Rain Shadow (12 page)

“Come on up, Taylor Ann.”

A moment later Taylor walked through the door and was immediately greeted by the smell of ginger and garlic and the excited yapping of a furry tornado.

“Hi, Twit.” She bent down and scooped up Minnie, planting a kiss on the dog’s tiny head.

Her mother beamed in approval. She leaned toward Taylor’s cheek, her lips lightly brushing hair. “Welcome. I’ve got stir-fry cooking. Make yourself at home.”

Taylor removed her shoes and wandered into the living room, her
feet sinking into plush white carpeting. White. Who besides her mother
would purposely install white carpet? Black and white AnselAdams photos were arranged on one wall and issues o
f
Seattle Magazin
e
fanned neatly across a glass-topped coffee table centered between black leather couches. The only other furniture was a piano. It dominated one corner of the room, facing a large window that looked out over Puget Sound. Quiet and dignified, the piano matched the calm waters outside.

Taylor caressed the glossy, near-black surface of her mother’s piano,
an antique Story and Clark upright concert grand worth a small fortune.
A genuine heirloom, the piano had been owned by her grandparents and great-grandparents before them. Her mother had paid several thousand dollars to restore it to complete magnificence. It was now worth in the neighborhood of twenty grand.

Taylor pulled out the bench and sat before the ornately carved behemoth
of an instrument. It stuck out in the stark environment, an anomaly in her mother’s otherwise stylish, modern home. She had missed the piano like a dear absent friend. It oozed history and memories—hers and those of countless people before—and had lulled her to
sleep on many nights when she lay listening to her mother play Cho
pin. She touched the keys, cool ivory on her fingertips. They had the power to transform a person, a curious white magic.

At the piano’s suggestion her mother, the woman she had never seen cry, exhibited a full range of emotion from little shakes of her head to the definite careful way she stroked each key, gently brushing some, firmly pressing others, to encourage subtle nuances of harmony. She would often look at the ceiling as her fingers danced over the keys of their own accord, lost in some timeless place. With the piano as partner, her cool and practical exterior evaporated and she became a
woman of passion, emotion swirling like a hidden current moving beneath
the placid surface of Puget Sound.

A picture of a wavy-haired maiden playing a flute in a stand of trees had been carved at the front of the
piano, deeply etched into the grain
of the wood. As a child Taylor needed only to look at the carving to be transported into a fairy tale, a fairy tale of music that beckoned the listener with a nocturne or prelude calle
d
Raindro
p
to enter another reality.

“You’ve redecorated since I was here last.” Taylor brushed her fingers once more across the piano and looked toward the kitchen where her mother measured rice into the rice cooker.

“I’ve had that piano forever.”

“I know. But the condo wasn’t set up like this when I lived here.”

“Real estate’s been good to me the last couple of years—it will be good to you, too. Then you’ll have the money to redecorate that country mansion of yours.”

Taylor felt instantly annoyed. She wanted comfortable, dependable things, not new, stylish ones. She missed her mother’s old mismatched furniture, like the worn beanbag that had once faced the picture window. A favorite reading place, the spot provided hours of reflection within view of the majestic Olympic Mountains. No doubt her mother
had worked hard to afford more, but Taylor couldn’t shake the feeling Ann Archer had been waiting to move into her true inheritance—stylish,
successful, modern woman—until the ball-and-chain daughter vacated the premises. The piano alone remained, a relic from childhood when her mother was the wavy-haired maiden sharing  the gift of music with a lonely child.

“Music is an example of something that doesn’t add up from an evolutionary standpoint,” Taylor remembered her father say while talking theology with Tom once. “Music doesn’t serve a basic need for survival of the species or follow animal instinct. It’s beauty for no practical
reason. Perhaps music is the only thing that suggests to me there is a god.”

The few times her father mentioned Ann, he always talked about
the music: how beautiful her mother’s playing was, how much he enjoyed
listening to it. It struck Taylor as astonishing that her mother was the one to show him a bit of heaven.

Taylor watched the rain increase, pelting the surface of the Sound until the line between water and grey sky melted into a single smoky palette.

“I’d forgotten how much rain this part of the country gets. I sort of missed it in California, but I’m already depressed about an entire winter of this crap.”

Because then I won’t be able to ride
.
The words longed to come out and shock her mother.

“Watch your mouth, Taylor.” Her mother hated coarse language, no matter how mild. “We live in a rain shadow here, what do you expect?”

“Rain shadow?”

“A rain shadow is a weather pattern dictated by topography, the lay of the land. Didn’t you learn this in school? The Cascades ensure we wil
l
alway
s
be wet; just as the east side wil
l
alway
s
be dry. Nothing anyone can do about it.”

In the shadow of rain with nothing anyone can do about it. Great.

“Shall we eat?”

Taylor moved to the dining area and a mahogany table with high backed chairs. Her mother ladled out servings of rice and stir-fry and they began eating in silence. The wall behind the table was painted a deep chocolate. A huge, frameless painting of a Japanese
Maple in full fall foliage accented the wall. If she had seen the painting on its own, in a shop somewhere, Taylor would never have imagined it would compliment her mother’s dining space so well. The oranges of the feathery leaves fairly glowed against the otherwise dark solemn colors in the
room. Funny how unexpected things could complete a scene. The picture on the wall proved the power of a special accent. Like a one-eyed horse.

Taylor thought of the mare and an overwhelming urge to tell her mother swelled inside. Pushing away the fear and ignoring her pounding heart, Taylor took a sip of water and opened her mouth.

“This is great stir fry.”

