Year of the Monsoon Read Online Free PDF Page A

seem to talk anymore. I feel like I might as well be at work,” Nan admitted.
    Maddie reached out and squeezed Nan’s hand. “Remember to take care of what’s important,” she repeated.
    Sighing, Nan looked back down at her list of clients and decided to cancel the entire week. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a whole week off. “Leisa is the most important thing right now,” she reminded herself as she reached for the phone.
    A couple of hours later, she and Leisa were seated at the kitchen table at Jo Ann and Bruce’s home a couple of blocks from their own house and from Rose’s, all within easy walking distance of each other.
    “Tell us what happened,” Leisa said as Bruce laid out a platter of ham and turkey for sandwiches.
    Jo Ann removed her wire-rimmed glasses and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “She was complaining of indigestion,” she explained in a tremulous voice. “We thought it was all the rich food we’d been eating. We went back to the hotel to rest.” She began to cry again. “I heard her fall in the bathroom. I did CPR, but the paramedics said she died immediately.” She couldn’t continue.
    Leisa looked up, her eyes red and puffy. She studied her aunt’s face, so much like Rose’s that people often mistook them as twins. Their dark hair had gone silver over the last few years and they had defiantly refused to color it, declaring that they had earned every one of those gray hairs.
    Leisa looked nothing like them, having been adopted, the only child of Rose and Daniel Yeats. Daniel used to tell her when she was little that they went to the baby store and picked her out, like picking a puppy at a pet store.
    “Your mother and I walked around and around, looking at all the babies there, and we picked out the prettiest and smartest baby girl they had,” he used to say, holding Leisa and rocking her with her blond head resting on his chest so that his voice rumbled in her ear.
    “I think I was ten before I started questioning that story,” Leisa would laugh.
    Now, they all picked at their food as no one had much of an appetite. At last, Bruce looked at his watch. “We’d better be going.”
    At the funeral home, they met with Horace Spink, a pale man with large bags under his eyes that gave him the appropriately mournful expression of a basset hound. “We’ve been in contact with the New York City medical examiner’s office, and they assured me that the deceased’s remains would be available by Wednesday.”
    “What do you mean ‘available’?” Leisa demanded.
    “After they have completed the autopsy, of course,” Mr. Spink answered with what he obviously thought was a reassuring smile.
    “Oh.”
    He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a leather binder. “Perhaps we should start,” he said, flipping the binder open, “with our casket selection.”
    It seemed there was an endless list of decisions to be made: arranging for the transport of the body, scheduling viewing hours, what to include in the obituary, choosing the floral arrangements, how many death certificates to order. Leisa had helped her mother with all of these things when her father died, but Nan had never been through this process. She felt helpless as she sat back offering nothing but her support.
    Nan had often watched, a bit enviously, as Leisa interacted with her parents and with Jo and Bruce. It was abundantly clear watching them that Leisa was not just loved, but adored, something Nan could not relate to.
    “We just don’t have anything in common,” she had said flatly when Leisa first asked why she didn’t want to see her family more often. “Having them in Oregon and me here works out just fine.”
    Nan was the middle child of three, “the unspectacular one,” she often said. Leisa had met Mr. and Mrs. Mathison once when they stopped in Baltimore on their way to Europe. “Let’s be discreet,” Nan had said.
    Leisa cocked her head to the side and asked, “Are you ashamed of