Year of the Monsoon Read Online Free PDF Page B

between her fingers. “Actually, she’s been on my mind pretty constantly since the night I was called out to get her.”
    “Leisa,” Maddie said gently, “it’s only been a couple of weeks…”
    “I know that,” Leisa said defensively. “I didn’t say I was ready to do it.”
    “Have you talked to Nan about this?”
    Leisa exhaled in exasperation. “I can’t talk to Nan about anything lately.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know. I guess she’s still angry that I came to work the week of the funeral.”
    Maddie frowned. “It’s not like Nan to stay angry. Do you intend to talk to her about Mariela?”

    “Would you like to have children? Someday?” Leisa had asked Nan once as they were getting to know one another.
    Leisa had always envied her friends who came from large families. Thanksgiving and Christmas had always felt as if something was missing with only her parents and Aunt Jo and Uncle Bruce. Her favorite television show growing up was old re-runs of The Waltons . She had no desire to get pregnant, but had always hoped she would meet someone who would be open to adopting two or three children. “Not just one,” she insisted. “One is lonely.”
    “No. Absolutely not,” had been Nan’s unexpected reply.
    Leisa was caught off-guard by the finality of Nan’s response. Nan, who never saw anything in black and white, who always took the trouble to try and see every issue from the other person’s side, was adamant about this.
    Puzzled, Leisa asked, “Why not? Don’t you like children?”
    Nan’s expression had hardened perceptibly. “No, I don’t.”
    Leisa swallowed her disappointment. She knew she was already beginning to fall in love with Nan, but to give up her dream of a family….
    Over the years, any hopes Leisa had that Nan might change her mind were dashed when friends began having children. Nan never held the babies or played with the toddlers. She often excused herself from get-togethers where she knew children would be present. Leisa had had to accept that Nan really didn’t like being around children.

    “Do you intend to talk to her about Mariela?”
    Leisa shook her head. “Not now. It’s not the right time.”
    She couldn’t help noticing that Maddie looked relieved. She knew Maddie most likely thought this impulse to take Mariela home was a reaction to Rose’s death. And if Leisa were absolutely honest with herself, “there is a grain of truth in that” she would have had to admit.
    Home was a very lonely place lately, but Leisa couldn’t talk to Maddie about what was going on. She missed her mom so much it hurt. There was a constant emptiness inside, compounded by a sense of guilt that she had told no one about. That day in the car, when she had thought about calling her mother, but hadn’t. “Why?” she kept asking herself. “Why didn’t you call?” She knew the question didn’t really make sense – “how could you have known?” argued a more logical side of herself – but she wished with all her heart she could re-do that day. Nan asked often how she was doing, and held her when she found her crying. But as warm and solicitous as Nan was in regard to Leisa’s grief, there was a distance in her recently that Leisa couldn’t bridge. “It’s nothing,” she said whenever Leisa found her, brooding and taciturn, staring into space. As empty as the world felt without her mother in it, it seemed even emptier with Nan so far away.

    Leisa and Nan climbed into the Mini and drove to Rose’s house, passing beautifully-kept Craftsman, Tudor and Colonial style houses. The early February sky was flat and gray, looking as if it might snow again. Leisa pulled into the driveway and sat there, her hands tightly gripping the wheel.
    “Are you sure you’re ready to tackle this?” Nan asked, reaching over to Leisa’s shoulder.
    Leisa hadn’t been inside the house since Rose’s death. Jo Ann and Bruce were the ones who had come over to pick out clothes