Lyn reached for a piece of bread. “Why haven’t you gone over?”
“I told her she had some decisions to make,” Nan said. “It’s up to her now.” She took a bite, chewing as she thought. “She did introduce me as her partner.”
Lyn and Maddie looked at one another. “That’s a good thing, then, isn’t it?” Lyn said.
“I hope so.”
Leisa exhaled impatiently as she clicked through television channels. “How can we have three hundred channels and still have nothing worth watching?” she grumbled. She pushed painfully to her feet, grimacing as she grabbed her side. For such a small incision, it still hurts like hell. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. After staring at the contents for a minute, she closed the frig door and called Bronwyn out into the back yard. She sat at the picnic table watching Bron run around, inspecting every corner of the yard. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. Nothing. No calls from Eleanor – “not that I expected any,” she reminded herself sulkily, remembering the photo – but no calls from Nan, either.
She’d been home for three days – almost as long as the longest car ride of her life. At least it felt that way.
“I don’t know how you thought you were going to drive yourself home,” Jo Ann had said as Leisa squirmed in the passenger seat, trying to get comfortable.
“I didn’t think I would have to drive home the day I got out of the hospital.” But Leisa didn’t say it. Didn’t even like to think it. She felt so stupid, thinking that Eleanor had been ready to accept her as a daughter. She turned to look out the window so Jo wouldn’t see the sudden tears that had sprung to her eyes.
Since getting back to Baltimore, Jo had come by each day to bring her food and check on her – “you really should come stay with us,” she fretted – but there had been no contact from Nan. “She’s waiting for you,” Leisa reminded herself. She knew, too, that Nan had left it to her where they went from here.
“You have some decisions to make,” Nan had told her.
Only, Leisa didn’t seem capable of making any decisions at the moment. “How did it come to this?” she fumed. Every time she tried to think back, to trace the chronology of the events that had led them to this point, it seemed her brain jumped from Williamsburg to now, “but that can’t be right.” There was Eleanor and Sarah and – “Damn!”
Restlessly, she got up and called Bron back inside, wandering from room to room, but there was nothing to straighten, nothing that needed doing. She was too sore anyhow. She sat down and tried to read, but gave up after a few minutes, tossing the book aside and getting to her feet again. Bron raised her head hopefully.
“Want to go for a walk?” Leisa asked, thinking that some fresh air and a little exercise would do her good.
Bron jumped up at the ‘w’ word and danced around as Leisa tried to clip the leash to her collar.
“Stand still, you silly little beast,” Leisa laughed. “Ready?”
Gingerly, Leisa descended the porch steps and headed along the sidewalk toward Herring Run Park. Distracted by the splashes of sunlight filtering through the leaves, she tried to breathe deeply, but it hurt.
Suddenly, Bronwyn yanked the leash out of her hand and raced down the street, heading toward Nan. Leisa yelled and sprinted after her, ignoring the pain in her side. Bronwyn rounded the next corner and disappeared from sight. Before Leisa could get to the corner, she heard the screech of car brakes and a heart-wrenching yelp of pain.
Rounding the corner, she saw a car stopped diagonally in the street and Bronwyn’s limp form on the asphalt. An elderly woman was getting out of the car. She looked up as Leisa ran to the scene.
“Oh, Leisa,” said the woman, her hands fluttering anxiously. Leisa glanced up at her and realized she was a neighbor. “I’m so sorry. She just came out of nowhere. I couldn’t stop in time.”
“I know, Mrs. Samuels,” Leisa said. “She got away from me.” She knelt beside Bronwyn, and could see that she was still alive, panting rapidly.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Mrs. Samuels helplessly as Leisa bent over Bronwyn. “I’ll go get Nan,” she said, trotting down the street as fast as she could.
Fighting the lump rising in her throat, Leisa ran her hands over Bronwyn’s head, soothing her. She could feel how cold the little dog’s ears were already. Bron’s frightened brown eyes stayed focused on her as she leaned close and whispered, “Hang on. You’ll be okay. Hang on, you hear me?”
