bronwyn, snuggled between them.

  Shivering, she looked toward the Mini Cooper, thinking longingly of the heated seats. She sighed and unlocked her ten-year-old Nissan Sentra, tossing her backpack onto the passenger seat, and turned the ignition. She switched the heat on high and pulled away from the curb, her tires spinning a little on the compacted snow near the curb. A few of the neighbors in their Baltimore community of Arcadia still had Christmas lights up, but most of the houses on this mid-January night were dark and still. The only good thing about being roused from bed at three a.m., she thought, is that there’s no traffic.

  By the time she pulled into the police station, the car was just getting warm. Her shoes crunched on the snow as she walked through the parking lot. She hurried through the sliding glass doors into the brightly lit lobby.

  “Hey, Matt,” she said to the young officer behind the desk as she retrieved her ID from one of the pockets of her backpack and clipped it to her jacket.

  “Hi, Leisa,” he answered, looking up from his computer screen. “You’re on call tonight, huh?”

  “Yup. The glamorous part of social work,” she said, stifling a yawn. “What do we have?”

  “Little girl.” He swiveled the monitor so she could see the report. “Neighbors reported seeing her going through the garbage looking for food. Our guys said when they got there, she ran and hid in a closet. Found a female corpse in another room. Probably her mother. The M.E. thinks it was most likely an overdose, one, maybe two weeks ago. Won’t know for sure until he does the autopsy.”

  Leisa grimaced. “Was it nasty?”

  Matt shook his head. “No heat in the apartment. It’s been so cold, the body was fine.”

  “How old’s the girl?”

  “Don’t know,” Matt shrugged. “She hasn’t said a word. Looks like she might be five or six.”

  “Where is she?” Leisa asked, glancing around the empty lobby.

  He jerked his head to the left. “Room 3.”

  “Alone?” she asked, displeased.

  “There’s a two-way mirror,” he explained, pointing to a closed-circuit monitor next to his computer. “I’ve been watching her. It was the only way we could get her to eat anything. She wouldn’t touch the food while we were in there with her.”

  Leisa leaned over the counter so she could see the image on the monitor. “So we don’t have a name, either?” She watched the little girl get up from the corner where she was sitting on the floor, come get a drink of milk from a cup on the table and go back to her corner, leaving a half-eaten sandwich on the table.

  “Nothing.”

  Leisa sighed. “Well, let’s see what we can find out.”

  She went down the corridor to Room 3, knocked and opened the door. Without looking directly at the girl, Leisa could see her hug her knees more tightly against her chest, trying to make herself even smaller. Leisa took off her coat and scarf, draping them over the back of a chair and sat on the carpeted floor also, still not looking at the girl. Opening her backpack, she found a chocolate bar. Tearing the outer wrapper open, she broke off a chunk of chocolate and placed it on the wrapper on the carpet next to her. She pushed it toward the girl a few feet and left it. Ignoring the girl, she broke off another piece of chocolate and put it in her mouth. She set the remainder of the chocolate bar on top of her backpack and waited.

  For nearly half an hour she waited, trying not to doze off. At last, the girl stirred from her corner and scooted closer until she could snatch the chocolate Leisa had left. She took it back to her corner and ate it, shoving the whole piece in her mouth.

  “I really like chocolate,” Leisa said as she took another bite. She placed another chunk of chocolate on the wrapper, not quite so far away this time.

  It only took a few minutes for the girl to come and get the chocolate this time. Before she could scuttle away, Leisa held the rest of the chocolate bar in her open palm.

  “My name is Leisa.”

  She looked at the girl for the first time. “What’s your name?”

  The little girl’s greasy black hair was tangled. Her face and hands were filthy, her clothing stained and torn. She surveyed Leisa with dark brown eyes that were large and wary.

&
nbsp; “What’s your name?” Leisa repeated, holding the chocolate a few inches closer to the girl.

  “Mariela,” the girl murmured in such a quiet voice that Leisa almost couldn’t hear her.

  “Hello, Mariela.” Leisa smiled, offering the candy bar to her. Mariela took the chocolate and this time stayed next to Leisa while she ate. Leisa glanced at her watch and saw that it was nearly four-thirty. “Tired?”

  Mariela nodded.

  Leisa spoke to the mirror. “Officer Wellby, could we have some blankets, please?”

  Within a couple of minutes, Matt came in with three folded blankets. He winked at Leisa as he handed them to her and left.

