West Wind (2 page)

Sabrina smiled at the small-town charm that
allowed people to leave cars running when performing brief chores.
Locked doors in Eaton are rare.

James Weaver pushed the key fob and the trunk
popped opened. He took her suitcase and hefted it into the
voluminous trunk, then slammed the lid. Scooting to the passenger
door, he opened it, gallantly standing to the side.

"Thank you," Sabrina said, sliding into the
elegant, full-size automobile that flouted her parent's ideology of
hybrid fuels and conservation. She caressed the leather interior.
I am
, she thought,
my grandmother's daughter
.

Since the fifteen minutes when her plane
landed, she claimed her luggage and was on the road. Small towns
had their rewards and a lack of traffic in the airport and on the
road, was the best, she reflected.

"Have you ever been to Eaton?" James Weaver
tried to restart the car, the ignition system grinding. He grimaced
apologetically. "Oops. Forgot it was already on." He slipped the
gearshift into drive and, without looking over his shoulder, he
made a quick U-turn and drove out of the airport parking lot.

"Yes," Sabrina said. "My parents traveled a
lot, so I spent most of my summers here with Grandmother Rose."

The old man nodded, not really paying
attention to her nervous, chatty reply. He drove along River Road
toward Eaton. "River's up," he commented.

Sabrina glanced at the water, its ripples
glinting in the late afternoon sun. "Has it been a wet summer?"

He nodded, then spent the next few minutes
recounting the increasing number of rainstorms. "One good thing
about the rain," he added, "is the fall leaves will be grand. That
should bring more visitors."

He turned into a quiet neighborhood lined
with Victorian mansions and spreading maple trees. Some houses were
modified into apartments for college students, others into offices
for lawyers and doctors.

The local preservation foundation owned a few
historic houses, selling them to wealthy residents who could afford
the restoration and the upkeep. Most were included on the
foundation's annual Victorian homes tour. Rose owned such a house,
with each rose-themed room decorated in a different color. Sabrina
stayed in the yellow "Lord Mountbatten Rose" room when she
visited.

Sabrina studied the elderly man as he drove.
He seemed to be in his mid-sixties, possibly seventies, but
appeared strong. She wondered who he was and how he knew her
grandmother. She didn't know James Weaver, although she hadn't been
to visit for a few years.

"Do you know anything about her
accident?"

He glanced at Sabrina apologetically. "Not
much. She was alone. Doctors say she had a stroke. She was on the
floor all night until my wife stopped by the next morning. She saw
her at the bottom of the staircase. 'Bout had a heart attack
herself. She thought the poor old woman fell down the steps and
killed herself. Doctor thinks she was sitting on the bottom step,
trying to catch her breath when she keeled over."

Sabrina's eyes filled with tears. Grandmother
Rose had always been kind to her, although Sabrina could well
imagine her as the evil stepmother in a cartoon. She was tall, rail
thin with her silver hair swept into a chignon. She always wore
haute couture, despite the fact that she rarely left her house.

To Sabrina, Grandmother Rose seemed a haunted
woman who denied herself the pleasure and love of people, but not
the pleasure of things. She seemed to enjoy her oriental vases and
bronze statues more than her own son and his family.

As a beautiful and wealthy young widow, Rose
Windham should have been the belle of the ball. Instead, after she
moved to Eaton in 1976, the town's residents learned that the
haughty woman didn't want friends.

Sabrina knew that her father felt slighted by
Rose. She shuttled him off to prep school the year his father died,
and then sent him to a military academy for college. In his junior
year, he withdrew, making a list of the top ten liberal colleges in
the nation and applying to all.

He chose Hampshire College in Amherst,
Massachusetts, for its particularly open-minded reputation. There,
he reveled in socially conscious, left-wing repartee and indulged
in artistic expression, majoring in theater with a minor in
psychology.

At Hampshire, he met the love of his life,
Marta, a beautiful Brazilian exchange student majoring in creative
writing. Throughout their bohemian life, they managed to rear their
daughter, Sabrina, who, in turn, rebelled against her parents and
sought education at a private girls' prep school and then at
Harvard's business school studying finance.