“It’s all about the lean protein.” Her mother smiled and took a tiny bite of food.

Just say it.

“I have a horse.”

“Pardon?” Her mother’s thin eyebrows furrowed.

“I adopted a horse from the shelter where I work on Sunday’s. Remember
I told you?”

“You said nothing about a horse. Ever
.
Tha
t
is something I’d remember.”
Ann placed her fork beside her plate and dabbed at her mouth with a fabric napkin.

“It’s a mare—her name is Rain—I don’t know if you remember but I always loved horses.” Taylor kept talking as if more information would help with absorbing the fact she’d been hiding a thousand pound animal from the person responsible for paying the bills on her life. “Rain got shot in the head, but she lived. It’s a miracle.”

Her mother didn’t appear to hear additional information, unimpressed with Rain’s spectacular life story. “How, on earth, can this go along with your current plans for real estate and getting your life on track? That’s all I want to know.”

“Well it doesn’t, exactly.” Taylor looked around the room for help. She saw Minnie watching them hungrily in the kitchen. “You have a pet. It’s like that. Rain is company for me; I don’t have any friends.”

“A five pound Miniature Pinscher is nothing like a stinky, filthy farm animal that eats into the double digit
s
every da
y
. How are you affording this, by the way?”

“The shelter donated hay this year, and other stuff. I’ll be able to afford her when I’m on my feet.”

“This is ridiculous Taylor Ann. Having a horse—much less a one-eyed one—is senseless. You’re no cowboy.”

Anger swelled and gave strength to the vulnerable feelings vacillating inside.

“How would you know that? You know nothing about me.”

“I must say, since you’ve lived with Neal I don’t recognize much.” Her mother kept her voice deliberately even and low, as she did with colleagues in the office when they were upset. It gave her a professional edge—avoid drama, stay in control. Taylor wished, for the hundredth time, to see her out of control just once.

“I’ve always loved horses. I loved the piano, too, but you never got me lessons because you said I didn’t have any natural ability. You never accepted me, just like you never accepted Dad.”

Her mother pressed her lips together, a sign the conversation was going somewhere she didn’t like. She pushed her plate away and started to get up. Then she sat back down.

“You assum
e
I
was the one who rejected your father. It never occurred
to you that perhap
s
h
e
was the one that never wanted me. I loved him once, very much, but my love wasn’t reciprocated.”

Abruptly Ann rose from the table and began clearing dishes while Taylor sat in stunned silence. She’d never considered that her mother
had actually experienced the vulnerability of being in love. It was impossible
to imagine. In the kitchen her mother’s brisk efficient movements were punctuated by the patter of Minnie’s following paws. Taylor heard her coo to the dog and give her a bit of chicken from the stir-fry.  

Taylor knew the conversation was over. There would be no talking real estate or her sort of first job as agent for Melissa, no more talk about Rain.  In the silence she thought of her assumptions about her parents and about the secrets that kept her mother. Perhaps they had something in common, after all. The knowledge felt strangely comforting.



Chapter 16

T

he twisting ribbon of road, glossy with moisture, appeared and disappeared around corners cutting through the thick fog that blanketed Whidbey Island. Taylor took her foot off the gas pedal and turned down Paul Brandt’
s
Leavin
’
that blasted over the Toyota’s wasted speakers. No sense getting a ticket. Or missing a foggy turn and ending up in the drink.

She glanced at the ghostly form of a lone man floating in a small boat on the serene surface of a roadside lake. She had plenty of time to make the 10:30 Keystone ferry. Her mother was to take the Edmonds ferry and meet her in Port Townsend for an agent seminar on marketing. Forget marketing, Taylor had a few questions about how to help a client secure a business loan. The information might be the only thing worthwhile about the day. Like the song, Taylor felt like
leavin’—her new career, for starters.

The road twisted up and over Deception Pass on its way to Coupe
ville. Heavy fog cloaked the space between the bridge and the ocean below. Stunningly beautiful on a clear day, the bay remained
dangerous for water lovers. Various pockets of undertow churned beneath
its surface like ingrown tornados.

Taylor wondered about the name
:
Deception Pass
.
Who had been deceived and over what? She imagined an explorer perhaps, on a warm day in summer, removing his clothes for a dip in the bay; the natural beauty of the place deceiving him about the nature of the current that
eventually sucked him under. Just another example of why outer appearances
couldn’t be trusted.

Once on the ferry, Taylor joined the stream of people leaving their cars and making their way up the metal staircase to the cabin. She sat down and leaned her head back, listening to the soothing drone of the massive engine below. It vibrated up through the seats and into the bones of her spine like a giant electric massage chair. Outside Puget Sound glowed with an otherworldly pallor. The sky and sea appeared a single boundary-less mass. Though no sun was in sight, the milky opaque light hurt her eyes.

After leaving the solid dock at Whidbey Island, the ferry disappeared into a pale haze missing a horizon. The fog obliterated everything but a few feet of water that sloshed ahead of the vessel. Nothing in the world outside appeared solid save the dripping metal rails of the deck and an occasional ropy sea weed floating like a green skeleton on the surface of the water. Every few minutes an unseen captain blew the fog horn, its blast echoing brave and wet.

Unnerved by her voyage on a vessel straight out o
f
Pirates of the Caribbea
n
, Taylor lay back against the faux leather seats at the edge of the cabin and closed her eyes, drifting into a shallow sleep. When she awoke, she sat up and glanced at her watch, expecting to find it was nearly time for the dark outline of Port Townsend to emerge out of the mist. Instead, the clock showed barely ten minutes had passed.