She kept murmuring, saying whatever came to her for what felt like long minutes, as she stroked Bronwyn’s face, trying to keep her calm. Trying to keep herself calm.
She glanced up the street toward the house, but could see no sign yet of Nan. “Oh, please hurry,” she prayed. Looking back down at Bronwyn, she realized she was no longer breathing.
“Oh, no,” she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. “No, no, no, no.” She picked up the still-warm body, cradling it to her and rocking. She heard footsteps running toward her, but couldn’t see anything clearly through her tears. Then Nan was there, kneeling beside her, wrapping her arms around both Leisa and Bronwyn.
“Come on,” Nan murmured through her own tears. “Let’s take her home.”
She said something to the distraught Mrs. Samuels and then helped Leisa to her feet, and together they walked back to their house. There, they laid Bronwyn on her bed near the fireplace. She looked like she was sleeping.
“It’s all… my fault,” Leisa managed to say in between her sobs as she collapsed on the floor in front of the couch and pulled her knees to her chest.
Not sure how her touch would be received, Nan tentatively wrapped her arm around Leisa’s shoulders. “It was an accident,” she said as Leisa let herself be pulled close. Nan held her tightly as they cried together for a long time.
Nan’s tears slowed after a while, but Leisa’s sobs seemed unending, now they had been released. The living room darkened and time crept by, and still Nan held her as she seemed unable to stop crying.
“I’m so sorry,” Leisa gasped during a lull.
“I’m sorry, too,” Nan said, caressing Leisa’s face with her other hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you from the beginning. I’m sorry I haven’t held you and touched you and loved you the way I should have. I’m sorry I ever made you doubt how much I love you.” She felt she couldn’t hold Leisa tightly enough or find words strong enough to make her know all the things she was trying to say.
It was late when Leisa’s tears finally seemed to slow.
“Are you hungry?”
“No,” Leisa sniffed as she sat up.
Apprehensively, Nan said, “Please stay here tonight.”
In the dark living room, lit only by the streetlights outside, Nan couldn’t read Leisa’s eyes, but she could see her nod.
“Why don’t you go upstairs?” Nan suggested glancing over to the dog bed where Bronwyn’s still body lay. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
Leisa’s eyes filled with tears again as she gave Bron one final caress before going upstairs. Nan swaddled Bronwyn in one of the towels reserved for her baths, and carried her down to the basement, tears falling again down her own cheeks as she laid the small bundle on a workbench for the night.
When she got upstairs, Leisa was undressing and getting into bed. “I’ll just be a minute,” Nan said as she went into the bathroom. When she emerged, she could hear Leisa crying again as if her heart were breaking.
“What is it?” she asked softly, spooning in behind Leisa and wrapping an arm around her.
Leisa couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure she even knew the answer. This upwelling of despair felt tangible and malevolent, as if it were a shadowy force threatening to pull her into its grasp and keep her there forever. But it was also familiar, something that only now did she realize had been stalking her for months, always just out of sight, but there, waiting. And it was all tied up with the things she couldn’t remember anymore, as if this… this th
ing was blocking all memory, all ability to feel anything happy. Until today, she had evaded its grasp, but now, she had no words to describe the terrible, aching aloneness she was feeling, an isolation and sorrow that went beyond Bronwyn’s death, beyond even her parents’ deaths.
“I’m here,” Nan whispered, sensing some of what Leisa couldn’t say. “I’ve got you, and I promise I will not leave you.”
“So, how is she?” Maddie asked a couple of evenings later as she and Nan did the dishes while Leisa and Lyn walked through the backyard to Bronwyn’s grave, marked by a chunky white stone.
Nan watched through the kitchen window as Lyn wrapped her arm around Leisa’s shoulders. “I’m not sure,” she said pensively. “We’re talking, but… there’s something different about her now.” Nan looked up at Maddie who was drying a skillet. “It’s almost like she’s not all here with me, like part of her has gone away.”