She blinked back her tears as James Weaver
pulled into the alley behind the Victorian mansion, parking the car
in the carriage house.

"We're here."

"We're not going to the hospital?"

"She refused to stay. She's been released and
has a nurse to take care of her at home."

* * *

Nothing could have prepared Sabrina for the
sight of the fragile, pale woman. Rose's body barely mounded the
quilts of the hospital bed incongruously placed in the dining
room.

The crystal chandelier above Rose's head cast
a yellow and ghastly light. Her nose, once patrician, now seemed
hawkish, her mouth encircled with deep lines. Blue eyes pinned hers
when Sabrina walked to the bed and gently picked up the bone-thin
hand.

"Grandmother?"

"Sabrina," the elderly woman whispered, a
tear rolling down the tissue-thin cheek.

"I'm here, Grandmother."

"Norman?" The old woman's eyes darted behind
Sabrina, falling upon her neighbor, James Weaver.

"He couldn't come, Grandmother. They're in
Tibet," she lied.

Rose Windham closed her eyes and sighed. A
moment later, her fingers tightened. "Thank you, darling girl."

She sat by Rose's bed for several silent
minutes, watching as the woman fell asleep. Then, she went looking
for answers.

Sabrina found the nurse in the kitchen. The
steaming teakettle stopped whistling as the young woman lifted it
from the flame. She looked up briefly, nodded at Sabrina, and then
concentrated on filling her teacup with the boiling water.

"Hello. You must be Miss Windham," she said,
setting the kettle back on the stove. After wiping her hands on her
blue hospital scrubs, she extended one to Sabrina. "I'm Shirley
Piper. I'm an R.N., and I'll be taking care of your
grandmother."

Sabrina nodded, pleased by the woman's
confidence. "Call me Sabrina, please. It's nice to meet you."

"And call me Shirley. You'll want an update
on your grandmother but can I fix you a cup of tea first?"

Sabrina recognized fragrant chamomile and
grimaced. After drinking herbal tea all her childhood, she forswore
it as an adult.

"Thanks, but I'll pass. I've got bottled
water in my bag."

Shirley nodded and leaned against the
counter. She lifted the cup to her lips and blew.

"Your grandmother fell, injuring her pelvis.
Or, at her age, her pelvis may have fractured first, causing the
fall."

"Excuse me? How does that happen?"

"Your grandmother has severe osteoporosis,
also called brittle bone syndrome by some people. It is a wasting
away of the bone that happens as women age. Bone breaks down more
quickly than it is replaced so bones weaken and may fracture. There
are medications that prevent or treat osteoporosis, but she has not
been taking them.

"She also suffered a transient ischemic
attack. You may have heard them called mini-strokes. These occur
when the supply of oxygen is cut off to an area of the brain.
Unlike a stroke, which is often permanent, the symptoms of a
transient ischemic attack last less than a day, usually less than
ten minutes."

Sabrina took a deep breath. It was the first
piece of good news she'd heard today.

Shirley sipped her tea again. "The problem is
that anyone who has a transient ischemic attack is at risk of
developing a stroke in the future. Your grandmother is at risk, and
a major stroke can be crippling, or even cause death."

"What can we do?"

"She refuses to stay at the hospital, and
since she has plenty of money and her doctor under her thumb, she's
insisted that we take care of her here. The problem with that is
the limited amount of medical equipment available. We have
established a hospital-room setting here, with oxygen and a heart
monitor. I've started an I.V. to make sure she has her liquids.
She's also on a blood thinner. We have contractors coming in
tomorrow to modify the downstairs bathroom, to make it more
accessible."

"Do you think she should be in the hospital?
Do you want me to try to talk her into going back?"

"You can try if you like, but I've known Mrs.
Rose for a few years, and I've never met a more stubborn,
hard-headed woman. You see, my daddy is Dr. Piper, the physician
under her thumb." Shirley gently added, "You need to understand
that Mrs. Rose is getting old, and she is a frail woman. We can
take care of her to a certain degree, but her biggest battle is
time and nobody wins that one."

