Year of the Monsoon by Caren J. Werlinger

for a while? I’m on my way now.”
    She got there as quickly as traffic would allow. Remembering to bring the folder, she ran up the steps to her aunt and uncle’s front porch. Jo Ann was waiting for her.
    “Leisa, what’s wrong, honey?” Jo asked as she closed the door. Leisa hung her jacket on the hall tree, not answering immediately.
    “I need to ask you about these,” she said, holding out the folder.
    Jo led the way to the dining room where she sat down and opened the folder. Her face blanched as she leafed through the papers. She stopped when she got to the handwritten note.
    “Your mother and father planned to talk to you about this,” she said, looking over at Leisa. “Rose kept waiting for you to ask about her, but you never did.”
    “Can you tell me about this?” Leisa asked, tapping the note in her aunt’s hand.

    “She changed her mind,” Rose had sobbed over the telephone. “All these months, we thought the baby would be ours…”
    Rose and Daniel were living in Albany. They were devastated when they learned they couldn’t have children. It turned out that both Rose and Jo Ann had such severe endometriosis that doctors felt successful pregnancies were impossible. Both sisters had had multiple miscarriages. When Rose and Daniel decided to adopt, the administrator of Catholic Charities gently warned them that the process would be lengthy and frustrating. They had been ecstatic when they got a call after just a couple of months telling them a young woman had decided early in her pregnancy to give the baby up.
    “Why did she change her mind?” Jo Ann asked, feeling her sister’s anguish.
    “They said she asked to hold the baby, a little girl, and she just couldn’t give her up,” Rose explained, still crying. “I understand. Of course I understand. I know I couldn’t do it. We’re just so disappointed.”
    A couple of months later, they drove down to Baltimore with the tiny bundle in their arms.
    “They said she kept praying, talking to her priest, trying to decide the right thing to do,” Rose said, watching Leisa’s perfect, miniature hand curled around Bruce’s finger as he held her. “She finally decided this was best for the baby,” she said, still not quite believing the baby was really theirs.

    “They never meant to keep this from you,” Jo Ann said to Leisa, reading her thoughts. “This was all part of what they wanted you to know.”
    “It just caught me off-guard to find it,” Leisa said, slumping back against her chair and shaking her head. “And then when I did, they weren’t here to ask.” She looked up at Jo. “Were they really okay with me and Nan?”
    Jo smiled knowingly. “With you and Nan? Yes. With you and what’s her name from college? No.”
    Leisa blushed and laughed. “I can’t blame them there.” She tilted her head. “Did they always know I was gay?”
    It was Jo Ann’s turn to laugh. “I think they figured it out when you wrote a love poem for your sixth grade teacher and cut all your mother’s roses so you could bring her flowers.”
    Leisa’s face burned a deeper crimson. “Miss Davison,” she said dreamily. “That was a serious crush. I felt really bad about the roses,” she admitted sheepishly.
    They were silent for a moment, then, “What are you going to do about this?” Jo Ann asked, tapping the note from Leisa’s birth mother.
    “I don’t know,” Leisa answered honestly.

    Leisa’s office phone rang. “Hello,” she said absently as she flipped through a folder on a new child referred to them that day.
    “Hi,” came Nan’s voice. “Is anything going to keep you late tonight?”
    “No,” replied Leisa in surprise. “I should be done by five. What’s up?”
    “Nothing. I just feel like I’ve hardly seen you lately. I was thinking about cancelling my last two sessions so we could have dinner and a quiet evening together.”
    Leisa blinked. “That… that sounds really nice.”
    “Great.” Nan sounded nervous.