“Maybe it has,” Maddie mused. “She’s lost so much that she loved, maybe part of her has died, too.” She put the skillet away. “Has she heard from the bio mom?”
“No,” Nan said darkly. “Nothing. After everything she did for them, they haven’t called to see how she is or say thank-you or anything.”
“You know, that’s something else I’ve wondered,” Maddie said as she hung her dishtowel on the rack. “What does that do to your head, to expect this cathartic meeting with your biological mother, only to find she basically wants to use her genetic mistake to take care of her real child?”
“You know, that’s exactly the phrase Leisa used,” Nan murmured.
They had spent that night wrapped in each other’s arms when Leisa was finally able to sleep. She didn’t say anything when they awoke. She went down to the basement while Nan cancelled her day. Wordlessly, they buried Bronwyn in the backyard. Nan cried again as they dug the grave then placed the small body, still shrouded in a towel, in the hole, but Leisa’s supply of tears seemed to have been exhausted at last. They went back inside and made breakfast. Leisa pushed her plate away after a few bites, and sat with her coffee cup cradled in her hands.
“I’m not really sure what I expected,” she began when she finally spoke.
Nan waited. Knowing how Leisa’s mind worked, she knew she would understand in a moment what Leisa was talking about.
“She doesn’t know me. She didn’t raise me. He’s the one she loves, the one she has memories of watching grow up, no matter how big an ass he is now. The real child,” she added wistfully.
Nan reached for her hand, and was surprised when Leisa took it. “You know better than that,” Nan said. “You were the real child for your parents.”
Leisa’s gaze focused on some far off memory and Nan saw a smile tug at the corner of her mouth.
“Rose! Where are you?”
Rose looked up in surprise at the sound of Leisa’s voice calling from the foyer after school one afternoon. “I’m upstairs,” she responded. “And may I ask,” she added as Leisa came noisily up the steps, “since when do you address your mother by her first name?”
“I’m not really your daughter, and you’re not really my mother,” Leisa announced as she dropped her backpack on the floor.
Rose paused as she pulled a t-shirt from the laundry she was folding. “Where did you get that idea?”
Leisa flopped across the bed next to the pile of clean laundry. “Randy Butler said so. He said if I’m adopted, then we’re not a real family. He said you’re not really a mother if you never had a baby, and I’m not your daughter.”
Leisa’s voice was casual, but Rose knew better. She’d learned long ago that Leisa’s mind worked in ways that continually surprised her. She also knew how softhearted Leisa was, no matter how tough she pretended to be. She lay down on the bed next to Leisa, propping herself up on one elbow. “And what makes Randy Butler such an expert?” she asked, running her free hand through Leisa’s silky blond hair.
“Well, he’s older,” Leisa shrugged.
“How old?”
“Third grade.”
Rose suppressed a chuckle. “I see. And since you’re only in second grade, he knows more?”
Leisa shrugged again, not looking directly at Rose.
“I want you to listen to me carefully,” Rose said. “Having a baby does not make someone a mother or father. Raising a child, being there with her every day, taking care of her even when she’s sick or has a scary dream, loving her no matter what…” She paused and turned Leisa’s face to her. “No matter what,” she repeated. “That’s what makes a mother or father.” She looked into Leisa’s serious eyes. “Do you understand that?”
Whatever Leisa read in Rose’s eyes must have satisfied her. “Yes,” she said with relief.
“So,” Rose said, sitting up, “what do you call me?” She gathered an armful of folded laundry.
Leisa grinned wickedly. “Rose?” she teased.
Rose dumped all the laundry on top of her, grabbing Leisa and tickling her until she squealed with laughter. “Stop, Mom!”
“That’s more like it.”
“Yes, I know better.”
Leisa’s eyes were focused on their intertwined hands, but Nan wondered what she was really seeing.
“You don’t have to deal with this alone,” Nan said softly, afraid of pushing Leisa away just as she seemed to be drawing near again.
Leisa’s gaze shifted to Nan’s, searching her face. “Would it be okay if I came home?”