Sabrina nodded. "I understand, and you're
right. It's important to make her comfortable. Is this a hospice
situation? Is Grandmother Rose dying?"

"No, nothing like that. She can recover from
this and live many more years. On the other hand, she could suffer
more TIAs until she has a major stroke. There are no guarantees.
She knows that. That's why she wants to be home. I suggest that you
make the most of the time that's left. Do you plan to stay
awhile?"

"I really don't know. I haven't made any
plans. I found out this morning that she was ill, so I hopped the
next available flight out of Baltimore."

"Well, I can take care of her body. Only you
can help her soul. Seems to me, that's what's been causing her the
most pain."

Sabrina thanked the young nurse, wise beyond
her years. She returned to her grandmother's bedside and, for the
next hour, held her hand, comforting the old woman.

At midnight, Shirley Piper went off duty and
another nurse, an older woman with beefy arms and a kind face,
began the late shift. Rose would have around-the-clock care.

Sabrina stood and stretched. She looked for
her suitcase and briefcase, and found them by the front door where
she dropped them. Exhausted, she dragged them upstairs to her
yellow rose room. Too tired to undress, she kicked her shoes off
and climbed under the covers. Within moments, she was asleep.

Chapter Two

For the next few days, Sabrina visited
quietly with her grandmother. She gave the nurses the space and
privacy they needed as they developed a routine for caring for the
elderly woman. Rose slept for hours, thanks to the scheduled
morphine shots to ease her pain. Sabrina filled her free time
wandering around the mansion, organizing books on shelves, dusting
knickknacks, and rearranging photographs of Norman and Marta in
foreign locales.

Ricardo Brothers began forwarding her mail,
and she arranged an alcove in the sitting room as her new office.
The kindly landlord also adopted her houseplants, keeping them on
his patio until her return. She had few clients since her business
was new, and for one-on-one consultations, she referred them to a
reliable financial pro. She hoped they would reconsider her
services when she returned.

One afternoon, bored and snooping, she
discovered a scrapbook and a collection of letters and journals
tucked in the antique chest in her grandmother's dressing room.

Sabrina felt guilty as she untied the lilac
ribbon that encircled the letters. She seldom ventured into her
grandmother's bedroom as a child, intimidated by the lavender gloom
and the overwhelming scent of roses. It reminded her of a
mausoleum.

This afternoon, however, she pulled the long,
heavy drapes away from the window, turned on the bedside lamps and
spread the items on the satin coverlet. Some of the letters were in
her grandmother's handwriting. Others were from Don Windham, Rose's
late husband. There also were some letters with no return name on
the envelope. Sabrina didn't know where to start, and her stomach
flip-flopped.

I'm not meddling. I'm researching family
history, she told herself.

She sorted the letters according to the dates
on the postmarks. They ranged from 1955 to 1975, twenty years of
Rose's life. She also organized the journals, starting with the
earliest. They began in 1965, and ended in 1975.

"As if she stopped living when Grandfather
died," Sabrina murmured. "Why? What happened?"

Sabrina never knew her family's history.
Norman preferred to live in the present, never mentioning his
father, never talking about his own childhood. Marta talked about
her childhood, but it was a bittersweet story of a young Brazilian
orphan brought up by affectionate Catholic nuns. Marta did not know
her mother or father, and had no family until she met Norman in
college. It was an important connection: Both felt abandoned,
alone, until they found each other. The difference was, Norman did
have Rose, a wealthy, yet distant, mother.

When Sabrina was born, the couple was
thrilled, but they had no idea how to form a family. Instead, they
viewed Sabrina as a toy, almost a pet.

Impatient, Sabrina picked up the last letter,
dated December 12, 1975. It was a small, creased envelope with no
return address. With shaky fingers, Sabrina extracted the one-page
note. The edges were torn, the blue ink faded and, in some parts,
stained. Tears?

"I must see you again. It can't end this way.
Meet me tonight. Believe me, Rose. We can do this. We deserve this.
D."

Sabrina frowned, then re-read the letter.