Year of the Monsoon (31 page)

When they were seated at the restaurant and had placed their orders, Lyn asked, “So, Nan, what did Bruce say about your grandmother’s papers?”

“Well… apparently, the financial advisor he spoke with told him the various accounts’ current total value is about five hundred thousand.”

Lyn stared at her. “As in half a million? Dollars?”

Nan chuckled. “About five times what she gave everyone else. I think that’s why she did it that way, hid the statements inside the photo album. She knew there would be hell to pay if they found out.” She took a sip of her iced tea. “But you know, I think I liked the album better before, when I thought that was all she meant by ‘this is the most valuable thing I can give you’.”

The weather forecast for the weekend was ideal, sunny days in the seventies, nights cool enough for a sweater. On Saturday, Lyn delivered her canvases to the gallery. She had chosen mostly seascapes, which she thought would sell well at this location. After lunch, they rented a boat and went on a cruise of the Chesapeake Bay, exploring some of the inlets and watching fishermen haul up crab traps. Dinner that evening was a feast of crab cakes and shrimp with a few bottles of wine.

“Good thing we walked,” Lyn giggled as she wove a trifle unsteadily on their way back to the bed and breakfast.

The inn had a private patio with a beautiful view of the bay. They sat and talked, Leisa’s head resting contentedly on Nan’s shoulder as they watched the moon come up, reflecting brightly on the water. Nan could finally let herself breathe a sigh of relief that the monsoon was over. Leisa was back where she belonged and they were together and whole again. She caught Maddie’s eye and smiled.

That night, she and Leisa made love and it was like coming home. Leisa’s mouth and body welcomed her. They fit together the way they used to, reading each other and pleasing each other without the need for words. Afterward, Nan spooned in behind Leisa, fighting sleep, not wanting to lose a moment of this perfect time. She could feel Leisa’s breathing slow and grow deeper as she drifted off. As Nan grew drowsy, she tried to remember how recently it had felt as if her life was falling apart. “We survived,” she whispered.

The next morning, the four of them went down for breakfast, where the innkeepers had small bouquets of wildflowers at each place at the table.

“Happy Mother’s Day,” the wife said with a smile as she poured coffee for each of them.

Maddie, Lyn and Nan all turned to stone. The woman, looking puzzled, returned to the kitchen.

“It’s okay,” Leisa offered. “You guys are horrible secret keepers. I know it’s my first Mother’s Day without my mom, and you were trying to help me forget, but it’s been a great weekend.” She reached over for Nan’s hand.

“Well, since you feel that way,” Maddie said uncertainly. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle this, but…” She placed two cards on the table, each made of brightly colored construction paper and decorated with their names spelled out in bits of colored paper and crayoned writing. “I was asked to give these to you this weekend.”

Puzzled, Nan and Leisa opened their cards. Inside each was scrawled, “Happy Mother’s Day! Love, Mariela.”

Chapter 23

“I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE
the house sold its first week on the market,” Jo Ann said from inside the refrigerator as she scrubbed.

“I know,” said Leisa where she was boxing up all the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink.

From the dining room Nan called out, “Bruce said it would sell fast.” She came back into the kitchen. “I’ve got all the good china stacked on the dining room table, and the hutch is empty.”

Together, they were trying to have the house ready for an estate auction in a couple of weekends. “It’s so tempting to hold on to everything,” Leisa bemoaned. “It all has memories attached to it.”

“That’s why it’s easier to let a stranger handle it,” Bruce had advised. “Mr. Jansen will get you the best price for everything, and then it will all be over. Just make sure you take anything you want before he comes for a final inventory, or you’ll have to bid on it to get it back.”

“At least the young family that bought the house seems very nice, honey,” Jo Ann observed. “This old place will have a new life to it with children in it again.”

“I know,” Leisa said wistfully. “I keep remembering my childhood here. All the Christmas mornings, trying to sneak down the stairs to catch Santa Claus laying out my presents, but those squeaky stairs always gave me away.” She grinned. “Learning how to climb down from my bedroom window using the downspout and shutters.”

“What?” Jo exclaimed, clutching her chest in mock distress. “It’s probably a good thing I never had children. I’m not sure I could have survived all the things they would have done.”

Leisa chuckled. “You would have been a great mom,” she said with a hug.

“So would you,” Jo said. “And Nan,” she added in a very loud whisper.

They had both noticed Jo Ann’s hints – “and she is not subtle,” Nan said ruefully – ever since Easter that Mariela would be a welcome addition to the family.

“I can hear you, you know,” Nan said.

“Good,” Jo Ann shot back.

Leisa just smiled.

Only a couple of days ago, she had replied, “she’s not getting angry and she’s not walking out” when Lyn asked how Nan was handling the closer ties to Mariela. “That’s enough for now. And believe it or not, I think Todd is mostly to blame.”

Todd had e-mailed and texted both of them several times since his parents calmed down after his return to Savannah. It sounded as if he hadn’t shown them the photo of his great-grandfather, preferring to keep it to himself for now, “kind of like a talisman against the relatives,” Nan guessed.