Chapter 19
“THE REAL DAMAGE FROM monsoon does not come in the first rains and winds,” said the little Indonesian woman. She was the matriarch of the family that ran an Indonesian restaurant where Nan and Maddie used to go when they were in school. She could have been fifty or ninety – it was impossible to tell as her bright black eyes peered from a face wizened and wrinkled by a hard life. “The real damage come later, after the winds and rains have battered you and weakened you and you think you cannot hold on any longer. Then the waves and flooding come and try to sweep you away completely.”
Nan remembered those eyes gleaming like onyx, staring intently into her own. Had the old woman been telling her future? she wondered as she drove home. Leisa was finally home, life was slowly getting back to some semblance of normal, and just as it had seemed the worst was over… Bill Chisholm had called earlier that day. “Todd has had a relapse,” his message on the voice mail said. “He’s back in the hospital. If there is any way for you to come now, you probably should.”
“How do I tell her I have to leave again her very first week back home?” Nan muttered worriedly as she drove home. She had been hypervigilant, watching for any signs of another emotional breakdown, trying not to let Leisa see her worrying. Leisa still seemed fragile and emotionally distant, often staring off into space for long periods of time, gone somewhere Nan couldn’t follow. Yet, she craved touch. She willingly let Nan hold her, and frequently rested an arm or leg where she could stay in contact with Nan, as if making sure she was nearby, but she hadn’t indicated she was ready for anything more. Nan guiltily wondered if, after her prior refusals of Leisa’s attempts to be intimate, Leisa would be brave enough to initiate anything even if she was ready to make love.
Nan was the first one to arrive home. She paused on the threshold. Over the past several weeks, she’d gotten used to coming home to an empty house, but coming home now, knowing Bronwyn wouldn’t be there ever again was still hard. She went to the office and began looking on the Internet for flights to Savannah.
“I’m back here,” she called out when she heard Leisa come in the door. She did a double take when Leisa came into the den, still caught off-guard by how haggard Leisa looked. She wasn’t the only one to notice.
“I’m not trying to pry,” Jo Ann had said to Nan a couple of days earlier, “but she doesn’t look good. She’s lost I don’t know how much weight; she’s got dark circles under her eyes. She looks like she’s aged twenty years in the last couple of weeks.”
Nan weighed her
words carefully, trying to reassure Jo Ann without saying too much. “I can’t tell you she’s really okay,” she began. “I’m not sure I even understand everything she’s dealing with, but I think she’s working through it. And I think coming home was an important step in that process.”
“What’s up?” Leisa asked now, glancing at the display on the computer monitor.
Nan sighed. “I just heard from Chisholm. Todd is worse. He’s back in the hospital. He said I should come now if I can.” She stood to face Leisa. “I hate to leave you so soon, but…”
“Oh, Nan,” Leisa said, taking her hand. “Of course you should go. I… I wanted to go with you when you went to meet him.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Leisa said, laying her hand tenderly on Nan’s cheek. “He’s part of you. And that makes him part of me. I just don’t know how Maddie will feel about me asking for more time off work right now.”
Nan looked intently into her eyes. “I love you very much.”
Leisa’s throat tightened suddenly. She saw the truth of Nan’s words in her eyes, and felt that monster stir within her as if it sensed a threat to the hold it still had on her emotions and her memories, roaring in her ears as it felt its grip loosening… “I love you, too,” she was able to say over the noise in her head.
Nan looked away, blinking rapidly. “You haven’t said that since… since before Williamsburg,” she said, her voice cracking a bit.
Leisa pulled Nan to her for a kiss. Tender and gentle at first, her lips parted and the kiss became more assertive. Nan still felt hesitant, and pulled away. “I want you so much,” she said softly, “but I want to be sure you’re ready for this.”
Leisa’s eyes were cloudy, unfocused. “I need you,” she managed to say, though she seemed to have a hard time speaking. She reached for Nan’s hand and pressed it to her breast where Nan could feel the nipple hardening. “I need you,” she repeated.
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