  Leisa spread one blanket on the floor beside her and placed a folded one next to her leg, patting it invitingly. Mariela laid her head down and Leisa covered her with the last blanket.

  Mariela looked up at Leisa uncertainly, not sure whether this was a safe thing to do. Leisa smiled down at her. “Go to sleep. I won’t leave you.”

  Was that night the trigger, the catalyst for everything that happened later? Leisa would wonder when she thought back. No, she realized. There had been no one cataclysmic event that had set things in motion. It had been so many little things, meaningless, or at least harmless at the time, chipping away at the foundation of their relationship, that by the time it was hit by something big – “our monsoon,” Nan would have said – there was nothing left to hold it up.

  “Hey.” Maddie’s round face, framed by a halo of frizzy hair, appeared over the partition around Leisa’s cubicle.

  “You do know,” Leisa said, glancing up from the report she was filling out, “that using the door to my cubicle, like normal people, would be the polite thing to do. Just because you’re seven feet tall –”

  “Six two,” Maddie cut in, ignoring the rest of Leisa’s jibe. “How’s Mariela doing?”

  Leisa shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to check on her today, but the residential staff said yesterday that she still hadn’t said a word to anyone.”

  “She’ll come around. What did Nan say about dinner on Saturday?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask her,” Leisa said as she turned back to her computer.

  Maddie’s disembodied face frowned. “Everything okay with you two?”

  “We’re fine,” Leisa reassured her. “She just got home late and I was already in bed. I’ll ask her tonight.”

  “All right. Let me know.”

  Leisa stared at her monitor. “We’re fine,” she repeated to herself.

  Nan sat, feverishly typing a treatment note from three appointments ago. She closed her eyes and tried to remember. What had that woman been talking about? Does it really matter? she asked herself. She’s been stuck on the same issues for three years. Her computer dinged that she had an e-mail and the little bubble appeared in the corner of her screen. It was from Maddie. Dinner Saturday? Lyn’s making chili. Hey, are you and Leisa okay?

  Nan frowned at the words. What was Leisa saying at work that would make Maddie ask that? It had been Maddie who introduced them, Maddie who saw what Nan couldn’t, wouldn’t see in herself. Like a child listening to a favorite bedtime story, Leisa had made Nan tell the tale of how they met so often that Leisa felt she had been there through all the maneuvering to get Nan to the party that evening, even though she hadn’t. She knew this story inside and out – “most, not all,” Nan would have corrected.

  “Look,” Maddie had said, making Nan sit down while Lyn went to make coffee for all of them. “Ever since we were in college together, I’ve watched you and the women you’re attracted to. You always gravitate toward beautiful players who have no intention of settling down, or if they say they will, they end up cheating on you like Jenna did.”

  Nan colored slightly. “Thank you for analyzing my shortcomings, Dr. Oxendine,” she said coldly.

  Unperturbed, Maddie sat back and shook her head with a wry smile. She knew her friend far too well to be affected by the chill emanating from Nan’s general direction. “I’m not analyzing your shortcomings, Dr. Mathison. I am analyzing your shortsightedness. There’s a difference.”

  Nan crossed her arms defensively. “Relationships just don’t work out for me.”

  Maddie leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, “They don’t work out for you because you sabotage them before they even get off the ground by the women you choose. You’re still punishing yourself –” She stopped abruptly at the warning in Nan’s eyes. Choosing different words, she continued, “You won’t let yourself believe that you deserve someone good and loyal who will love you. Really love you.” When Nan made no response, Maddie asked in frustration, “How can you see so clearly what your clients need and still be so blind when you look at yourself?”

  Nan’s face softened a little. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have found someone like Lyn.”

  “Oh, yes she does,” said Lyn, overhearing this last bit as she came into the living room with a tray filled with coffee mugs and a plate of cookies, “because I remind her all the time.”

  Their gray tiger-stripe cat, Puddles, followed her from the kitchen.

  Maddie took Lyn’s hand after she set the tray down on the coffee table, and pulled her over for a kiss. Lyn’s long, wavy hair swung forward, obscuring them from view for a moment. Puddles jumped onto Nan’s lap and began purring as Nan reached for a mug and waited while Lyn settled on the couch next to Maddie.

  “Sometimes,” Maddie went on, “you have to create your own luck. And yours could be about to change,” she said with a pleased grin.