But Leisa knew. She knew the real reason he hadn’t shared it was because it was a connection he wanted to preserve privately with Nan, with his roots, without having to defend it or explain it to his parents.

They spent nearly every remaining evening and weekend day before the auction cleaning, sorting, trying to group things in lots for the auctioneer. Leisa took a break to meet the new owners at Bruce’s office a couple of days before the auction so they could close the sale on the house.

“Normally, we wouldn’t close until the house was empty and ready for the buyers to do a walk-through, but they have to go back to New Jersey to close on their house up there. They agreed to do things this way. I assured them you were trustworthy,” Bruce grinned as he left her in the care of his partner.

Leisa was prepared to thoroughly resent them, but this young family was ecstatic to have found such a perfect house and they thanked her so profusely that she couldn’t help liking them. Their two children, a girl of seven and a boy – “I’m almost five,” he corrected indignantly when his sister told Leisa he was four – couldn’t wait for Christmas with a real fireplace. Leisa leaned toward them and whispered, “I almost caught him going up the chimney, twice.” Their eyes got huge as they squirmed in their seats.

All the same, it was heartwrenching to watch Bruce’s partner hand them a set of keys after all the papers had been signed.

Apparently, the auction people did a good job of advertising, because the streets for blocks around were lined with cars by seven a.m. on the Saturday of the sale.

“Go home,” Nan urged anxiously by mid-morning as Leisa looked ready to cry nearly every time an item sold. It didn’t matter whether they sold for a little or a lot, they were all treasures to her. “I’ll stay here and help out as much as I can. Bruce and Jo Ann are here, too. We can keep an eye on things.”

Leisa finally agreed when the dining table and hutch sold and all she could think of were all the family meals they had shared around that table. “You’re right,” she admitted, blinking back tears. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

She went home and tried to busy herself with some cleaning that had been neglected while they were working on the other house. She had the front door open and saw the mail carrier come onto the porch.

“Thanks,” she said as she went out to meet the mailman and collect the bundle. She sat down on the top step of the porch and sorted through it. There, amidst the catalogs and credit card offers, was an envelope from the Syracuse hospital that did the transplant. It looked like a bill. Frowning, she opened it. All of her expenses were to have been paid with no out-of-pocket from her.

She shook out the papers inside, and stared at them for several minutes, trying to make sense of them. It was a bill, but not for her. It was for Donald Miller, totaling over seventy-eight thousand dollars. The other paper was a financial form listing her and Eleanor as the responsible parties. At the bottom was her signature, except it wasn’t quite. The form was dated three days ago. Her hands were trembling in anger as she tried to think calmly. Forgetting to lock the front door, she carried the papers with her back over to her mother’s house.

Wandering frantically through the house, she searched the sea of faces for Bruce, Jo or Nan. She found Jo Ann first.

“Leisa, honey, you’re white as a ghost,” Jo said worriedly. “What is it?”

Mutely, Leisa held out the papers. Jo Ann’s face became a livid red and her lips pursed until they disappeared entirely. “Go find Nan. I’ll find Bruce and meet you on the back porch,” she said.

A few minutes later, they were all huddled over the forms. Bruce expelled a disgusted breath. “I was afraid they might try something like this.”

At Leisa’s puzzled look, he explained, “Real estate sales are public record. All they had to do was keep an eye on the Internet and do a search for your name. They know exactly how much you sold the house for.”

“He can’t get away with this, can he?” Jo asked in alarm.

“No, of course not,” Bruce said calmly. “But it is a pain in the neck. The hospital has your social security number from your admission paperwork?” Leisa nodded. “We’ll have to prove it’s not your signature and that you have no legal connection to him, but they could make things difficult with your credit in the meantime.” He laid a reassuring hand on Leisa’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll have my partner draft a letter and place a phone call first thing Monday morning.”

Leisa shook her head in total disbelief. “I just didn’t think they were capable of this,” she said in dismay.

One of the auction workers ran up just then to ask a question about an upcoming item. Bruce and Jo Ann went with him.

“Are you all right?” Nan asked, watching Leisa carefully.

“I’m fine,” Leisa answered in disgust.

“You couldn’t have known,” Nan told her firmly. “You had no reason to suspect them.”

“I could have listened,” Leisa said as her jaw hardened. “You all tried to warn me.”

“You had no more reason to distrust them than Todd and his parents had to distrust me,” Nan reminded her.

“I guess,” Leisa admitted, looking at the papers again and shaking her head.

Father Linus leaned his elbows on the windowsill, watching the kids out on the playground. Both basketball hoops were surrounded by boys shooting baskets, only a few intrepid girls brave enough to push their way in uninvited; a few groups of girls were jumping rope, creating their cliques as only girls can do, the outsiders sitting and watching wistfully, hoping to be invited to join in; the swings and slides were all occupied; a few loners were scattered about on the outskirts of the playground, mostly the odd kids, the ones the other kids thought weird, the ostracized ones. And then there was Mariela, an exception to every one of those social roles.