  Nan’s dark eyes immediately became guarded and suspicious.

  “There’s this new woman –” Maddie began.

  “No!” Nan cut her off.

  “No, wait,” Maddie pleaded. “She just started working in residential. She’s kind of quiet, but she seems really nice.”

  “Don’t set me up,” Nan groaned. “It never works out.

  “You really didn’t like me, did you?” Leisa said with a laugh later when Nan told her this story.

  Nan shook her head. “I didn’t want to like you,” she corrected. It was too hard to fall in love. “You just set yourself up to have your heart broken,” she might have added. Nan had stopped falling in love long ago, choosing instead to enjoy her lovers for as long as they stayed. It still hurt when they left, just not as badly. But her heart betrayed her the moment she met Leisa. She only remembered bits of the party that evening at Lyn and Maddie’s.

  She had found Lyn in the kitchen when she arrived. “Let me help you,” she said.

  “Oh, thanks,” Lyn said gratefully, stirring multiple pans on the stovetop. “I lost track of time in the studio today. Working on a new landscape.”

  “I’d like to see it if you have time later,” Nan said as she got out a knife and cutting board.

  Lyn gave her a sideways glance, still keeping most of her attention on her steaming pots. “Is this your strategy to escape all evening? Help me in the kitchen and then go hide in the studio?”

  Nan grinned and didn’t answer as she began chopping onions. Within a few minutes, she was squinting with tears running down her face as she blindly continued chopping, hoping to keep the tips of all ten digits intact. She was startled when Maddie brought Leisa into the kitchen for introductions. She hastily wiped her streaming eyes on her sleeve and looked up to find Leisa looking at her with her head tilted to one side in a gesture that would become endearingly familiar. She took in Leisa’s short, blond hair and slender build, but it was the gray-green eyes that captivated her.

  “I hope it wasn’t me,” Leisa joked. “The tears,” she added when Nan looked at her blankly.

  “Onions,” Nan said, holding up both knife and onion, and trying unsuccessfully to use her shoulder to brush back the small strand of hair that always pulled loose and hung along her cheek.

  “Oh good,” Leisa smiled, reaching forward to tuck the loose strand behind Nan’s ear.

  Nan
felt her face get warm at Leisa’s touch. Maddie continued Leisa’s tour of the rest of the house, and Nan casually abandoned her plans of staying in the kitchen as she carried platters and bowls of Lyn’s excellent cooking out to the dining room table. Nan mingled with the other guests, making small talk, but trying to keep an eye on Leisa’s whereabouts. At one point, tired of the socializing, Nan slipped away to the studio to see Lyn’s latest work and was startled to find Leisa there.

  “Oh, hi,” Leisa stammered apologetically. “I hope Lyn and Maddie don’t mind, I just needed a few minutes of quiet.”

  Nan smiled reassuringly. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Besides,” she said, gesturing around the room, “this is the most fascinating room in the house. I’ve known Lyn for years, and it still amazes me that she can turn a blank, white canvas into something this beautiful.”

  Together, they roamed the open space of the studio as Nan told Leisa about the various locations of the seascapes and landscapes Lyn had hanging or leaning against the walls.

  “Maddie said you went to UNC with her,” Leisa said.

  “Yes,” said Nan.

  “Did you play basketball, too?”

  Nan laughed. “No. I’m not tall enough or athletic enough. Especially for UNC.”

  “It’s just… I saw some pictures of you two,” Leisa said. “I almost didn’t recognize her. Maddie was so –”

  “Skinny?” Nan finished for her when Leisa stopped abruptly. She nodded. “She was. All arms and legs. Great for blocking passes and grabbing rebounds. We stayed at UNC for grad school, but then we came to Baltimore for post-grad and she met Lyn. Maddie calls it happy fat.”

  Leisa looked quizzically at Nan. “Do their families mind?”

  “What? That they’re with a woman? Or that the woman is a different color?”

  Leisa blushed furiously. “Both, I guess.”

  “Lyn’s family is fine, but I don’t think Maddie’s mother is thrilled about either,” Nan said thoughtfully. “I went home with Maddie a few times when we were in undergrad, and I think her mother was suspicious of our relationship even then. Wondered why she was bringing this white girl home. Especially in their tiny town in southern North Carolina. I think I was the only white person there anytime I went. Maddie just lives in a different world than her mom.”